Chapter 13: The Mistresses revenge
The gramophone in the west wing sitting room hissed softly, a jazz trumpet weaving a lazy, blue melody through the haze of cigar smoke. Ron stood at the window, his back to the room, watching the moon glaze the courtyard tiles. The drink in his hand was single malt, peaty and expensive, but it tasted like nothing.He hadn’t come here for pleasure. He’d come for a test.A rustle of silk, a whisper of stockinged feet. They’d sensed his presence, a shift in the mansion’s gravity. Yvette entered first, her wrap dress clinging deliberately.Then Hana, her movements a studied calm. The other two—the blonde American, Clara, and the quiet Italian, Sofia—followed, a nervous flock.
“Master,” Hana said, her voice a low chime. “We didn’t expect you.”
He turned.Their eyes were bright, hungry. He saw the calculation in Yvette’s smile, the careful hope in Clara’s.They were beautiful sculptures, perfectly maintained. He’d chosen each for a specific aesthetic, a particular skill. He finished the whiskey, felt it burn a hollow path down his throat.“I’m here,” he said, the words flat.
It was all the invitation they needed.They moved with practiced ease, a well-rehearsed ballet. Yvette took his glass, her fingers brushing his.Clara approached with the decanter, refilling it. Hana lit the cigar that had been waiting in the ashtray, placing it between his lips. Sofia knelt to untie his boots.Their touches were expert. They knew his body, its rhythms and pressures.Yvette’s thumbs worked the tension from his shoulders.Hana massaged his scalp. They shed their clothes not with passion, but with a quiet efficiency, like unwrapping instruments.
He let them. He sat in the high-backed chair, the leather cool through his shirt, and watched. He allowed Yvette to lower her head into his lap, her blonde hair fanning across his thighs.He felt the warmth of her mouth, the practiced suction. Clara kissed his chest, her hands roaming.Hana watched, her dark eyes missing nothing.It was technically flawless. It was utterly empty.His body responded, a mechanical reaction to skilled stimulation. Release was a physical inevitability, a brief, tight clenching deep in his gut. Yvette swallowed, a flicker of triumph in her upturned eyes.She moved to clean him with a soft cloth.
As her fingers touched him again, intending to stir him once more, he caught her wrist. His grip wasn’t hard, but it froze her completely.“Enough,” he said.
The word fell into the room like a stone. The jazz record had reached its end, the needle clicking rhythmically in the sudden silence.“Master?” Clara ventured, her hand stilling on his arm.
He stood, pushing Yvette gently but firmly aside.He adjusted his trousers, fastened them. The energy in the room curdled, turning from sensuality to anxious confusion. “You may go.”
Hana’s composure cracked first.“Was our service lacking?”
He looked at her, then at the others. Their perfect bodies, their expectant faces. They were a menu from which he’d lost his appetite.“No.It was sufficient.”
The word was a dismissal more brutal than anger. Sufficient.They were meant to be exceptional, intoxicating. They were meant to be a necessity.He walked out without another glance, leaving them in the opulent, smoke-filled room. The hollow feeling hadn’t left him.If anything, it had deepened. With them, it was a transaction.A draining.With the girl in his bed, it was… different. A claiming that left him feeling not empty, but oddly, uncomfortably full.It made no sense.
Back in his own chambers, the silence was absolute. He washed at the basin, scrubbing the scent of their perfumes and powder from his skin.The water was cold. He looked at his reflection, a stranger carved from shadow and sharp planes.He slid into bed. Leila was a small, warm shape in the center, deep in sleep. Her breath hitched slightly as the mattress shifted, a soft sound in the dark. She smelled of simple soap and, faintly, of the sandalwood incense that permeated his rooms.Not rose powder.Not Parisian perfume.
He pulled her into the curve of his body. She murmured, unintelligible, and her hand came up, not pushing him away, but resting lightly against his chest as if steadying herself. In her sleep, she trusted the cage of his arms.The jade pendant was cool between them.
He held her, watching the slow rise and fall of her shoulders until his own eyes closed. The hollow feeling was gone, replaced by a possessiveness so fierce it bordered on violence.She was his.Not just her body. Her sleep.Her breath.The ridiculous, innocent trust.It was the only thing that made sense.
In the west wing, the air was thick with fury and humiliation.
Yvette paced, her wrap dress tied tightly now, strangling her.“Sufficient? Did you hear him?Sufficient!”
Clara curled on the chaise, looking young and bruised. “He didn’t want… he didn’t want more.”
“He didn’t want us,” Hana corrected, her voice like ice. She was perfectly dressed again, every hair in place, but her hands were fists in her lap.“He used us to… to verify something. And we failed the verification.”
“It’s that little bitch,” Yvette spat. “He’s comparing us to her.A dirty village girl. He’s thinking of her while we… while I…” She couldn’t finish, her face twisting.
“She has bewitched him,” Sofia said quietly, speaking for the first time. “It is not natural.”
“It’s an aberration,” Hana agreed.Her calm was back, colder now, strategic. “And aberrations must be corrected.We have been too gentle in our thoughts.An accident is too vague. It leaves room for his suspicion.”
Yvette stopped pacing, her eyes locking with Hana’s. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying we make it not an accident, but a consequence.Of her own nature.Her own…” Hana searched for the word. “Her own unworthiness.”
A slow, ugly smile spread across Yvette’s face. “Go on.”
“He values her innocence, her simplicity.What if that simplicity becomes a liability? What if her peasant ignorance threatens something he holds in higher regard?” Hana’s gaze drifted to a small, priceless jade figurine on a shelf—a family heirloom from Ron’s mother. “He brought an outsider into the heart of his domain.Outsiders do not understand the value of things. They break them.”
Clara sat up. “You want to frame her for stealing?”
“Too crude.Too obvious.” Hana shook her head.“Destruction.Careless, stupid destruction. The kind a scared, ignorant girl might cause while prying where she doesn’t belong.” She looked at each of them.“We need an opportunity. We need her to be somewhere she should not be, with something she should not touch.”
“The library,” Yvette breathed. “He spends hours there with his papers.The girl can’t read.She’s afraid of that room. But what if she was lured in? What if something precious was left just… within reach?”
Hana nodded once.“We will create the opportunity. And we will be the horrified witnesses to her clumsiness, her catastrophic lack of refinement.” She smoothed the silk of her kimono. “He may keep her after such a thing, but she will be shattered in his eyes.A broken toy. And he will remember what it is to have women of quality.”
The plan solidified in the perfumed air, a poison taking its perfect, elegant shape.They didn’t just want Leila gone anymore. They wanted her destroyed in front of him. They wanted to watch the light of his peculiar fascination die, and have him turn back to them, his rightful possessions.
In the master bedroom, Ron slept, one hand still curled possessively around the jade goddess at Leila’s throat. He dreamed of black earth and the scent of rain on potatoes, and the girl’s small, bloody hands tearing cloth.A peace he didn’t understand.A pull he couldn’t name.
He held it tighter, even in his sleep.