Lost & Bound (3 page)

Callum

Thankfully Eric was cool with letting me
stay on his couch for a few days. He didn’t question why I wasn’t staying with
my father and I was thankful for that. I wasn’t sure I could make up some
bullshit lie that would be the least bit believable.

After three beers, a power nap and a hot
shower I got back behind the wheel of my rental car and headed to my father’s.
I planned to arrive just before dinner when I was sure he’d be home. I was
going to act as casual as possible and suss out how he felt about my return.
That was the plan anyway, who knew how the night would unfold.

I press the doorbell and wait. I can hear
my heart thumping loudly in my ears. I listen for his steps inside. Nothing.

I ring the doorbell again and look around
the front garden. The night is still and the area is as secluded as I remember.
A faint flickering of lights from a nearby property is the only sign of civilization,
other than that, my surroundings are pitch black.

Finally, I hear the locks turn and the door
cracks open.

“Callum?” He forces a smile. Well, I assume
it’s forced, I don’t remember what his smile actually looks like.

“Hey, Dad.” I hear the trepidation in my
own voice.

Act casual
.

I force myself to lean in for an embrace
and he reciprocates the gesture. He smells the same. Old Spice mixed with the
faintest touch of leather.

“Good to see you, son.”

This time there’s warmth in his voice. He
almost sounds genuine. Almost.

I let my eyes sweep over him. He looks
good. His hair has gained more silver and he has lost a few pounds, but he
still looks like the same distinguished gentleman. I notice his eyes. They look
dark and shifty. I’d never noticed that about him—
that
his eyes dart all over the place when he’s nervous.

“When did you get back?” He claps me on the
back as he steps aside letting me into the house.

I open my mouth to answer, but hesitate as
I do.
Don’t lie,
I tell myself.
If you lie, he’ll know. He’s a human
lie detector.

I clear my throat. “This morning.”

A look crosses his face and I immediately
think I’ve blown it.

Fuck, I should have planned for this. He
knows I’ve been in the house. He knows everything.

When I think he’s about to question me
further, he presses his lips together and nods his head.

“Good.” He smiles crookedly. “Come in. Tell
me all about Italy.”

My father is an obnoxious man. I’ve barely
said ten words to him and I can already feel the falseness radiating off of
him. He is a man who cares about two things. One is the township of Merling.
His family was one of the founding families of the town and he saw it as his
right to be the mayor.

The second is what people think of him. He
always wants to appear better than everyone else. He wants to have more money,
own the nicest car, and host the most prestigious parties.

In short, my father is a pretentious
bastard. Even his name proved this true.
William Osborne
Mathers.
Osborne wasn’t actually part of his given name. It was my
mother’s maiden name and a name he bestowed upon himself. Three names signified
he was someone important, or so he thought.

I follow him through to the kitchen. The
room is spotless once again and there is no sign of Leila. I don’t know what I
was expecting, him to have her shackled to the oven while she prepared his
dinner? Of course she’s—hidden.

“What can I get you? Wine, beer?” He walks
to the refrigerator.

“Water’s fine.”

He reaches for the canister from the
fridge. “Water it is.”

He grabs two glasses from the cupboard and
places them on the bench between us.

“So, how’s life in Italy? How’s Sofia?”

He pours two full glasses of water and
takes a sip from his. I didn’t expect this—for him to act so normal. Part
of me wants to yell at him, to tell him I know about the girl he has hidden in
the basement, to tell him this charade is over, but I know I can’t. Patience is
key, he taught me that himself.

I pause for a moment, adding some intensity
to my father’s hanging question. “I broke it off with Sofia.”

He drops his glass to the counter. The base
landing with a loud clunk and
water spilling
out the
sides, but he doesn’t notice.

“Why on earth would you do that?”

She’s a spoiled brat. She’s too high
maintenance. She’s a horrible person. I don’t love her…

“It just wasn’t working,” I say without
looking at him. I know he’s disappointed. I can feel his gaze condemning me
before I have a chance to explain myself. He doesn’t give two rats about Sofia
and I, he only cares about her family, their name and the power they hold in
the Italian social scene. To my father power is everything and what I found out
today proved that to be true.

“She’s a good girl, Cal. Don’t let her get
away.”

I try to disguise the eye roll he deserves,
but I fail.

“You can make it work,” he softens his
voice. “All relationships go through their ups and downs, but you have to stick
around and work through it.”

Did your relationship with mom have its
ups and downs? Did you lock her up and rape her when you needed a release?
Fuck, being civil to this guy is proving harder than I imagined.

“I don’t think we’ll be working through
anything, Dad. I don’t have the energy for it anymore.”

All I did was fight for my relationship,
but I wasn’t so sure it was a relationship worth fighting for. I tried to make
it work. God knows for the majority of our relationship all I did was try and
make it work, but I couldn’t explain that to my father. He’d probably tell me
to take a mistress on the side or something absurd.

“How is Sofia taking it?” His question
surprises me. He actually sounds like he gives a shit.

“She was upset—is upset. I told her I
needed some space.”

“So, there’s still hope then? Good. Never
burn any bridges, that’s always been my motto.”

He smiles at me. My father always hears
what he wants to and ignores the rest. I’m used to this.

He wipes down the bench, as he looks lost
in thought, a line wrinkling his forehead. “Are you staying at your house?”

