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"Dr. Percy. What a pleasure to hear your voice again."

She does not sound overtly pleased. Her tone is as professional as ever: cool and refined, cordial without familiarity. A woman who deals in jewels, not flesh.

"I hope business is going well. I wanted to ask, are you still in touch with Bella?"

Neither of them are here for chit-chat.

She sounds as enthused to talk to him as he feels having to talk to her. This is something she must do, a task to be accomplished, an obligation perhaps. If he reaches back, he can recall something of the sort promised on the day he took Bella. A seed of intrigue that went unnurtured and became lost among the dirt of irrelevant memories.

Holding the phone to his ear, he exits his study and attempts to track down Bella within the house.

"I am," he says to announce his presence. "We're living together but I'm afraid she's out at the moment."

This would be part of it, if she were to speak to Ibarra: Bella surrendering financial and social control to him. An evolution of their arrangement into a complete, structured lifestyle.

"Oh, I see." Actual surprise bleeds through Ibarra's tone. "That's wonderful to hear."

In her bedroom, Bella hears Hap's voice, and she's out at the moment. That's a strange enough thing to hear that she closes her pen into her notebook, absently, and gets up from her bed to go to the door.

"Will she able to call me back?" Ibarra continues to Hap. "A friend of a friend of hers is trying to get in touch."

His teeth clench in silence at Ibarra's token approval. Evidently her lack of follow-up hadn't been due to thinking Bella and Hap were a great fit. The irritation is still on his face when Bella emerges. Hap angles the phone away from his ear to hover his thumb over the button that ends the call.

Don't be stupid now.

"I'll take a message." Hap resumes a congenial tone when he offers, "No point wasting time with telephone tag."

Bella's eyes widen. It's an unguarded, naked look. Suddenly her fingers are tight on the notebook, tension visible in her shoulders and neck.

"Mm," Ibarra hums, doubtful. "It's about some old business. I imagine she'll have follow-up questions. I can call back, if you're amenable."

"Of course," Hap folds with warm aplomb, his stare ice cold. "I'll let her know. She can get in touch with you herself."

It is not Bella's fault that this has veered far from how he'd have liked it to go, but she is the one who is going to have to resolve this with him, and to his satisfaction. Across the corridor, she looks as naked as he's ever seen her, no walls up to rebuff the billowing malcontent coming off of him. She understands.

"I appreciate it. You can tell her it's about Lawton."

Bella isn't breathing. (That isn't true: she's breathing light and fast, a little short of hyperventilating.) She's recognized Ibarra's voice by now, and picked up that Ibarra is trying to reach her. She should scream. She should tackle the phone away from Hap and--

And tell Ibarra what? She doesn't know where she is. All these months and she has no idea where the fuck she is. Does the reward of letting someone know that she's been kidnapped, with no further information, outweigh what Hap will do to her in retribution?

"So, it's working out?" Ibarra asks.

Hap recognizes the simmering, nervous energy coming off Bella. Before he perfected the gas, when he had to rely primarily on the threat of force, his subjects were all drenched in that same anxiety when it came time for a session. He can't take it away from Bella like he can for them.

But he shouldn't have to.

"She puts up with me," he makes light, smiling tightly. Ibarra is not owed any more than that after eight months of apathy. "Is there anything else I should pass along?"

"She does have an extremely high tolerance for discomfort," Ibarra muses. "No, that'll be all. Thank you, doctor. You know you're welcome back at my establishment any time you're in town."

"Thank you." He sounds genuinely grateful. He is — to have this interrupt concluded. "Give my regards to Mel."

Without further exchange, Hap lowers the phone and taps the screen, ending the call. The charm he was forced to call upon, wound taut across his shoulders, loosens. He glances up at Bella, doing his best not to look anything but expectant.

What does she intend to do about this?

As his finger descends to the screen, Bella manages a raspy, faint, "Let--"

Too late. Unlikely Ibarra heard it, if she was even still on the line. Bella inhales sharply, chest heaving, and puts out one hand to balance herself against the door frame. The other hand is tight and sweating on her notebook, the cover bending around the shape of the pen in its pages.

"She wanted to talk to me."

She feels like she's standing in the middle of a thunderstorm, electricity gathering invisibly around her and making her hair stand on end. It has to ground itself somewhere. It will be dangerous when it does.

Pocketing his phone, he takes her in with a flickering sweep of his eyes and chooses not to approach her.

