There was no more resisting after that. After he returned to the States, he fell into a new routine, of sorts. In the mornings, he woke up and opened his iPad to go directly to the feed of her still sleeping. He only let himself watch her for a little while in the mornings—no more than thirty minutes. Getting to watch her for longer at night was his reward for making it through another successful business day.

She wasn’t nearly as disciplined as him, and her schedule varied wildly. Sometimes he found her drawing at the kitchen table when he got in around midnight. Sometimes she was sleeping. And about once or twice a week, he caught her with the large vibrator between her legs.

He preferred that, but it didn’t matter what she did. He jerked off to her just the same. Morning and night, he fucked his hand while watching her. It was a good way to release any sexual tension before going into his business day with a clear head. That was what he told himself.

Months passed in their strange little routine. But then something strange happened in late April.

Dawn had led an extremely frugal life since securing a job. Before he stopped allowing her to shop for her own groceries, she’d use her own funds to pay for whatever she decided to buy, including her bike. And even after Wayne started purchasing all of her groceries, she insisted on paying for everything else with funds from her own bank account. Her one last bastion of pride, he supposed.

Pride wasn’t something she was allowed to have. He’d take that away from her too. Perhaps for their second anniversary, he’d decree that she was no longer allowed to work at her sad little Lower South Providence daycare.

But he found something interesting as he was reading over that month’s banking statements, which include one for the account he’d had set up for her. Instead of accumulating more money in interest fees as her checking account often did, it was suddenly missing five figures.

He scrolled down until he found the source of the missing money. One payee had subtracted over $30,000. His entire body chilled over when he saw the name written in the Description section.

It was the Rhode Island Design School.

PART III

Secrets could only be kept for so long from an all-seeing monster like Victor.

13

DAWN

He’d surprised me on our first anniversary, but I didn’t let him for the second.

I took the day off of work. I also gathered all the drawing things scattered around the house and packed them away in the dorm boxes in the guest room so that he wouldn’t see them.