Uncharted Territory (The Compass Series Book 3) (20 page)

“I have plans.” Rey always takes me out on my actual birthday.

“We thought this evening if you’re not busy.”

I hesitate for a second because I don’t actually have an excuse. She pounces on the opening.

“We’ll have a car pick you up at four. No need to wear anything fancy. See you in a bit.”

I find myself on the other end of a dial tone. She sounded weird, but when doesn’t she? Probably just a new dosage. I cannot deal with my parents tonight. Hopefully they’ll take me someplace nice with a good wine cellar and I can drown their inane conversation in a good pinot.

I turn back to the school work I’d been slaving over, and when I’m done, it’s time to attempt to make myself presentable. I don’t know why I bother. No matter what I do, she’ll have something to say about it. My hair, my makeup, my clothes. Always something. But in an impulse I can’t ignore, I have to try. It’s an urge I suspect daughters have been losing battles with for years. Decades. Centuries. Millennia.

*

I climb into
the waiting town car and extract my Kindle to read the new Ian McEwan at Hunter’s instruction. I need to finish it by tomorrow evening. We’re having dinner with the Grahams, and Jerry Graham loves contemporary Brit lit. I don’t mind—it’s better than some of the other stuff Hunter has me read—and I don’t mind Jerry. He’s kind of lecherous, but if I keep him entertained, Hunter will be so pleased with me.

I settle into the doomed antics of Michael Beard for the hour and a half it takes to make our way into the city. When the car pulls up to the curb, I’m expecting to step out in front of my parents’ pre-war building. Instead we’re in front of a modern glass horror show. I know this building. I’ve driven or walked by it many times. We must be in the wrong place. I lean up to tell the driver he’s got the wrong address when my father walks toward the car.

He opens my door and offers me a hand. All of my senses are on high alert. I know this neighborhood. There aren’t any restaurants on this block my parents would condescend to eat at, never mind that they don’t eat at five-thirty. Why are we here? I warily take my father’s hand and see my mother over his shoulder. She’s standing by the entrance, looking at once elegant and annoyed in her powder blue skirt suit. It’s a nice color on her, setting off her professionally colored hair—the blonde she’s been for as long as I can remember.

I’m glad I’m wearing the designer dress I treated myself to yesterday. It’s armor against whatever’s about to go down here.

“Indie.”

“Daddy.” I acknowledge him with a hand at his arm. He’s the only member of my immediate family who doesn’t insist on greeting me with a kiss. Familial kissing has always made me uncomfortable, but no one else seems to care. He’s the one who looks uncomfortable, though, and it ratchets my nerves higher. My mother must’ve talked him into something he knows I’ll find unsavory. What is it this time? Another consultation with a plastic surgeon about my imperfect nose?

We’ve reached the entrance, and I suppress a shudder as my mother bobs in for a kiss. She smells as she always does—Chanel No. 5 and Guerlain lipstick.

“Indie, darling.”

“Mother.”

Unlike my father, she doesn’t seem ill at ease, just disapproving as always.

“Come along. We’ve an appointment before dinner.”

Crap, I was right. More tiresome talk of rhinoplasty. Kill me.

There’s no receptionist in the spacious and tastefully decorated waiting room; the doctor greets us himself. Always the fucking red carpet treatment for Preston and Samantha.

“Miss Burke, I’m Dr. Arnold Glazer.”

“Dr. Glazer.” I apathetically offer a limp wrist, and his icy hands are stiff around mine. He shows us to a nicely appointed office where my parents sit on either side of me on a tufted leather couch. I slouch like a pouty teenager between them. I am so over this nonsense.
Three more days, three more days.
Tomorrow I’ll see Hunter and he’ll make me forget about all this. The thought of Hunter soothes my nerves. He’ll take care of me. He always does.

“Do you know why you’re here, Miss Burke?”

I raise my eyebrows and tap the side of my nose, expecting him to laugh. They usually do. But not this guy.
No sense of humor, eh Dr. Glazer?
This is going to be more painful than usual. His brown eyes behind his steel-rimmed glasses widen in horror and shift between my parents.

“Did you not tell her, Samantha?”

My mom averts her eyes to gaze at an oil painting. Guilty is not a good look for her.

“Preston?”

They look at him like children who broke their parents’ beloved Limoges vase they brought back from their honeymoon. Not that I’d know anything about that.

“Miss Burke, you’re here because your parents are concerned about you. And frankly I am as well.”

What the fuck is this?
He’s clearly not a plastic surgeon.

“You’ll have to let me in on your little secret, Dr. Glazer.”

“Your parents received some…photographs this morning. By messenger.”

What?
I feel sick, and the spring cinches tight around every vital organ in my body. This is my worst nightmare, and it’s coming true. This cannot, cannot,
cannot
be happening. But it is and I have to keep my shit together.

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Doctor.”

“Perhaps this might clear some things up,” he mutters, handing me a thin file folder. I stand before I open it. Whatever this is, I don’t want to look at it while sitting next to my parents. When I flip the front cover open, I barely believe what I’m seeing.

It’s me. And disjointedly amidst the rage and the panic, I think I look pretty fucking hot. I’m kneeling on the floor in Hunter’s playroom wearing nothing but a crimson bra and matching undies. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve also got on a blindfold, my collar, and a bit gag. Not to mention black leather cuffs pinning my arms behind my back above my elbows and another set circling my wrists, which are tethered together at the base of my spine and hooked by chains to cuffs around my ankles. Fuck.

I flip through the rest, an even half dozen, and what I see is really pretty trifling. To the uninitiated, this could be horrifying. To me it looks like some mild to moderate bondage. When I think about what else happened last night, I feel an unexpected wave of gratitude. This could have been much worse. I coolly close the file and hold onto it.

