Chapter 5

Ellie

I pressed my hands together, touching the tips of my fingers to my chin as I inhaled deep. I knew I couldn’t really fight Daddy when he had made up his mind, but I also knew that he wanted to make me happy. If I said the right things, he would see things my way.

“Not a chance,” I eventually said.

He sighed at me. “Eleanor,” he said slowly. “My family is in danger. That means doing things that we might not like.”

“Do you also have a shadow following you around all day every day? How am I supposed to live with no privacy? Girls need privacy, Daddy.”

“Girls need to not get their throats slit and then become dismembered.”

I felt myself go cold. “Please, Dad. Don’t do this to me. I’ll be good. I’ll stay inside.”

“No, you won’t,” he laughed. “When have you ever stayed inside for longer than two days?”

“I know I have.”

“The flu doesn’t count. The discussion is over. Your new bodyguard is in the hallway and I want you to meet him. He’s very capable. Dandy likes him already.”

I gasped. That betrayer dog. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Cory when he came up to get him for his afternoon treats. They’d paraded my baby around some stranger. I knew they probably did it to make sure he wouldn’t kill the guy, but still. My baby. Mine.

“I am deeply against all of this,” I said.

“I picked up on that. Mort!”

I mouthed the name as my door opened. The man from the file given to me had walked through. He matched the picture perfectly, as I had expected. It had stated that he was six foot three, but one couldn’t really prepare for that height only reading in on paper. Even with the impressive height, I noticed his eyes first, as light as the sky in June, and as cold as a lake in winter. I found it hard to look at him, but I didn’t want to appear anything but confident in the face of a man who only knew that I needed protection. He stopped in the middle of my room, carelessly with his feet on two separate flowers on the pattern. I took another long look at him, wondering if he could really keep me safe. Being big didn’t mean much in the end. He looked fairly unkempt, even with the suit on. I blamed the almost-curls around his ears.

“I’m Ellie,” I said to him, holding a hand out as I approached. “I hear you’re my new best friend, Mordechai.”

He took my hand to shake it, but I saw one split second of change in his eyes. Oh, I’d caught the giant off guard.

Dad laughed. “Why did you say his name like that?”

I hadn’t considered I’d done something wrong. I looked to Mordechai. “Was that not how it’s pronounced, with the little H sound? That was how one of my friend’s grandpas pronounced it.”

Mordechai cleared his throat and straightened an already fine jacket. “No, that’s how you say it. I don’t normally introduce myself that way. People get, I don’t know…”

“What am I missing?” Dad asked.

“Nothing,” I responded. “Before this goes any further, I need to make it perfectly clear again that this is really unneeded. No one is coming after me for anything. I don’t need someone babysitting me. I’m perfectly capable of handling myself.”

Mordechai chuckled under his breath, quickly composing himself.

“Something funny?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, stone cold sober again. He kept his eyes on the floor.

“No, speak up,” I invited him. “You think I can’t defend myself?”

When he looked up at me, that cheeky little smirk I just knew brimmed, appeared. “I would never say something like that,” he stated, scratching the back of his head all innocently.

“It’s the truth,” Dad said.

Gasping, I turned to him. “Hey! There’s no reason for you to think I can’t keep myself safe.”

“Other than the fact that you’ve never once been in a fight before, always had guards at the house, and have absolutely no training in any sort of combat?”

“What about Mom?”

“Mom is with me all the time. When she’s not, she’s got people with her. I’m doing the same thing with you.”

“Oh? Is your guard for her sleeping in your room?”

“He doesn’t need to. Look, I know this isn’t ideal, but it’s what’s happening.” He nodded toward the door. “Mort, follow me. I want to have a talk with you, man to man.”

“Something in particular we need to talk about?” Mordechai asked my father.

“That’s my little girl in there. I want you to make sure she’s as happy as can be, but within reason. I need her safe, and that matters the most. Other than that, I want your top priority to be her. Everything involving her. Act like I’m watching.”

I rolled my eyes as the two of them headed for the door. Dad stepped out, but Mordechai lingered in the doorframe, his back to me. I thought about taking a dive out the window and making a break for it, but people would catch me before I even made it to the gates. I still had to come up with a way to fight this. I couldn’t give up all of my privacy for this thing that I didn’t even need.

Clearly I had to prove myself.

