Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“Penny—”
“And you think you can help?”
“I think you need someone who is willing to try,” Roz replied. “So here I am, willing to try. I’m not asking for your permission to do it because if it was left up to you, I don’t think you would let anyone help. And yeah, I’m here whether you want me to be or not.”
That quieted the girl.
Finally, Penny muttered, “They’re saying I have to go back to the States ... for a lot of reasons.”
Yeah, Roz knew that, too.
Because Penny needed to bring charges in the country where the assaults happened. Because she wasn’t a citizen of this country, she couldn’t be placed with a family or conservatorship here. And there were more details that just ... muddied all of this up.
“I applied to foster you when they bring you back to the states,” Roz said quietly.
Penny’s head snapped up. “What?”
“It was me, or a random family. A random foster home. I am here to help,” Roz said again, “whether you want me to or not.”
“Oh, I bet Kyle will love that,” Penny sneered under her breath. “Put the prodigy in with the washed-up prodigy, and he gets exactly what he wants.”
Roz brushed the girl’s attitude off.
Mostly.
“I have spent the last several years headlining one of the biggest orchestra companies in the world, and I chose to leave the company because I want to begin my life with a man who waited for me despite all the odds,” Roz said, “and I truly don’t give a single shit if you never put your fingers back on the ivory again, Penny, but in case you haven’t figured it out yet, lashing out to hurt me doesn’t actually fix you.”
Penny wouldn’t look at her, but her shoulders sunk a bit. “Sorry.”
Roz decided to go in a different direction with the girl. “How are you feeling about the fact they’re going to make a second formal statement about your father’s abuse to US officials once you’re back home? I imagine you don’t want to go through that a second time.”
Something akin to a bitter sneer curved the girl’s lips.
“What is that for?” Roz asked.
“You think it was just my dad?” Penny gave Roz a look over her shoulder, and in that moment, it felt like her heart fell to the floor and shattered. “It’s more than just him. There are a group of them, Roz. It’s a network. And I am not the only one they did it to. We’re a commodity to them ... something to be traded, kept, or borrowed. He only sent me away because I was getting too old, my body changed, and I was getting louder. I was causing problems—I was a problem. That’s why they started sending me away.”
She felt sick.
“I haven’t broken the surface yet,” Penny continued, “but when I do, nothing is ever going to be the same, and that is what scares me.”
“A network,” Roz echoed.
Because she was still stuck on that.
Why would this girl lie?
“They’re everywhere. But you’re not like me, so you can’t see them. Monsters are very good at hiding in plain sight.”
New York: Part 1
Naz POV
“And this is the room where Penny will be staying, correct?” the woman CPS had sent in to do a walk-through of Naz’s Manhattan penthouse. Now, Roz’s penthouse, too.
“That’s right,” Roz said. “She’s sixteen—she needs privacy, and her own space to be alone in when she feels the need, doesn’t she?”
“Being that she’s a suicide risk—”
“She is still sixteen.”
The woman nodded, and scratched something on the paper in her hands before looking back up at Roz. Then, her gaze drifted to where Naz was lingering at the end of the hallway, closer to the sitting room in the penthouse. The wall of glass windows behind him sat in front of a baby grand that had once been his grandfather’s.
Naz tried not to feel edgy when the woman looked him over, but it still made him feel uncomfortable all the same. He didn’t know why, but her stare was just a little too pensive. Like she was considering something about him, but the problem was, she didn’t know fuck all about him to know anything. Anything she thought were all conclusions she had drawn on her own, and he wasn’t here for that shit.
“And this man—Nazio Donati, yes?—will also be living in the residence,” the woman said.
“He owns the penthouse?” Roz’s question came out slightly sarcastic, and yet still annoyed at the same time. “He’s also been my long-term boyfriend for over—”
“Not husband,” the woman interjected.
Naz blinked.
Roz quieted.
“Because that could present a problem. The girl will need to be brought into a stable household. We consider that to be, more often than not when presented, a couple that has proven their—”
“The only reason she isn’t my wife is because she has spent the last several years on an entirely different continent than me,” Naz said sharply, “and I thought it wasn’t appropriate to marry someone when we couldn’t begin an actual marriage together in the same house, let alone country, but okay.”