She doesn’t emerge right away, though, and I imagine her in there, giving herself a pep talk.
Ten minutes pass before the door opens, and she steps into the bedroom. She looks around. She takes in literally every detail of the room so as to avoid having to look at me.
I’m a patient man. I wait until she has no choice but to meet my gaze.
“Why did you bring me in here?”
“I thought you’d be more comfortable on the bed. You were asleep—”
“I wasn’t asleep.” She glances at the bed. She doesn’t believe me that it’s concern for her comfort, and she’s right not to.
Any normal person would feel pity for her, but not me. I like her fear. It gets my heart pumping, blood flowing. Gets my dick hard.
“Is it starting already?” she asks, her voice breaking a little.
“Is what starting already?” I ask, as if I don’t understand.
She shakes her head, opens her mouth, then closes it again, points to the bed. “I mean, what you want from me, we both know what that is.”
“What do I want from you?”
She looks at me, narrows her eyes. “I’m not going to play your stupid games.”
I uncross my legs, smiling as I rise, go to her.
She stands her ground, even when I get into her space, but flinches when I raise my hand to her face, almost touching her cheek, but not.
Instead, I set her hair behind her shoulders and take a moment to feel the texture of it, feel the difference of the black strands as opposed to the silver streak.
I lean in close to her, inhale her scent. She’s trembling a little.
“That’s too bad, because I like games,” I say.
I step back, look her over, then return to my seat, pick up my drink, and take a sip. I cross my leg over my knee again. “Your shoes are hideous.”
She looks down at them, gives me a little smirk when she looks back at me. “I like them.”
“Drink?” I ask her while I sip mine.
She shakes her head no.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you going to stand for four more hours?”
She looks beyond me out the window, but it’s still night. “Where are we going?”
“Venice.”
“Venice? As in Italy?”
“Yes.”
“But…you can’t…” She sits on the edge of the bed, almost falls into it, and tugs the sleeves of the pretty black dress down into her palms.
I notice the strange ring on her finger.
She turns back to me with something like hope in her eyes. “I don’t have a passport.”
I almost chuckle. “I’ll stop the captain immediately, then. Tell him to turn the plane around. Call the whole thing off.” I extinguish that hope like a candle and I know it’s cruel to do it but it’s too easy and I can’t resist. And really, like a passport would matter if it was even true. “I have your passport. Your mother knew the rules. Everything was arranged, as it should be.”
“You’re a jerk.”
I shrug a shoulder.
She puts her fists to her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t understand.”
“We’re going to the Scafoni estate in Venice. There’s not much to understand. You will be comfortable—”
“Comfortable?” She snaps her gaze to me. “I will be anything but comfortable. Your brothers look at me like I’m a piece of meat. Your mother looks like she wants to stab me. And you…you…”
I’m on my feet and so is she. “No one’s going to stab you, Helena. Don’t be dramatic.”
She stops, looks up at me. “Don’t be dramatic?”
I don’t comment. I know it’ll take her time to accept her situation.
“Is this funny to you? Putting me and my sisters up on blocks like we’re slaves to be auctioned off, dressing us in decaying old…parchment—”
“It was hardly parchment—”
“Looking us over, one by one, judging us while your brothers look on, one of whom could barely keep his dick in his pants while you…you—”
“Settle down,” I warn, and when I step toward her, she backs up.
“While you touched me like you did. You’re sick, all of you, but especially you! You think this is funny? Kidnapping is funny? Making someone a slave to you, to your family, is funny?”
“Not just someone,” I say, closing the space between us so her back is to the wall. “You.”
She raises her arm to slap me, but I catch her wrist. “Don’t ever do that.”
She tries with her other arm, and I capture that one too. I raise both of them over her head and lean into her, pressing her back to the wall.
“Do you have a hearing problem, Willow Girl?”
“My name is Helena.”
“Your name is Willow Girl when I want it to be Willow Girl.”
She tries to free her arms, but she’s trapped. When she tries to knee me, I capture her leg between my thighs. And then she does something totally unexpected.
She spits.
Right in my face.
Instinctively, I transfer both of her wrists into one of my hands and raise my arm, palm flat, ready to strike, but she lets out a half-scream, and I stop because what the fuck am I doing?
Her eyes are huge, and I wonder if she isn’t as shocked with what she just did as I am.
I lower my hand, the one that was ready to slap her, and wipe off the spit, rage building inside me like lava coming up a volcano on the edge of erupting.
I grip her jaw and force her face up, look at her features, pretty and delicate. She’s so much smaller than me. My hand next to her face, it’s huge.
“Be careful, Willow Girl. I can crush you.”
When she blinks, tears streak down her cheeks.
I watch her; wild horses couldn’t drag my attention from her right now. I am lost in her sad, frightened, midnight-colored eyes. The blue is lighter when she cries and she’s so fucking pretty right now, so soft and vulnerable and afraid with her wet face, her swollen lips and wide eyes.
Some women are prettiest when they cry. She’s one of them. And I want her tears. It’s sick, I know. A disease. I’m sick. But I want them.
“Won’t you crush me anyway?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper. “But is that all you’ll do? All your brothers will do?”
I release her and step back. I understand her meaning. We don’t take the Willow Girl for her conversation skills. She’ll be our toy in every way. And this part, I can’t kick the fact that it bothers me.
