The laws of love, lust, and lies

CHAPTER NINE

ALICE

As I lie on my bed holding a bag of frozen veggies to my right cheek to try to lower the swelling and pray that I don't get any marks , I relive the events of the night and wonder why I didn't say no to dinner and came home immediately? So maybe at this moment , I would be sleeping peacefully and not crying while I regret all the decisions I made in the day.

Dinner was delayed , unsurprisingly , because not only did it take me a long time to decide which dish to order from the complicated menu that was put in front of me , but once I chose , I did it wrong , and after Dominic realized that I did not like the dish I had ordered at all , not because it tasted bad , because I am sure that if I had not had an aversion to sweet potatoes I probably would have enjoyed it a lot , he called the waitress and asked her to change it for a pepper steak , so I had to wait another while for my food.

I was completely ashamed for having made him return such an expensive dish , and I was mortified to think of the cost of the wasted dish and could only pray inside that it would not be thrown away but would be eaten by some waiter or someone in the restaurant kitchen because I was very sorry to think that such a dish would go to waste , however , Dominic did not seem to care too much about this matter and I understood that perhaps he has never had to worry about what his next meal is going to be , or if there will be an upcoming meal.

Something that has been a cause for concern for me after George and I had to start getting by on our own in the absence of our father , and the first months were of total uncertainty since he only got low - paying jobs that were not enough to pay for all our expenses and since I was in college , I could only work on weekends , so my help was never enough, and this is why I endure George's fits of anger because he could perfectly have left on his own and left me alone , because after all , I was already of legal age when that happened and could take care of myself , but he never did , on the contrary , he took two or even three jobs to pay the expenses of our house and also those of my university.

And although I tried very hard to focus on dinner and not pay attention to my phone ringing incessantly with incoming calls from George , which caused an annoyed expression on Dominic , so I had to put it on silent , but still , the brightness of the screen that turned on every time a call came in was impossible to hide , however , I tried to ignore it and pay attention to the conversation we were having with my new boss , in which he tried to explain to me how it was going to be my work from now on , in a much more detailed way than Kim did in the morning , and he even gave me some very useful tips and guidelines for it , which according to him , would have saved the skin of his previous assistants if they had paid any attention of what they were doing.

It gave me a bit of joy to think that he was trying hard for me to understand all of this because maybe he wants me to stay and not ruin everything to the point where he has to fire me , but being the rational person that I have always prided myself on being , I tried not to get carried away by these silly assumptions and focused on memorizing the most important aspects of his talk , and so , between all that talk , time went by without either of us noticing it , and when I finally looked at my watch and I noticed that it was close to eleven o'clock at night , I basically jumped out of my chair making Dominic look at me in surprise.

" What happened? " he asked me.

" It is too late, " I replied in a plaintive tone causing him to frown.

" Late for what? " he asked me curiously , and I had to think fast to answer him because I knew that it would not sound right if I told him that my brother had put a curfew on me even though I am already twenty - one years old , he would think that I am too stupid to be his assistant.

" I have to study , and I am late for it ," I replied , looking out at the outside garden , and although I know he didn't believe me for a second , he didn't say anything , but instead called the waitress to bring him the bill and after this , he handed over the black credit card without even looking at the total amount.

Once the valet parking brought Dominic's car to the driveway , I saw this as my cue to go and said in a tense tone:

“ I think it is better that I order a taxi to take me home , it is already quite late and a car like this would only attract unnecessary attention , and I do not want those people in my neighborhood to think that suddenly I have money , it is enough with them seeing me arrive with so many shopping bags, "

" Nonsense , I will take you, " he replied.

" Mr. Pemberton , you are very kind and I know you are trying to do something good here , but believe me when I say that it is a bad idea to drive that car to my neighborhood at this hour , it would only get me in trouble, " I told him , and he frowned in annoyance , but ended up accepting and asked the valet parking to call a taxi for me , and while we waited for it to arrive , I took out all the bags and began to arrange the clothes and shoes in such a way that they all fit in no more than three large bags , and for this , I had to take the shoes out of their boxes and leave them loose or put them inside the two handbags we bought , at the same time I rolled up the clothes so that they would fit all , while Dominic looked at me with a deep frown and arms crossed over his chest.

And when the taxi arrived , he assured me that he would get rid of the bags and boxes so I did not have to worry about it because I was panicking without knowing very well what to do with the remaining bags and boxes , then he helped me up to the taxi and gave the taxi driver a hundred dollar bill to take me to the address that I indicated and then give me the change , although I assured him several times that it was not necessary , he did not listen to me and simply gave the bill to the taxi driver before waving goodbye to me.

" Thank you so much for everything , Mr. Pemberton , I will see you tomorrow at the office, " I said , and the taxi driver gave me a judgy look when he noticed the shopping bags , but I decided to ignore him.

" Be careful and please send me a message when you are at home , you have told me so many bad things about your neighborhood that I will not be calm anymore, " he told me , and I was a bit surprised with his statement , but I only limited myself to nod before the taxi pulled away.

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And all the way home I was nervous and sweating cold , afraid of what would happen once I got there , so when the taxi driver stopped in front of my house and gave me the change , which was not much because the restaurant was quite far away , I got out and immediately went to the back of the house while praying that I had forgotten to lock the window of my room as usual , and when I pushed it gently , I internally cursed to find it closed , so I returned to the front of the house while I was evaluating my options , but I didn't find any viable one to hide the shopping bags and concluded that George was going to see my new clothes and shoes every day anyway , so it was better to tell him now.

When I entered the house I was amazed at how fast my reflexes were as I narrowly avoided a glass that flew towards me the moment the door opened and crashed an inch from my face almost cutting me , and even though my first instinct was to run and hide , I knew that was only going to make things worse , so I stood paralyzed with fear as I embraced myself and waited for the rest of my brother's fit of rage.

" WHERE THE f**k WERE YOU AND WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TO AVOID MY CALLS? " he yelled at me , and I just trembled in fear as I pushed my back against the door.

" I told you I was going to leave work late, " I replied in a small voice.

" Oh yeah? And your job is to go shopping? " he asked me as he looked at the bags that were on my feet.

" That's work clothes , the law firm gave them to me, " I try to explain , but he grabbed my hair tightly making me scream in pain.

“ Do you think I am stupid enough to believe that ton of s**t? Where were you? " he insisted in a threatening tone.

" I was working , I swear, " I replied through tears.

" LIAR! " he yelled at me as he slapped my right cheek hard making me fall to the ground as I grabbed my face with both hands and saw small black spots.

" I swear I didn't buy that , I don't have money , you know it , it's just office clothes , nothing more than that, " I said pleadingly.

" And how do you explain then that you didn't answer the phone? " he asked me , and I panicked not knowing what to answer.

" Because after sending you the text message I had to go into a meeting that my boss had with a client and take notes , I couldn't answer the phone, " I replied with the most confident tone that I was capable of , and although he seemed to hesitate for a moment , he finally nodded and went back to his room , not before warning me that , if he caught me in a lie , I was going to regret it.