“And?”

My parents and Dr. Glazer stare at me. It takes a few seconds for someone to break the silence, and unsurprisingly, it’s my mother who finds her tongue first.

“I’m sorry? That’s all you have to say? ‘And?’”

“What would you like me to say?”

I can’t imagine she’d like a detailed accounting of what exactly is going on in these photos.

“Miss Burke, I know this is a shock, but you have to understand how seeing these photographs must make your parents feel.”

That makes me pause. “Yes, I can understand how this could be upsetting. But
you
have to understand how it feels to be dragged in here under these circumstances.”

“I can imagine that would be unpleasant,” volunteers the good doctor.
Unpleasant? Are you shitting me with this, Glazer?
Unpleasant doesn’t begin to describe it.

“How long has this been going on, Miss Burke?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.”

“How many partners do you have?”

“Again, I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.” I fold my arms across my chest, finding my stride.
I can do this all night long, Dr. Glazer. I can do a lot of things. All. Night. Long.

“Indie,” my mother warns.

“I’m not being rude, Mother. It’s none of his business, and it’s none of yours.”

“Well, someone made it our business when they sent us this…this…pornography!”

I choke back a laugh.
Oh, Mother, you’re adorable.
I’d show her from pornography, but I’m pretty sure she’d fall over dead.

“All you need to know is that this occurred between consenting adults and we’re safe. I won’t discuss it any further.”

“Oh, I think you will.”

“And why would I possibly do that?” I’m unable to keep the condescension out of my voice.

“You will be going straight from this office to Briar Hill and not coming home until you’ve been cured of this odious sickness.”

“I’m not sick, Mother.”

“Then what do you call being voluntarily tied up and beaten?”

It’s all I can do to hold back “A good time on a Saturday night?” because that won’t get me anywhere. Possibly a strait jacket and a tranquilizer, and that is just not my scene. But, yes, in one of the photos you can see fading bruises from a caning across my ass and newly raised welts from a cat scattered over my back. Is that what this is about?

My mom doesn’t like to talk about it, but she did not have a genteel upbringing. To the contrary, she was—if I can put it in unsavory terms—trailer trash. Sammy Stevens from backwater Wyoming. She traded up on her looks and her street smarts until she had climbed pretty freaking high on the social ladder and landed my father. Before that, her life was downright ugly. Her drunk of a father used to beat her up—when he bothered to come home at any rate—and her first few boyfriends didn’t treat her any better. Some of them worse. She’s got some screws holding her jaw together because of it.

“Mom, I never really get hurt.”

“How can you possibly say that? You have bruises, you have welts. I saw them.”

“You don’t understand.” No permanent marks, never anything that’s likely to result in the need for professional medical attention. Of course accidents happen, but this isn’t fucking HGTV; we’re not DIYers. We’ve both been trained how to do this stuff as safely as possible. But that’s also something I don’t feel like explaining. And to think my mom’s always liked Rey…

“You’re damn right I don’t. You’re spitting on your entire upbringing, chasing what I spent my whole life running away from. It’s disgusting. Not to mention there’s nothing stopping whoever sent these photos to us from sending them to other people.”

Right. There’s the crux of it. I’m going to embarrass her.

“There’s no way to prove this is me.” Hunter had been careful to obscure my eyes and the telling scar on my lower back. “And I know who sent the photos. They’re not going to the press.”

My confidence falters. I wouldn’t have thought Hunter would send photos of me to my parents, either. I’ve trusted him with my body, my mind, and my heart for years. The idea that he could do something like this sends a frisson of terror through me. What else was he capable of when he had me at his mercy? How close to the edge of oblivion have I been walking all this time when I thought I was safe? Is nothing sacred?

My mother is unimpressed by my assurances and turns to Dr. Glazer for help. My father is sitting motionless, staring at what is no doubt a fascinating spot on the coffee table.
How could you do this to me, Daddy?

“Miss Burke, Briar Hill has had an impressive record of successfully treating conditions like yours, as well as the depression and self-loathing that usually accompany such afflictions.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is he going to ask me if I cut myself, too? The disgust I feel for this man is growing every second.

“You should shut the hell up, Dr. Glazer. I’ll have your license for this.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Burke, but the DSM—”

“The DSM says that symptoms must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,” I recite verbatim. “Do I look
impaired
to you?”

His mouth drops open. I’ve leveled him.
That’s right, asshole, I’ve done my research
. I didn’t get into Princeton because of my parents’ money. Okay, not
just
because of my parents’ money.

“So you’re refusing to enter treatment?” My mother’s voice is clear like the eye of a storm, and Hurricane Samantha is not something to be trifled with. What’s her next move? Threatening to commit me? She can’t do that. Right? The idea of being institutionalized by people who have a total lack of understanding of my psychology… It’s the very worst kind of horror movie.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, and you’re not checking me into an institution because of your own fucked-up world view.”

“If you won’t agree to our terms, then we’ll need to discuss your trust fund and your inheritance.”

My heart stops. My parents have been holding this money over my head my whole life, and when they threaten me with it, it’s a good indication they’re at the end of their rope. But unlike when they’ve spluttered the threat before, I don’t think they’re bluffing.

“What about it?”

“If you refuse to seek help for your condition, it’s gone. Every penny.”

I might shatter from the sheer force of the rage building inside me, but I keep my cool because I always do.

“Fine. I’m not selling my soul for a few million dollars.”

“No, you only sell yourself for sex,” hisses my mother. I want to roll my eyes. Does she not understand anything? It’s difficult to find paid work as a submissive—far easier as a Domme.