Authors: Sophie Stern
Blood Dolls
Sophie Stern
Contents
Copyright © 2016 by Sophie Stern
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Celia opened her eyes.
Closed them again.
Opened them once more.
Her alarm blared with a familiar song until she finally sat up with a growl and shut the damn thing off.
“Another day, another dollar,” she mumbled, heading toward the bathroom. She didn’t want to go to work. She felt sick at the thought of spending another day in the office. She knew, rationally, that if the thought of going to work made her sick, then she could quit.
It made sense. If you hated your job, you shouldn’t do it. End of story. Part of being an adult meant making hard decisions and tough choices, and sometimes that meant a career change.
Unfortunately, for Celia, that just wasn’t an option.
It wasn’t that she hated her work itself. She didn’t. She was good at her job, liked her responsibilities, and enjoyed the coworkers she’d met in her time at Orbonai Software. Celia had a knack for business and she was a people person. Her desire to do something else with her life had less to do with the company she worked for and more to do with her supervisor.
The real reason Celia dreaded going to work was simply that her stepfather was the CEO and he made her life a living hell.
He’d always been horrible, but the last year at Orbonai had been downright awful. When he’d taken over the company after the death of his own father, Celia thought Raymond would change. She thought he would be fair. She thought he would be normal.
He hadn’t.
He’d been as awful as he’d ever been.
Celia had worked for Lester, Raymond’s father, after college. He’d viewed Celia as the granddaughter he’d never had and had taken her under his wing. It had been good for Celia, perfect even. She’d felt loved and cared for in a way she never had before. She’d felt complete. She’d felt safe.
When Lester passed, she half-expected she’d be the one to take over the CEO position of the company, but she’d been wrong. Lester had been far too trusting of his attorneys and had gotten some awful advice about his will and trusts. He had made some mistakes in how he set up his will, which resulted in the company going to next-of-kin instead of a person of Lester’s choosing.
Lester’s next-of-kin, unfortunately, was Raymond.
Celia stood under the water in her shower and tried not to think about her stepfather. She tried not to think about the way he treated her or her mother growing up. She tried not to resent her mother for marrying such a bastard. She tried not to hate herself for working for him.
She should have quit her job when Lester died. She had already been at Orbonai for two years at that point. Two years was more than enough time to look good on her resume and launch her career with another company, but she’d stayed.
She still didn’t know why.
She had told herself over and over again that she should leave, and while she’d been procrastinating, a year had gone by.
Now, with three years total at the company under her belt, she had a solid understanding of how Orbonai Software ran and functioned on a daily basis. She has personal relationships with the investors and employees. She was, essentially, the face of Orbonai.
Why hadn’t she left?
Oh yeah: her mother.
Tammy was frail and broken. She was in a mental institution: one of the best in the state. Celia secretly blamed Raymond for putting her there, even though it had really been her own fault. After Celia, as a teenager, had tearfully confessed to her mother all of the things Raymond had done to her, Tammy had gone insane with guilt.
She’d been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, bipolar, addiction, and five other things Celia had never heard of. It wasn’t hard for Raymond to have her locked away or to get the charges against himself dismissed in court.
Now Celia worked for the very man who had raped her as a teenager.
Now she had to face the asshole who had hurt both her and her mother.
If she didn’t keep working for him, if she didn’t stay at the company, he wouldn’t pay her mother’s medical bills. He’d have her put in a shitty facility where they wouldn’t take care of her, and there was nothing Celia could do. Raymond was her mother’s medical guardian, which meant he had final say in all of her medical decisions. Even if Celia could afford to keep her mother at Ironcrest, which she couldn’t, Raymond could have her moved with a few simple phone calls.
No, it seemed that Celia truly didn’t have a choice.
And that killed her.
She showered and dressed plainly. She didn’t like drawing attention to herself. She lived on her own in a cheap rental under a fake name and all of her bills went to a P.O. box. If Raymond wanted to hire someone to hunt her down, chances were he’d be able to, but she didn’t want to make things easy for him.
She had escaped his house when she was 16 years old. She didn’t have any intention of letting him touch her again.
Celia put on her makeup and stared at herself in the mirror. She took deep breaths in and out. She could do this. It was just another day. One more day. She could get through a day. She could get through the next few hours and then she’d be home, she’d be alone, and she’d be safe.
She could do this.
***
It hadn’t always been bad. As Celia rode the bus to the Orbonai headquarters downtown, she thought about the better times. When her dad had been alive, things had been awesome. They’d been great. They were the epitome of one big, happy family. Those people who were always smiling on book and movie covers? That was her family. They’d been content. They’d been peaceful. They’d been safe.
Then Dad had died after a short battle with cancer and Mom had remarried almost immediately. Raymond had been there for her in her darkest hour. At least, that’s what Mom thought.
Now Celia wondered if her mother had ever really known Raymond. Why had Mom settled for someone like him? Why had she settled for the monster?
The first time he had touched Celia, she thought she had done something wrong. Maybe if she hadn’t worn such tight skirts or short tops. Maybe if she hadn’t looked so provocative in her pajamas. Maybe if she hadn’t hugged her boyfriend in front of him.
Raymond told her it was her own fault, said if she told anyone, he’d kill them.
She hadn’t listened.