I charged at Mordechai and launched myself onto his back, hoping to knock him down and get him a headlock. Sure, I didn’t know how to do that, but that would be a problem for five-seconds-in-the-future me. I managed to land on him, but he only lurched forward a little bit.

I put my arm around his neck and my legs around as much of his middle as I could manage. He seemed a hell of a lot bigger once mounted and I hadn’t truly accounted for that. I thrashed around in my attempt to get the upper hand, but it didn’t do much.

“Sir?” Mordechai asked my father.

“Do what you have to do,” he responded.

Mordechai pulled me around to his front with so little effort that it actually caught me off guard. The next thing I knew, he had me dangling in the air, holding my ankle as I swung.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Dad!”

He laughed at me. “That’s what you get. This man is trained to kill. You’re lucky you didn’t get a knife to the stomach. You understand me now?”

“He didn’t even stop me from attacking!” I said, attempting not to let my growing dizziness get to me. “What does that tell you?”

“That you couldn’t hear us talking from the door,” Mordechai said. “I heard you coming.”

I scoffed. “Put me down.”

Mordechai looked to my father for instruction, and he finally nodded. Mordechai pulled me up, twisted me around, and then set me on my feet. When Daddy looked away, he smirked at me again. Oh, I would have to kill him myself. I didn’t have any choice.

“This is dumb,” I said. “So, so dumb. Please, just let me be on my own. I don’t need to be watched. When have I ever gotten into trouble before?”

Dad put a hand on my cheek, using his other to pet my hair. “I would give you the whole world if I could. You know that. I work very hard to keep you in pretty clothes, to keep you fed, to give you this lifestyle. Sometimes, we have to make sacrifices. Someone showed up dead on my porch. That was a message to me. It said ‘we’re not scared of you. We’ll do whatever we want.’ I won’t let anything happen to you because of that.”

“I hate this.”

“I know. But with him, that means you still get to go places. You can still have your lunches, you can shop, you can take trips. You can have anything else in the whole world you want, but you need him with you.”

The harder he fought for it, the clearer his real message became. He didn’t think I could handle myself. I was so fragile, so weak, and so pathetic, that I needed a man with a gun to keep me from getting myself killed. I couldn’t know the truth about what happened in my own home because of my weak mind, and now, I couldn’t so much as shower on my own. The man had no faith in me.

“Nothing is going to happen to her,” Mordechai promised. “I’m very good at what I do.”

“You better be,” Dad said. “Anything happens to her and it’s over for you. I think you understand that, right? Did that manage to sink in?”

Mordechai nodded. “It did.”

“Do whatever it takes to keep her safe, even if she doesn’t like it.”

“Dad!”

“No!” He stared me down, sounding angrier than I’ve heard in a long time. “This is your life we’re talking about. I’m not taking risks. This discussion is over. He’s with you until further notice.”

I couldn’t do anything but stand there frozen in reaction to his tone. Never in a million years would my father have hurt me. But if he did, I would have believed it could come in that moment. His eyes never softened, the growl in his voice might as well have come from a lion. I did what everyone else around him did. I fell in line.

Dad looked to Mordechai one more time. “I’m sending up some things you’ll need. Keep an eye out.”

I turned around and went to my room, stopping only to flip the lights. I grabbed a book, sat on the center of my bed, and opened it up so I could rage read for a while. Mordechai followed me in and took his place next to my bed. He kept his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes forward. He said nothing to me.

I only got a few pages read before my phone rang.

“Oh my god, Grace,” I said when I answered it. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because I haven’t heard from you in months.” Honestly, I found it kind of weird to hear from her right then after so much silence. I hadn’t so much as gotten a text from her.

Grace stayed quiet for a few seconds. “Oh, well ya know, it’s been busy. School is crazy.”

“Yeah. It’s just that it was summer…”

“I was working,” she responded, her tone clipped. “My parents can’t afford my tuition so I’m trying to balance a job along with having a life.”

“Oh, if you need help—”

“That’s okay. So… tell me about how you’ve been.”

I had to force myself not to glance at the man standing next to me, still as a statue. “Are you sure about school? If you don’t want money, my dad can call about that scholarship thing you were trying for.”

“No, don’t do that. I didn’t get it and… I don’t know. Some people don’t get what they want just because they want it. Maybe if I had been the valedictorian it would have been enough to push me through, but…”

“I’m sorry,” I said, almost automatically.

