in a recently reclaimed and renovated brownstone in a row of other reclaimed and renovated brownstones, and had tons of character. Like creaky floors and a noisy radiator and windows that stuck when the summer became too humid. And maybe there was no elevator, but, hey, climbing five flights of stairs every day was a lot cheaper than joining a gym. And so what if it only had one bedroom and teeny living area and a kitchen that was the size of an electron? She had a view of the city that was pretty breathtaking, and being on the top floor gave her roof access that had allowed her to make a patio of sorts up there with potted plants and everything.
Okay, okay, it wasnât the Ritz. It was still a million miles away from the cramped apartments sheâd called home growing upâsuch as they were, since âhomeâ had always been a fluid concept. Even more fluid than the concept of âfamily,â which had never been cemented in the first place. If one of her foster parents got sick, or if the building where they were living was condemned, or if some court order saidso, then, hey, so sorry, you have to move somewhere else. And you wonât know anyone there. And once you do get to know them, theyâll be taken away from you anyway, so donât start caring about them unless you want to get hurt.
After Violet turned eighteen and was no longer a ward of the state, her living arrangements had really deteriorated, because sheâd been working low-paying jobs and trying to save money for that house in the âburbs that she was this close to making a realityâ¦provided Gavin Mason didnât swoop down and ruin everything. And dammit, there he was in her thoughts again. Would the man never leave her alone? She wasnât even safe in her own home!
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The days that followed Violetâs ill-fated trip to Gavinâs office only hammered home how unsafe she was from him, but for entirely different reasons. Thanks to the success of her Saturday book signing, Marie was able to land Violet a meeting with a features writer for the Sun-Times, along with a couple of appearances on local news shows the following week. It should have been a writerâs dream come true, all that publicity for her novel, but every time Violet spoke with an interviewer, it became clear that the person assumed the novel sheâd created out of her imagination was actually a not-so-fictionalized account of her own experiences working as a high-priced, high-society call girl. Question after question addressed not Violetâs protagonist, but Violet herself. At best, there was a wink, wink, nudge, nudge banter involved. More often, though, there was less-than-subtle innuendo.
Like she even knew what position fourteen of the Kama Sutra was. And sheâd never even met Hugh Hefner, let alone had his love child. And French tickler? Wasnât that a city in Indiana? Worst of all, however, were the questions about her character of Ethan, and whether or not it was true hewas modeled after a certain Chicago business magnate who shall remain nameless, but who everyone seemed to know the identity of anyway. No matter how many times Violet denied any knowledge of anything nonfictional in the week that followed her confrontation with Gavin, she grew more and more worried that no one believed a word.
The whole thing was nuts. The whole world was nuts. And casting a pall over all of it had been the specter of Gavin Mason, and whether or not he planned to go forth with his lawsuit. If the questions her interviewers were asking were any indication, however⦠Well, suffice it to say that Violet had a bad feeling about, ohâ¦everything.
Although he had been surprisingly quiet after she left his office Monday, she didnât kid herself that meant he was backing off. A man like him probably needed a little extra time to hone his weaponry and get all his peons in a row. There was no room for error with a guy like that. He