I wake early, the girls still dead to the world. Sunday. Church day. Fuck...
A night of having my balls drained makes a man forgetful — I'd thought of preparing a surprise for Katie, bringing her along to see the convent this morning, without once checking what day it was. In a town like this, everyone goes to mass — and I'm Katie's husband, so I go too. So do the girls. It's the price of looking respectable, and the neighbors count. And the shop I wanted to visit to prepare a surprise for Katie? Shut on Sunday, like everything else.
So the plan changes while the coffee drips. Today: the convent, alone, with Paul. The surprise I'm preparing for Katie keeps until tomorrow afternoon.
---
We all go to mass, the five of us. Katie in her Sunday dress, hair pinned up. Hope in a pale blue dress, honey-blonde hair brushed out for once. Hester in navy, sleeves long, modest collar — the kind of outfit that reads demure church girl and isn't. Paul takes the end of the pew beside his daughter.
Katie nudges me awake somewhere in the homily. The priest drones on and on, same cadence, same three points, the whole town nodding along in time.
I let the words wash over me and think about the school. This town is so stuck with religion, we're going to need one of these for the chapel — a real priest, someone the parents trust. The question is where a man finds a fairly depraved one. Loyalty is one thing, but I'd rather not corrupt an honest priest if I can help it. Someone already broken would be easier to buy.
Hester catches my eye across the aisle during the offertory and hides a smile behind her hymnal. Hope elbows her.
I shake the priest's hand on the way out and pliment his sermon, and no one thinks twice about Ben Roberts, good husband, good father. They're still giggling when we file out into the late-morning sun.
---
By two o'clock Paul's beige sedan is idling at the curb — the kind of car a vice principal would drive. He honks once.
I grab my jacket and head out alone. "Paul's picking me up," I tell Katie at the door. "Property visit. Back before dinner."
She gives me a curious look but doesn't push. Good slave-wife. Trusting.
Paul shakes my hand when I reach the car. "Ready to see the convent?" I slide into the passenger seat. "Drive."
The convent is ten minutes outside town on Cedar Street — its acquisition the result of cooperation between Paul and my sleazy lawyer. The road narrows as we leave the mercial district behind, the houses thinning out until it's just fields and the occasional oak tree. Then the wall appears — old stone, moss-stained, topped with rusted iron spikes. Beyond it, the roof of the main building rises against the afternoon sky.
Paul pulls up to the gate and kills the engine. "First time seeing it up close?"
"First time." I step out and take it in.
The convent is three stories of weathered brick, with a slate roof that's missing a few tiles and a bell tower that hasn't rung in years. The windows are dark, some boarded, some just empty. The grounds are overgrown — knee-high grass, a cracked fountain, a gravel path that's more weed than gravel.
But the bones are good. The bones are solid.
Paul unlocks the main gate with a key from his pocket and swings it open. We walk through. At the front door he works a second key from the same ring — new locks all round, fitted the moment the acquisition went through — and lets us in.
The inside is better than the outside promised. The entrance hall is wide, with high ceilings and original hardwood floors that have held up under decades of dust. The building is L-shaped — the main block running straight back, a shorter wing branching off to the right. The main corridor opens into what was once mon rooms — four of them, one after another, each with tall windows letting in good light. They'd make decent classrooms. A small parlour sits near the front door, wood-paneled, the kind of room where nuns once received visitors. The refectory is further back, a long hall with a vaulted ceiling. A wide serving hatch opens into the adjoining kitchen — big gas ranges, industrial sinks, a walk-in pantry built to feed sixty nuns. More than enough for a boarding school.
"Dormitory's upstairs," Paul says, gesturing toward the stairwell. "Sixty cells. Third floor's got the old Mother Superior's office, a library, an infirmary, and what used to be the novitiate wing. I didn't go through it all — the listing said the plumbing needs checking up there."
Paul walks beside me, pointing out details. "Electrical needs updating. Heating's functional but inefficient. Roof needs patching in two places. But structurally, it's sound."
"Teachers first," I say. "That's what my lawyer tells me. State won't approve the permit without them on staff."
