“Good girl.” Felix smiles, and hatred sticks in Amara’s throat like an olive stone, bitter enough to choke her. “The first time Victoria showed me around your lovely home, I was intrigued to see that chest in the tablinum, set right under the window to your bedchamber. I’m sure you know the one I mean. Just the sort of chest a girl like Victoria might be able to stand on, if she wanted to get a good look into your room and see what you were up to at night. Especially since it turns out you were thoughtful enough to keep a lamp burning in there, lighting up the whole bed.” Felix is still staring into her eyes, and Amara knows she is incapable of hiding her fear.

“Victoria protested, but she always does what I want in the end,” Felix shrugs. “You shouldn’t hate my wife too much, you know. She kept your secret from me for more than half a year. She only decided to betray you after I told her how you used to fuck me when you came around to pay the debt, how I thought you would have made a better wife than her. So as you can imagine, when she came out with her lurid tale, I thought she might have invented the whole thing out of spite.” Felix leans closer to Amara, and she shelters Rufina, not wanting any part of his body to touch her daughter. “But do you know what convinced me? I made her repeat exactly what she saw that night. Not once, but hundreds of times. She described the way he fucked you in such excruciating detail, as if she were watching the memory unfold in her head. And each time, her account was the same. Because it was true.” He sighs, a long, contented exhale. “We both know Victoria isn’t smart enough to memorize a complicated lie like that. To tell me exactly how he touched you and when.” Felix shudders in disgust. “Though I thought she must have invented the weeping. Is that really what you do? Cry over him, when he’s finished?”

Amara wills herself to stare back at Felix without flinching, without betraying the nausea that threatens to overwhelm her. “It’s all a lie.”

“I can see why you might stick to that. Considering what would happen, should it ever be uncovered.” Felix smiles again, his face crinkling with amusement, so that anyone watching would never imagine he is threatening her. “How much is Rufus paying to support the bastard his slave got on a whore?” Amara turns her face away and does not answer. “How much would you pay me to keep my mouth shut?”

“You really are a fool, if you think Rufus would listen to anything you have to say.”