Chapter 105: NADIA’S DRESS
KEISHA’S POV
"I know I have something in here." Nadia said from inside my wardrobe. Which she had completely dismantled.
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched clothes come flying out one by one and land on the floor and the chair and partially on my face.
"Nadia." I said, pulling a sequined top off my head.
"I need something that says I’m fun but also employed." She groaned. "Those are two different vibes and I need both simultaneously."
"You have an entire wardrobe at the mansion." I said. "Full of things that say exactly that."
"I’m not going back there." She scowled. "I told you."
"You told your father you were leaving his house." I said. "You live on his estate. You work in his pack. You eat food his cook prepares and sends over to my house every other night."
"I earn my own salary now." She said. "Which I deposited into my own account this week. Independently."
"Nadia." I said. "That’s not the point."
"I’m making a point." She said. A dress flew out. "About self sufficiency."
"The point would land better if you weren’t currently destroying my wardrobe looking for something to wear to a club." I rolled my eyes.
She emerged from the wardrobe with her hair everywhere and a red dress in one hand. "This." She said.
I looked at it. "That’s mine."
"I know." She stared at me. "Can I borrow it?"
"You just threw fourteen of my things on the floor." I looked around the room.
"I’ll fold them." She waved a hand dismissively. "Can I borrow the dress?"
I looked at her. "Fine." I agreed.
She disappeared back into the wardrobe to find shoes and I sat on the bed and thought about Eliora’s face widening into that smile when Nadia agreed to come tonight and the drop in my stomach that had followed it.
"I still don’t think you should go." I muttered.
"You said that." Nadia’s voice from inside the wardrobe.
"I’m saying it again." I sighed.
"Keisha." She came out with my shoes this time. "She’s a colleague. We’re going to a club. Nothing is going to happen."
"You don’t know her." I reminded her.
"I’m getting to know her." She said. "That’s the point of going out with people."
"She lied to Sera’s face." I said. "About the bathroom."
"People lie about embarrassing things." Nadia said. "I have lied about embarrassing things. You have lied about embarrassing things."
"That’s different." I glanced at her.
"How?" She asked.
I opened my mouth and then, closed it.
Because I couldn’t say I asked Dane to look into her resume and I’m waiting for the results without explaining why I asked Dane to do anything, which would require explaining what I knew about Dane, which was a whole different conversation I wasn’t ready for.
"I just have a feeling." I said.
"Your feelings are usually right." She said, not unkindly. "But sometimes they’re protective instinct and not actual intuition and I think this might be the second one." She sat beside me and looked at me properly. "You’ve been wound tight for weeks. You want to protect everything and everyone around you and I understand why but—" She paused. "Eliora is fine. I’ll be fine. I’ll text you every hour if you want."
I looked at her.
She was already in my red dress and somehow it fit her perfectly despite us being completely different sizes and I had no idea how that happened.
"Every hour." I reminded her. "Text me."
"Every hour." She said. "I promise."
She stood and looked in the mirror and turned once and nodded at herself. "Okay." She said. "I need to go or Eliora will think I changed my mind." She grabbed her bag. "Come with me to get my dress from the mansion at least. You said you would."
"I said I’d think about it." I said.
"Think faster." She whined.
I got up.
We walked to the mansion in the evening dark and Nadia was chatting about something that had happened with Peter at work today that I was only half listening to because I was looking at the building getting closer and thinking about bumping into Callum.
Which I then did almost immediately.
He was coming out of the east wing corridor as we came through the main entrance and he stopped and looked at both of us and his eyes stayed on me for a moment in the way they did when he was checking something he wasn’t going to say out loud.
"Nadia." He said.
"Hi Dad." She said, already moving past him toward the stairs. "I’m just getting a dress. I’ll be two minutes."
"Two minutes." He nodded. "Okay."
She was already up the stairs.
It was just me and Callum in the entrance hall.
"How are you feeling?" He asked.
"Fine." I said. "Properly fine. Not the version I say to make people stop asking."
Something pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Good." He said.
"Callum." I muttered.
"Hm." He said.
"Never mind."
We stood there and the entrance hall was quiet around us.
I looked at him standing there in his coat with the evening behind him.
"Is everything okay?" I asked.
"Yes." He said too quickly.
I looked at him. He looked back at me with his face exactly where he wanted it and said nothing else and I filed that away.
Nadia came back down the stairs in four minutes with a garment bag over her arm and three additional items she definitely hadn’t gone up there for.
"Ready." She said to me. Then to Callum — "Don’t wait up."
"I never wait up." He said.
"You always wait up." She smiled. "It’s sweet. Don’t stop." She kissed his cheek and headed for the door.
I followed.
In the corridor outside I helped Nadia carry her things and she was talking again and I was listening with one ear and with the other I was back in Callum’s face when he said yes too fast.
We got back to my house and Nadia changed, touched up her makeup and her phone buzzed with Eliora’s message saying she was outside.
"Every hour." I reminded her.
"Every hour." She said. She squeezed my arm at the door. "Get some sleep. You look exhausted."
"Thank you." I said.
She laughed and left and I closed the door and stood in my hallway alone.
My phone buzzed a while later.
Dane.
I opened it.
"Eliora’s resume is completely fabricated. None of her qualifications are real. Her actual background is in food service — she trained as a baker for three years and left under investigation for assaulting two colleagues who were promoted above her. Two criminal records. She’s not who she said she was."
I stared at the screen. Read it again.
Nadia.
Nadia was in a car with her right now heading to a club on the boundary road and I had just let her walk out the door.
I grabbed my coat.
Shit.