I’ve already spent myself two times watching her eat dinner. It would have been three, but I nearly blew up the whole weekend and marched downstairs when that young fucker touched her leg under the table and ogled her the entire meal like she was his.
She is not.
Never will be.
No one is going to touch her but me.
The thought shakes me as I hear Carolyn pouring herself another glass of Cabernet from the bottle she brought with her a few minutes ago when she came into my area. She comes around to half sit on the edge of the desk where I’m glued, watching the monitor of Agnes walking around her bedroom, still dressed in that long sequined gown that I want to rip from her body with my teeth.
“You always find a way to make things tip in your favor, don’t you?” Carolyn swirls the burgundy liquid around in the glass before raising it to her lips, which ironically are the same color as the wine. “Father taught you well. I will say…” She leans against the edge of the desk, crossing one arm across her body, the other with elbow bent, holding the wine glass at shoulder height. “The one thing that saved you from being a complete narcissistic misogynist like the three generations before you was Mom.”
I nod, barely listening, but there’s truth in what she says. Still, right now is not the time for me to go over family history. I love my mother, unfortunately she’s long since forgotten who I am, the cruel hand of a head injury delivered by a drunk driver who hit our limousine as we drove back home after my father’s funeral. Fate has a way of digging its nails in hard when it wants to, another reason I do my best to not leave things to fate.
The irony is, that horrific event is what eventually propelled me to want to dispose of this estate and use the land for more lucrative purposes. My father had always been more than happy to let the trust manage the property, more of less ignoring it and it’s value happy to pursue his own interests in New York and Europe than waste his time with an old family heirloom in the middle of Michigan. When he passed away, thing that were formerly in his control came into mine.
Agnes moves toward the window where two candles are burning. One of the rules of the game is no electric lights in the rooms. Candlelight only and after ten PM, they are to be blown out, leaving the guests in darkness for the night. The psychologist I spoke to when I was planning this weekend gave me a list of things that would heighten the guests’ susceptibility when it comes to the tricks we have planned. Forced darkness was one of them.
Agnes picks up the small envelope and I silently chastise myself for not dealing with that detail before she came back to her room.
I was too distracted with my hard-on and rampant fantasies to remember to switch out her challenge task for the evening for something less potentially frightening.
“You going to stay up all night watching the show?” Carolyn stands and spins, walking on her red heels around the perimeter of the room, looking at the portraits while sipping her wine.
“Probably,” I answer, knowing there’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep.
“You hired people, they can watch. I mean, who cares anyway right? You’re going to get what you want one way or the other. This is all just theater.”
I glance at the other monitors, realizing I’ve been paying almost no attention to the other guests. I click some keys on my laptop, sending a message to Dalton and the crew chief I hired to manage another surveillance room set up in one of the rooms toward the back of the estate, telling them to be sure to keep an eye on the three guys, but that Agnes’ surveillance, as well as any of the other ‘special’ effects in her room, were being turned off.
I get a questioning reply, but I shut it down, telling them to do as I instruct and only to contact me if something is urgent.
“They are watching.”
“But you don’t trust them, do you?” She shakes her head, shooting me a look over her shoulder. “Always the control freak.” She rocks her head back on her neck, letting out a long breath. “Well, I for one am not going to watch. Far too voyeuristic for me. I have a bath waiting, gonna take this fella here with me…” She picks up the half-full bottle of wine and heads toward the door. “I’ll get the play by play from you in the morning before I leave. I have meetings most of tomorrow, but I’ll be sure to be back before the ball starts.”