Page 11 of Saint
“Um… Eight. Seven and a half.”
He nodded and returned to clacking away at his laptop before finally powering the device down.
“You hungry?” He asked once his attention was free of the device.
I hadn’t eaten anything since we’d landed. The swarm of events leading up to the present moment hardly permitted it. Now that Saint had asked, I could eat several horses. That was saying an earful because I didn’t eat meat.
“I could eat,” I confessed.
The flight to Komodo Island from Paramour took almost a day and a half. Just as quickly as I’d arrived, I was leaving. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was being taken, but I expected we’d be in the air for a while.
Saint rose from where he sat and disappeared behind the bulkhead separating the cabin from a small food preparation area I noticed when we were boarding. He returned with a salad, which he handed me alongside a fork. I stared at the packed dish, noting the presence of chicken. On any other occasion, I would have declined it and sent it back to where it came from, but I was famished.
“Thank you,” I pushed out, opening the container and proceeding to dig into the medley of fruit and vegetables.
Without complaint, I removed the chicken from the mixture and ate everything else in the bowl. With my attention focused on the food in front of me, I didn’t notice Saint’s presence until he touched my feet. I yelped in surprise, averting my attention to his actions. He held my ankle up, giving it a close inspection before gently wiping it with some sort of antiseptic.
Considerate, his hands were upon me, soothing the ache of scratches, cuts, and splinters digging into my feet. The liquid antiseptic offered relief upon contact. The tweezers he’d procured removed prickly leaf points that sought to lodge into my soles. The sensation of his hands against my tormented skin was the biggest contradiction. Coarse but supple, I grieved their absence once his unsolicited care came to a conclusion.
The burning pain I felt in my feet had disappeared.
“Thank you,” again, I voiced my appreciation for the man who had taken me captive. Slowly, he was becoming less of the monster I’d made him out to be.
“There’ll be shoes for you when we land,” he announced, not really acknowledging my gratitude.
“Land? Land where?” I asked.
“Paramour.”
Fighting against the smile threatening to make its presence known, I bit down on my bottom lip. My heart rejoiced at the announcement, relieved that I was going home. Thank you, God. They were taking me home.
Victoria
Maybe home was too zealous of a descriptor for where we were headed. Assuredly, we landed at Paramour International Airport, but Saint didn’t free me from his possession. He gave his associate – whom I’d come to learn during our lengthy flight was named Supreme – a brief hug, and then we broke off to go our separate ways.
They were brothers, I realized after studying them during my waking moments on the flight. They didn’t share a striking resemblance, but I gathered as much from their names. There was a subgroup of Black parents who tended to name their children following a specific theme. Their parents fell into that category.
With his hand outstretched once I exited the plane, Saint led me to an AMG Coupe parked in the plane hangar. Once I was situated inside the car, I looked around for a key, calculating my chance for escape. There was none. As Saint rounded the car and entered, I watched Supreme take off in a Porsche SUV.
“Where are we going?” I probed, needing to know where he intended to take me.
“Somewhere safe,” was his response as he coasted down the highway at an even but fleeting pace.
Internally, I wrestled with the fact that he’d mentioned safe as if it were his intent all along. From the time I’d witnessed Javier’s demise up until the moment I decided that he deserved the bullet in his head, I hadn’t thought highly of the man named Saint. Again and again, he sought to prove me wrong.
My attention was whisked to the view outside the window as we breezed past the big city of Paramour. As the vehicle cruised through the streets, the view shifted to one in favor of more greenscape.
We neared the back end of Paramour Canyon but didn’t directly advance toward it. As a resident of South Pointe, I hardly ventured to Paramour City in favor of the less congested areas of the state. I’d never been up the canyon or visited the area surrounding it, so the scenic view was entirely new for me. Increasingly, I grew curious of our final destination.
Saint slightly cracked both our windows. The small opening allowed the stench of the ocean breeze inside the car. Though I hadn’t seen the coastal waters yet, the air was pregnant with the smell of salt and the sky, like a curtain of pale blue silk. The further we advanced, the more I took note of the increasing company of palm trees. The ocean was near. My senses alluded to it. Confirming my suspicion, Saint began to slow the car’s speed, taking the exit ramp for Paramour Beach.
As we eased down the coastal town, I took stock of the evergreen farms and natural vegetation lining the roads. Dark brown hues of melanated souls appeared sporadically as we advanced. My eyes absorbed evidence of the successful Black inhabitants. Their presiding presence was a gift. Palm trees danced to the tune of the breeze emanating from the sea. It felt like I was on an island of Black excellence.
We took a turn off the main road toward a less populated area, where it was evident that only a particular income group of dwellers were welcome. The houses were grand in display, with brick-paved driveways. Every lawn was manicured to a nearly identical height. Strangely, not a single soul was in sight, probably off working to pay the high-ass house notes.
The car came to a creep as it turned into a circular driveway of a massive cream-colored concrete beach house. The exterior was sheathed in cherry blossoms and animated palm trees that almost seemed to wave as we approached. I swooned, utterly smitten by the architecture and landscape. As I busied myself with locating my lower jaw, Saint entered a three-car garage, informing me that we’d reached his home.
My door was locked as he exited, leaving me with a befuddled look until he rounded the car, approached my side, and opened the door.