"That's not a good idea," he warns. Talking to Ibarra, and whatever else must be coursing through her mind. Her madame's voice has had the effect of a flashback on her, wrenching her back the night he paid off her debt. A time when the life she lives here seemed impossible and escapable. She was smart then. He's giving her grace to be smart now.

"Why did you tell her I'm here at all, then, you idiot?"

She sounds half-dazed. Even now, though, she can't stop calculating angles, and she can't stop herself from speaking them. How can a man so meticulous be so thoughtless?

"I could have left you. I could be in the wind on the west coast for all anyone knows. She wants to talk to me, you goddamn sadist."

"You can't talk to her like this." He gestures to her. She's coiled like a rusted spring, brimming with captive tension. She wouldn't be able to help herself. Hell, she already can't.

Hap had to think fast and she has to think it through. He was as meticulous in his dealings with Ibarra as he was on his dates with Bella. It would be suspicious for him not to have the contact information of a woman whose time I took nearly every opportunity to monopolize to the point that he purchased it in perpetuity. What would be more likely in that case: That Bella left behind both him and Ibarra, or that she vanished without a choice? She proved she doesn't trust him enough to relay a message.

"Oh, you're right, I might be a little out of practice!"

Her voice rises. She hates the way it shakes. This godawful electric feeling is too much to bear: she balls her hand and slams the side of her fist against the door jamb, bone against wood, hard enough to hurt in a jarring, uncomfortable way.

The pain helps. At the very least, it interrupts what feels like an uncontrollable skid towards hysteria. Breath hissing in between her teeth, she drops her notebook to the floor and cradles her hand against her chest, flexing her fingers.

His hand curls loosely in on itself, a dejected fist. She's coming apart so it behooves him to maintain his composure but he is not happy. It's an effort he might abandon if not for the clack of the pen on the floor as it rolls out from between the pages of her notebook. True, she shouldn't have brought that to the door, but at least she didn't do anything foolish with it.

"Bella," he cautiously cajoles, taking a step towards her. "You want to know what she has to say, don't you?"

He moves forward. She steps back, watching him resentfully.

"What's it going to cost me to hear?"

Oh, for God's sake. What is that supposed to mean?

As if he's constantly exacting new degrees of inhumanity from her. Her compliance may not always be enthusiastic but she's never expressed disgust or reluctance. Once he got her through the door, at least.

"Nothing," Hap scoffs. "Just your cooperation."

Bella feels the crazy urge to slap him. Not to attack him to try and escape, nothing like that: just to lash out at that scoff. Knock the condescension out of his lungs.

She squeezes her bruising hand with the other to quell herself.

"Following your script." If she remembers it. It's been so many months. He'll make sure she remembers it. He'll rehearse her as thoroughly as she ever prepped for an opening statement. "Letting you listen while I tell her we're very happy together."

Hap is doing his best not to reevaluate the entirety of their situation. The enmity surrounds her like static electricity. Stored energy, perhaps. Have they been enemies this whole time? Has she been lying to him?

One thing at a time. Once they've put out Ibarra's fire, he can figure out how he's going to dispose of the coals that may have been burning under the floorboards the past eight months.

"We'll come up with a new one. We're hardly in the honeymoon phase anymore." He reflects some of her resentment back with that remark.

Honestly, that's almost funny. He's a witty man. It's part of what makes it hard for her to hate him.

Usually. It's astonishingly easy to hate him right now.

"Oh, we. That's what you want from me. You want a good story." She shakes her head. "That figures. You always did."

One thing at a time.

One thing at a time.

He takes a deep breath, bracing for him and warning for her. He understands she's in disarray but that doesn't mean he'll placidly let himself be insulted. Fucking Ibarra. If there's anyone to blame, it's her. She's the one who handed Bella over to him. She's the one who had Bella in a position to be handed over to anyone.

"That's it. Let's call it an early night. Would you like some help sleeping or would you rather stew in vitriol all night?"

"I'll stew, thanks."

Letting him near her with a needle right now would be a disaster. Even with her emotions high, she doesn't think he'd intentionally harm her; he wouldn't offer the choice if he had designs that way. But she doesn't trust herself not to do something stupid if he gets in arm's reach.

"I'll see you in the morning."

She retreats another step into her room and shuts the door -- not slamming it, and leaving notebook and pen on the floor in the hall.

Edited 2025-07-19 06:02 (UTC)

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