Paul nods. "He's right. The feasibility review cleared — size, zoning, all tentatively approved for a school. The building can wait; the hiring can't."
"Miss Delaney." I say her name like a chess move. "English. Young, sharp, already warming up to me."
"I know her. Good teacher. I can make some calls, see who else might be interested."
"Start with Delaney. We'll build from there."
He nods again and we step outside. The grounds stretch behind the main building — a few acres of untended field that could be anything with the right investment. Paul points to a clearing near the tree line.
"That's where the villa would go. Zoning's already filed. Property lines are clear."
I look at the empty field. I see it. A house for my girls. Separate from the school. Private. Ours.
Paul hands me the keys — a heavy ring with the main gate, the front door, the chapel, and the rest. "The deed's filed. It's yours now." I close my fingers around them. Cold iron. Solid.
Paul reaches for the door handle, then stops. "You ing?"
I shake my head. "e back for me in two hours. I want to take my time, explore the place properly — figure out what to do and what to change before the renovation starts."
He frowns, glances at his watch, then shrugs. "Two hours. I'll be back."
He heads for his car. The engine starts, the beige sedan pulls away, and then it's just me and the empty convent.
I lock up behind him — gate first, then the front door — and pocket the ring of keys. Two hours to walk the place alone. No Katie. No questions. Just the building and the plans forming in my head. The main corridor, the dormitory, the wing at the end of the third floor. I walk it twice, making notes, imagining walls knocked through and soundproofing laid and doors that only I will ever open.
The east side of the property is where I linger longest. A belt of old trees — birch and maple, grown thick and tall — runs along the boundary there, and beyond it the field stretches open. I walk the treeline, thinking. Beyond that grove would be a good location for the staff lodging. Close enough to reach the school in two minutes, screened from it entirely, a little village of their own. The town will love it — staff housing reads wholesome.
I make another mental note as I circle back through the dormitory floor. Sixty cells, but you can't have sixty to eighty girls alone at night without supervision. So: knock each pair of cells together into a proper double room — bathroom on the old shared-wall line, double closet, double desk — and two girls to a room. That gives thirty rooms, and a handful of overflow cells on the third floor pushes the roll to eighty. The short bar on this floor bees the keepers' wing: a study room at the start, then three mini apartments — bedroom, bath, sitting room, a little kitchenette — for two matrons and a teacher, on rotation. They eat in the refectory like everyone else; I'll earmark a few small tables for the staff.
Laundry too. Not a line of machines for the girls — I can just picture sixty teenagers with irons, burning the school down before we even open. No. A proper staff-run laundry with mercial machines, folded and returned. I'll take the old study lounge off the main corridor for it, so the girls drop their bags steps from their rooms and never think about it again.
By the time Paul's beige sedan rolls back up the gravel, the afternoon light has turned gold. I climb in without a word.
"Get it sorted?" he asks.
I nod. "One surprise left to arrange."
He glances over, curious for a moment — then shrugs and lets it pass. We ride back into town in fortable silence.
Except it isn't entirely silent. Not in my head.
*Hey, system. You picked me, back then. One of the reasons — I remember this conversation — was that I had the whole building wired before you even arrived. Every wall, every bathroom, every bedroom. A surveillance-minded host, you said.*
[That is correct, host.]
*So I have to ask. I'm putting all my focus into the school now. The building, the convent — that's where everything moves next. Does that change anything between us? Are you... staying?*
A pause. Then:
[The school is not a departure, host. It is a step — a large one — on the road to being the greatest perverted daddy the system has ever produced. Sixty to eighty girls under one roof, on your land, in your care. The host is not moving away from his purpose. He is consolidating it.]
[And besides — the host plans to wire the convent far more thoroughly than his building. Cameras in the dormitory, the bathrooms, the study rooms. The den will have its second location.]
I feel the corner of my mouth tug upward in the darkness of the car.
"Good," I say aloud. Paul doesn't look over. *I got used to you, system. I wouldn't want to lose you.*
[The host means he doesn't want to lose the chance to get all these teenage girls.]
I sigh — contentedly, the way a man does when the road ahead finally feels clear.
*That too, system. That too.*
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