She’d gone to her mother, but Mom hadn’t wanted to believe it, hadn’t been able to accept the fact that her new husband was less than perfect.
The next time, Raymond had made it hurt even more. It was payback, he’d said, for trying to get help. It was just what happened to bad girls.
The third time, she’d shown her mother her bloody bed sheets, and Mom had been unable to keep denying the truth.
Raymond had gone through all the proper channels to make her mother appear unstable, though, and no one believed either one of them. The police thought she was a grieving widow whose only daughter was acting out for attention.
It helped Raymond that he was friends with the detectives.
Mom had been committed shortly after, and Celia had gone to live with Lester. It wasn’t hard to get away from Raymond: not as hard as it should have been. Apparently he didn’t want her around anymore than she wanted to be around, so he hadn’t fought her when she’d left.
Lester had always been different than his son. He’d been safe. He’d been the grandfather she’d never had. Celia thought no one could be quite as kind or caring as Lester, but everyone had their secrets. Lester’s was that he had a rapist for a son.
How had such a kind gentleman raised such an evil person? She’d never understand that.
She’d never know where Lester had gone wrong.
The bus stopped down the road from the Orbonai office and Celia hopped off. She walked slowly, not wanting to start her day. She didn’t want to step through the glass doors and have to paste on a smile. She didn’t want to have to pretend everything was okay. She didn’t want to have to pretend she felt safe or comfortable or all right, but she didn’t have a choice.
It was time for another day.
It was time for her to hide out in her office and carefully avoid Raymond.
It was time to be brave.
***
“He’s on the warpath,” Abby warned Celia when she walked in the door.
“About what?”
“He thinks you didn’t complete the file on the new software update.”
“What? I finished it last night. I even emailed him a copy to all of his addresses.” She had been at work until after midnight working on it. In fact, Celia had barely slept five hours before she’d had to get up and come right back in.
Abby shrugged, then turned back to her computer. She was the receptionist for Orbonai and one of Celia’s best friends. Well, she was one of Celia’s only friends. Celia essentially spent all her time at the office, so the only two people she could really talk to were Abby and Lauren.
Even then, they had the type of relationship you have with cool people at work. They hung out at corporate events and kept each other updated on their personal lives. They didn’t really know much about the other one’s greatest fears or darkest secrets. Abby certainly didn’t know why Celia hated Raymond so much.
She
definitely
didn’t know why Celia kept working for him.
While Celia had come to expect his poor and unprofessional behavior at work, she also hated starting her day this way. She’d slept strangely and now she was here again. She wanted to blame her job and Raymond for her sourpuss attitude today, but that was only part of her problem. The other problem was the nightmare she’d been having.
It was always the same dream. It had been nearly three months and she was tired of the dream. Celia didn’t consider herself to be fragile, but the truth was that the dream frightened her. She didn’t like how it made her feel, how it made her think. She didn’t like the things she saw in the dream.
She didn’t like what she did in them, either.
In the dream, she woke in a castle or a mansion. She was never quite sure what type of building it was. Maybe dream-Celia just wasn’t very good at identifying architecture or maybe the details were blurry, but Celia didn’t like not knowing where she was.
When she woke in the dream, she was alone and hungry. She was starving. Someone would come to her and feed her by hand, like a child. The food was always very plain, but sweet. It would be things like fruit or meat.
That wasn’t the thing that freaked her out the most. The next part of the dream, when she managed to get that far, was even more terrifying. Celia would be brought to a large bedroom. There would be a man there. He was always dressed in black and she could never make out his face. He seemed familiar, like she should know him, but she didn’t.
Then he would whisper to her.
He would say things to her: naughty things, bad things.
He would strip her soul bare and then he would devour her.
Celia knew what the man was. She never got past that part of the dream. She always screamed herself awake. It was a good thing she didn’t have roommates or they’d think something was insanely wrong with her.
The only thing that she knew was that the man was a vampire and he wanted to take her in ways she’d never even dreamed of.
The fact that he could see into her soul scared her even more than the idea of sex.
Oh, Celia had been with men before. Who hadn’t? It wasn’t like she was a virgin, but she was inexperienced. She’d had a lot of boyfriends, but they had been unskilled and uninterested in making sex good for her, which meant most of her experiences had been fumbling and unmemorable.
She’d never come during sex, never even come close. She’d never had a man go down on her and she’d never sucked a dick. She wanted to, was curious about it, but that seemed long ago. Her last sexual experiences with a man had been before Lester died, back in college.
“Seriously,” Celia groaned, and Abby looked up at her. “Why do I have to deal with him this early?”
“Haven’t had coffee yet?” Abby asked sympathetically.
Celia shook her head. Not even close. She’d dragged her feet too much to have time for a cup this morning. Now it looked like it was going to be awhile before she could get one.
“Cheer up,” Abby said. “It won’t be that bad. You did everything you were supposed to, right? Maybe he just missed the email. I’m sure once you point it out to him, everything will be fine.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Celia said, but she didn’t believe her own words and she knew Abby didn’t, either. There was nothing else she could do right now. She would go get settled in and then Raymond would come scream at her like he always did.
Every day was the same and Celia had nothing to look forward to.
Celia went to her office. She had her own tiny space, which was nice. At least Raymond hadn’t taken that away. Of course, he tried to find any excuse possible to come into her office alone and talk with her about various stupid things, but at least she had her own room.