“Stay here,” I told Chandra, and headed back to Xavier’s office.
She caught up to me. “But-”
“I have an idea,” I told her, and shut the door in her face before she could say any more. Xavier would be too aware of her presence, his pride and self-consciousness acting as barriers to seriously considering my words, and I had to get what I needed from him in the same way Olivia always had. By appealing to the soft side of her beloved, doting father.
In retrospect I could appreciate that the years I’d considered myself trapped, confined, and caged under Xavier Archer’s roof hadn’t been heartbreakingly traumatic. He could be accused of neglect, but not abuse. He had never injured me physically, though his words, and even his silence, had possessed a whiplike feel to them. Compared to the way some people terrorized their children, Xavier could even be called benign. But back when I was sixteen-traumatized, alone, abandoned, frightened, pregnant-I didn’t have such a wide frame of reference. I only knew that he flinched when I walked into a room, he refused to let me speak of my mother, and he ignored both the physical and mental scars of my attack, so that I felt shamed in my own young body.
So fuck him if he was having trouble sleeping lately.
The office was normal once again, oversized furniture returned to the room’s center, desk spotless, wood gleaming like it’d just been polished. Even I wouldn’t have been able to scent out the lingering incense if I hadn’t known it was there only minutes before. The Tulpa had set Xavier up with some seriously powerful hoodoo. Which begged the question. Why?
“Where’s your new partner in crime?” Xavier said, jerking his chin at the door as it swung closed behind me. His word choice threw me for a moment, but I relaxed when I saw he meant it figuratively.
“Outside. We’re just hanging out until Cher gets back from Fiji. But I wanted to talk to you alone.”
He motioned to a high-backed chair across from him, before settling in his own.
“I’m going to get a job,” I announced brightly, crossing my legs, and sitting up straight so I looked innocent and eager. Maybe my bright smile kept Xavier from recognizing Olivia Archer’s first ever act of defiance. When, after an awkward moment, he realized I was serious, he laughed anyway.
“We’ve discussed this before, Olivia,” he began, his tone patently patronizing, one most people used with domesticated animals and toddlers. He picked up a thick fountain pen and began twirling it in his fingers.
“No, you dictated before. I don’t remember ever discussing it.”
“Well, the answer is still the same.”
“Except this time I’m not asking,” I said, my voice both high and sweet. His fingers stilled. The incongruity between my words and tone seemed to baffle him, and I widened my smile, probably confusing him further. “I’ve been doing a lot of reevaluating the last few months and have decided I need to change some things in my life. I need a purpose. A rhythm to my days. A reason to get up in the morning.”
Xavier didn’t move. I realized I was going to have to sugar him up, so made sure my gaze wasn’t challenging when I met his eyes. “Like you, Daddy. You get up in the morning and you know exactly what you want from your day. I want to be like you.”
A number of emotions passed over his face in quick succession, fatigue overlaying them all. That might have softened me toward him if the very first emotion hadn’t been derision. If it had been Olivia sitting here, she would have seen it too. I consciously unclenched my jaw.
“Honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” I asked, imbuing hurt I didn’t feel into my voice. “You don’t think I can do it? That I don’t have the ability to learn?”
“Why would you want to?” he asked, skirting the questions. “I give you everything you want. If there’s something more, tell me. I’ll get that for you too.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Okay. How about self-respect?”
When he only sat there, those fingers still and brow drawn, I thought, You bastard. He’d always done this, regarding Olivia from a distance that reduced her to a single dimension. A pretty picture he could hang on his wall, imagine as he wished, control and attend to at his whim. “Nobody who’s given everything they desire without having to work for it,” I inserted into the silence, “can truly possess that.”
I was talking about him, about the way the Tulpa dangled carrots to control him, but naturally he didn’t realize that. “Self-respect doesn’t come from what we do, Olivia. It comes from who we are.”
“Who we are?” I repeated slowly. “You mean an Archer?”
“Yes. Exactly that.”
I nodded my head slowly, like him, then stopped. “I don’t know, Daddy. Sometimes the title feels like something I’m wearing. A brand upon my skin. Like I belong to someone, rather than am someone. Like I’m a puppet in the…Archer’s organization.”
And there it was. Humiliation had him wincing. Anger thinning his lips. Hopelessness lowering his eyes. The blended emotions smelled like used fuel and the soul he was so cheaply giving away. “That’s ridiculous. Now, you’re not getting a job and that’s final.”
I stood. “It’s not final.”
“You’re not getting a job.”
“Fine.” I angled my body around the chair. “Then I guess I’ll have to-”
“What?” he finally snapped, rising to his feet and turning away at the same time, only to whirl on me again two feet later. “What will you do, Olivia? Go on a spa strike until I give you your way?”
I let that hang between us to see if he could hear how ugly it sounded. He did, and shame dueled with stubbornness to have him turning away. He paced over to the window to regain his composure, but I wasn’t going to give him time for that.
“I was going to say,” I said softly, “that I guess I’ll have to leave.”
He stiffened, and half turned. “What?”
His face was sallow in the harsh daylight, and he suddenly looked fragile despite his bulk, or what was left of it. I didn’t care.
“Leave,” I repeated, clasping my hands in front of me. “Leave the city, leave the West Coast if that’s what it takes. Leave the Archer dynasty.”
“I’ll cut you off like I did Joanna. Is that what you want?”
It was an automatic response; the ruthlessness and nerve that’d propelled him to the top of the competitive gaming world had him calling my bluff while countering with one of his own. Usually it served him well. But not now.
I shrugged. “I’ll survive.”
“How?” His voice was a tad hoarse, and he cleared his throat, adding a sneer to his words. “How will someone like you survive? You have no skills, no real education, you’ve never even won a talent contest.”
I pressed my hands against his shiny desk, leaning forward to keep the bitch-slap with his name on it from knocking him off his feet. “And why is that, Daddy? Why have you always been hell-bent on keeping me in my place, a box marked, ‘Look, but don’t touch.’ A pretty one, but a box no less?” I straightened as his eyes widened. He was finally facing me fully. He was finally listening. “You never hear or see me. You refused to even consider I might have an opinion, and now look at me. I’m like a property you acquire, wealth you hoard, a company you collect because you can.”
“You’re becoming hysterical.”
I was acting like Olivia, but speaking for myself…and he’d never seen my kind of hysterical. I lifted my chin and returned his earlier sneer. “Mother would have never allowed you to do that to me.”