He’s probably petrified that I want to
sleep in my childhood home, what a conflict that would be.

My own home is a three-bedder that I bought
when I was twenty-three and fresh out of college. It sits on the outskirts of
Merling. Since my move to Milan three years ago, I rented the house out. I haven’t
told the tenants to vacate yet, I’m not even sure I want to stick around.

“There are tenants in there now,” I tell
him. “I’m staying at Eric’s for a few nights.”

“Right.”

My father hates Eric. Despises him in fact,
and he’s always frowned upon our friendship since we were juniors. Eric had a
humble upbringing and my father didn’t approve of our friendship from the
start.

As our conversation runs dry, I struggle to
find something to talk about. I haven’t seen this man in three years and yet we
can’t hold a conversation for longer than ten minutes.

“How’s the town going?”

Just as I bring up my father’s favorite
subject, his beloved Merling, his phone rings.

He looks at the screen and then up at me.

“Sorry, Cal,” he says, not an ounce of
sincerity in his voice. “I have to take this.”

“Sure, no problem,” I tell him.

“Why don’t you take a look in the fridge
and choose something for us to heat for dinner?”

He doesn’t wait for my response before
turning his back and leaving the room.

“Hugh, how’s it going?” His voice bellows
down the hallway.

When he’s out of sight I rush to the
basement door. Pausing, I listen for his footsteps. None. He is still, probably
sitting in his office at the end of the hall. I can hear his deep voice
carrying down the corridor, he lets out a gruff laugh and I figure I have some time
to spare, five minutes at best.

I silently push the door open and step into
the darkness. I don’t remember ever coming down here as a child. Maybe it was
always my father’s sex dungeon, even when we lived here as a family and I was
none the wiser.

When I’m halfway down the staircase I
notice a dim light illuminating the corner of the room.

“Leila,” I half say, half whisper. “Leila,
are you here?”

“Callum,” her heavy accent fills my ears
and I find myself smiling.

I descend the last few steps and look around
the area. I don’t know what I expected to find down here, but the space isn’t
entirely dreary.

There’s a huge four-poster bed on the far
side of the room, set against an exposed brick wall. The linen is all white and
crisp. The exposed wood beams and the high ceiling make the space cold, my arms
instantly covering in goose bumps.

“This is where I live.” Leila indicates the
room around us. She’s sitting at a white antique dressing table near the bed.
She’s brushing her hair, the long brown tresses shine, even in the dimly lit
room.

She stands and walks over to me. She’s
wearing the same pink satin robe as earlier in the day, but now her face is
painted by makeup. Her lips are pink and her cheeks rosy. Is she getting ready
for him?

I swallow roughly. It feels like I’m
swallowing razorblades.

Glancing to my right, I notice there’s an
archway that leads to another room. A sofa, coffee table and a small fireplace
fill the space and then lead to another door. A bathroom, I presume.

“I didn’t know when I would see you again.”
She smiles at me, her manner casual despite meeting me just hours ago. “Where
is he?” She says
“he”
as if she’s afraid of the word and equally afraid
to utter his name.

“He’s upstairs, on the phone,” I whisper.
“We haven’t got long.”

She nods at me knowingly. Taking a step
closer, she purses her lips as if she’s about to tell me something. She’s so
close that I’m distracted by her scent, a sweet flowery scent that reminds me
of my mother. It takes a moment for my brain to process this.
She wears my
mother’s perfume.
I glance at the dressing table behind her looking for the
familiar crystal shaped bottle.

I spot the bottle and walk over to take a
closer look. I pick it up, take a whiff and let the memories come flooding
back.

“What is it?” Leila asks from behind me.

“This perfume, it’s my mother’s.”

I turn to look at her and her lips part
slightly as she struggles to speak. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“I take it you don’t wear it by choice?”

She shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes again.

I place a hand on her shoulder. She
flinches as first, but then she leans into my touch. I stroke my thumb over her
silk robe, a comforting gesture, nothing more. But as I continue tracing my
thumb along the line of her shoulder and down to her elbow the way her body
reacts tells me she’s enjoying the contact more than she should.

I look at her standing before me, her face
full of kindness, the trust she holds in me painted all over her face. My
father has used this poor girl to replace my mother. He makes her apply the
same lipstick, wear the same perfume, he even uses my mother’s name when he refers
to her, but Leila is nothing like my mother.

She’s the total opposite of my mother’s
body type, Leila being five inches shorter and much more shapely.
So why her?

“Callum?” she questions, wondering where my
attention is.

“Yes?”

“He’s having a party.” Her eyes are wide,
her tone serious. “On Friday.”

“How do you know this?”

“He told me so.”

“What happens at this type of party?” I
ask, not sure if I’m ready to hear the answer.

“The men…they come…and I have to put on a
show and maybe please them.”

What. The. Fuck.
This thing just went to a whole new level of fucked up.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing. That
in Leila’s world, this kind of party is actually the norm or that my father is
the one who hosts such parties. Merling is a small town, how many perverted men
live here?

“I’ll come to the party,” I say without
thinking.

“You can’t.” She grabs onto my arm, her
gaze pleading with me to reconsider. “He will know we spoke.”

“What if I pretend I’m one of them?” I ask
and her eyes immediately meet mine.

“One of them,” she repeats, pronouncing
each word carefully.