“It’s not your fault you got better grades.”

No, but it in all likelihood happened more because the teachers knew my father rather than me earning them. I didn’t want to admit it out loud and give Grace even more reasons to hate me.

“What’s been going on with you?” she asked again.

“Really not much. What about you?”

“No, I would rather hear about you.”

I chose not to think anything of that, going on to tell her about what she would no doubt find boring. With no job, no school, and no friends, I hadn’t been doing all that much. I got a lot of books read, bought a lot more, and redecorated one of the rooms in our house. I went into the details of that, telling her about how hard it had been to find the exact right shade of purple for the walls. She didn’t have anything to say to that.

“It took so long but we eventually landed on wallpaper borders and paint above and below it,” I said.

“Wow, that sounds great. I bet it looks really pretty.”

“I can send you pictures if you want. I took a bunch of them.”

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

I proceeded to send her about twenty pictures of all the little details in the room I would have liked to turn into a lounge of some kind. I’d told Dad that I thought some old arcade style machines would be good in there. As far as I knew, he’d ordered a few themed around movies he liked, and he wanted me to come up with a list for me to get for myself too. I only showed Grace a few of the machines, not sure how it would come off if I showed her all of them.

“That’s cool,” she stated. “I bet it was a lot of fun to do that.”

“Yeah, I loved it.”

“Great. That’s super great. It sounds like you’re having a good time. You must not miss school very much with all this stuff to do.”

I didn’t want to complain to her about really anything, so I kept it to myself. “Ya know, I find ways to pass the time. Just curious, what made you call?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I know you’ve been busy, but I guess I expected some news.”

“Nah, no news. Just wanted to check in with you. You haven’t been up to anything else?”

“Not really. What about you? It has to be something, right? School is probably exciting and fun.”

“It’s a lot of work and a lot of money so I can finish up and then have a hard time finding a job. It feels like I’m wasting my time and money mostly, but I have to be here. I don’t get handed things for no reason other than I want them.”

At some point, I couldn’t deny the hostility in her voice. Nothing new, but normally, she would sprinkle that shit in a little more sparingly. Typically, she would also stop it for a while after a trip or something like that.

“If you need a break, maybe you can come upstate for lunch,” I offered. “My treat.”

“Yeah, of course. That would be great.”

If she said the word great one more time, I would probably lose my mind. I had finally come up with something to say when she suddenly cut me off saying she needed to go.

“Oh, so soon?” I asked.

“Yeah, I have to study. Sorry.”

She wasted no time with an awkward goodbye before hanging up on me. I set my phone down. Exactly one hour had passed.

“Huh,” I said.

Mordechai didn’t respond.

“You gonna stay quiet?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Cool. Love that for you. We’re gonna have a great time, aren’t we?”

I went back to my book when Dandelion finally wandered in. He didn’t so much as growl at Mordechai in my honor, choosing to come lay with me on the bed. He watched people coming into my room, putting a bed in the corner for Mordechai to sleep on. I couldn’t believe this was real. I should have made him sleep in the closet.

Mordechai didn’t move from his original spot, though he had been watching every single person who came in to put stuff in my room for our little adventure together. When everyone left, the final person closed my door behind them.

I turned my head to my new guard, resting my chin on my hand. “Tell me what you thought of that call.”

He cocked an eyebrow but didn’t so much as look my way. “I don’t think you want that.’

“I do.”

He clicked his tongue. “It was a rough one.”

“That’s what I thought. She talked to me for exactly one hour.”

“Interesting. Best not look into that unless you want some hurt feelings.”

Too late. “I’m sure it’s school and the workload and all that stuff. Whatever. People don’t stay friends with the people they went to high school with. Like, are you still friends with the people you knew then?”

“I didn’t have friends in high school. Maybe I would have if I could pay for their lunches and take them on pretty trips to Paris,” he said, eyeing my wall of pictures from the very many trips I had taken.

“Cool,” I said. “Another person who hates me because I have money. That’s a nice suit you got there, hot stuff. Who bought that for you?”

“Bought it myself. From working.”

As if I could have helped my lot in life. I couldn’t change my parents, my last name, or how my father treated me. We all got dealt a hand of cards. I couldn’t help that mine happened to be good.

I sat back on my bed, glaring at the other bed in the room. This would be a long, long process.