Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“So that’s all there is to it?” I asked. “What about the other rumors? Are they true?”
“I know when to keep my mouth shut.” He swallowed and sat back in his seat. “So if I address them for you, you give me your word what I tell you doesn’t leave this house.”
My laughter faded. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Surely not all the rumors were as innocuous as French food. That would mean facing the truth about my time here.
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head as he read my expression. “You don’t get to back out now. Tell me you can keep my secrets. I intend to have all your secrets, too, so it’s only fair.”
I thought of the mission Diego had charged me with. If I accepted, from this point on, I’d be passing along sensitive information I’d been sworn to keep. At least last night, I hadn’t yet agreed to anything.
So who had my loyalty?
After today, there could be only one answer. Me. I was loyal to myself. I couldn’t trust the reasons why Diego wanted the information, but I wasn’t going to kneel for Cristiano, either. Nor would I give up the phone just yet. As of now, it was my only communication with the outside world.
I glanced at the table and back up. “You have my word.”
“Fisker—oye,” he called out. “How many languages do you speak?”
The chef sauntered onto the patio wiping his hands on a dishtowel. “Fluently? Cinco, señor.”
“So that’s Danish, Spanish, English . . .?”
“German and Swedish. And some French.” He turned to me. “You look surprised, madame. But it’s very common where I come from, and in the Badlands too.”
“My men are from all over the world. They speak everything from Russian to Chinese to Swahili.” Cristiano gestured at Fisker. “In how many languages can you say snails?”
“In more than I speak. Escargot, snegle, caragols de terra, slakken, caracoles—”
“This is Natalia’s first experience with them.”
“Ah, but you requested them?” he asked Cristiano, who nodded. Fisker turned to me and added, “Butter is the key. Dip generously.”
Cristiano dismissed him with a “Merci.” When we were alone again, Cristiano said, “To an uncultured ear, some languages, especially all at once, might sound—”
“Barbaric,” I finished.
“But what’s barbaric,” he said, “is the Scottish wedding ritual I partook in last year.”
I glanced up, my eyebrows cinched. “What was it?”
“Our Scotsman found himself a lassie, and in his super rural part of the country, they have some outlandish customs. The bride and groom are blackened with soot, feathers, and more, and paraded around the night before the wedding to ward off evil. We then covered the bride in the worst things we could find, like dead fish, sausages, and curdled milk . . . and tied her to a tree.”
My jaw tingled as he sat there chewing his food like it was no big deal. “That’s disgusting,” I accused. “How can you allow that?”
“Should I judge someone else’s culture? They have their ideology, and she was a willing participant. Some people might find it strange that you and I were lassoed.”
“No one more than me,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “The happy Scottish couple was married right here on the property, and they’re expecting a son next month.”
“So how do people know what happens in here if nobody has lived to tell the tale?”
“Rumors find a way, and that’s not true, anyway. People can leave any time they want, but most choose to stay.”
I didn’t know enough yet to say if that was true, but why would they stay?
“And drones,” he added. “We capture or shoot them out of the sky on a regular basis, but occasionally I’ll allow one to spy on us—if I think it helps.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “Helps . . .?”
“Let the people talk,” he said, waving a hand. “That’s my logic. What the idle mind conceives is far worse than what I can do. If people want to believe we have no internal compass for right or wrong, and that we’ll brutalize intruders who would do us harm, I won’t correct them.”
I blinked. Either he was fucking with me or he was fucking with the world. “You don’t brutalize intruders?”
“Who’d do us harm?” he asked, sucking his teeth. “Of course we do.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What about the virgin rumor?”
“Well.” He dipped another snail. “That I’m not sure about, although I have some ideas where it started.”
I studied him a moment, then finally gave in to the aroma of garlic and butter and picked up a shell. I followed his lead, extracting the meat and dunking it in the sauce. It looked even slimier drenched in melted butter. I stared at it, steeling myself to put the creepy crawler in my mouth.
“Are you sure you don’t want wine?” he asked with a hint of a smile.