“You stay in here and try to wrap your brain around your situation.”
“Stay in here? Where would I go? We’re on a fucking airplane.”
“Take this time to come to fucking terms with the fact that I own you.”
“Fuck you.”
I snort. “Want some advice, Helena?” I ask, taking her by the arms. Squeezing. “Try to figure out how not to piss me off. It might help you to remember that you belong to me. That I am your master, and that I will be obeyed. Are we clear?”
When she doesn’t answer right away, I give her a shake.
“Are we?” I ask.
“Yes!”
“Good” I go to the door,
“I saw Libby,” she whispers. “She was my aunt.”
I stop, my hand on the doorknob.
“The last Willow Girl,” she says, as if I need that clarified.
I straighten. I know.
I remember Libby.
I turn to her. “Have a fucking drink. Have ten. Get yourself together.”
Her chest heaves with a sob, and she wipes the back of her hand across her face.
I open the door and walk out into the main room where my family, my fucking family, has been enjoying the entertainment.
“She givin’ you some trouble, brother?” Ethan asks, picking the olive out of his drink and tossing it into his mouth. “Told you that you should have taken one of the other
s. They were prettier anyway. Mama, don’t you think so? They were prettier.”
Lucinda ignores him. “You should whip her, Sebastian. The instant we arrive. It’s the only thing that works on the Willow whores.”
She drains her martini.
I go to the liquor cart, yank the glass out of the attendant’s hand, and pour myself a double. I take a long sip before turning to them.
“I’m glad you enjoyed the show, but where it concerns my Willow Girl, mind your own fucking business.”
4
Helena
I do as he says, but only after sitting on the bed for a while and feeling sorry for myself.
I’m wasting tears on them, on my enemy. I’m weak. God, not twenty-four hours ago, I was staring him down, ready for him, wanting him to choose me only because I thought he wouldn’t.
But I’m pathetic and weak.
I get up off the bed and pick up the glass he left unfinished and drain it. I don’t especially like whiskey, but I force it down and pour more. Pour another, generous glass of the stuff. It’s inelegant, I know, but I don’t care.
I sit on the edge of the bed and drink it like it’s water, and when I’m finished with it, I crawl onto the bed with my hideous shoes still on my feet and lay down on my side and I cry some more.
He’s right. I need to get myself together. But first, I need to get this out of my system. Get my fear gone.
I look at my aunt’s ring. She thinks I’m strong, but she’s wrong. I’m weak. So weak. So opposite her.
When my mother sat us down on our sixteenth birthday and told us this part of Willow history, I swore I wouldn’t be the Willow Girl because it scared the fuck out of me. And as soon as I could, I made sure I wouldn’t pass the virginity requirement, thinking it would save me.
So yeah, I’m weak.
A coward.
“There’s a reason it was you, child.”
I sit up, reach into my boot, and take out pocketknife. I’ve had it forever, but never even dissected a worm with it. I open it now, touch the sharp point, press it into the tip of my finger until I draw a drop of blood.
“They chose you, Helena. The Willow ancestors chose you.”
I wish I knew more about our history. I wish I’d studied the books in the library rather than pretending it wasn’t real. That it was an archaic tradition. That I was safe.
I don’t know what binds the Willows and the Scafonis. What has bound us for generations. When I was little, and my Aunt Libby returned home, we were told she’d been on a trip. I was too young to ask questions. That same summer, she slit her wrists on the old bed in the attic of the Willow family home.
I think the only reason my parents didn’t make up some story was because I’m the one who found her.
I remember I used to be afraid of the attic. Always thought there were ghosts there. My room was just below it, and the only reason I went up there at all was because the blood had finally dripped through a crack in my ceiling and onto my foot.
Drip, drip, drip.
The window was open. It was the hottest summer I remember. The air-conditioning didn’t work as well on the third floor, and it was hard to sleep in the heat.
When I woke up, I saw the drops of red on my foot. I remember thinking how strange it looked and wondering what it was when another drop fell, and I looked up to see the stain on the ceiling.
Every time I remember that night, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I went up there. Why I didn’t go wake my parents. But I didn’t. I took my flashlight and my teddy bear, and I climbed the creaky old stairs to the attic.
I remember when I first saw my aunt lying in that bed. I went over to her to ask her why she wasn’t sleeping in her room where it wasn’t so hot. That’s when I saw the pool of drying blood she was lying in. Saw how unnatural her color was, how gray.
She used to be so pretty whenever I looked at photographs of my mother and her sisters. Aunt Libby was the prettiest of them all in fact.
But not after she came back home from her years with the Scafoni family. They stole her beauty. Her youth. And ultimately, her life.
I turn the ring on my finger, look at the skull, the hollowed-out eyes, smear the droplet of blood over the bone.
It’s made of bone. How does someone do that? I turn it again and feel the three sharp tips of the amethysts.
“They chose you, Helena.”
I lay back down and close my eyes. I’m tired. I don’t think he’ll come back in here. I don’t think he’ll allow his brothers or mother in either. I do know without a doubt that Sebastian Scafoni is in charge of his family. Even his mother.
I just don’t know what that means for me.
When I wake up, I am again disoriented.
We’re no longer flying. I can tell before I even blink my eyes open because I no longer hear the constant, dull noise of the plane in the air. My mouth feels like cotton. I’m thirsty. Did we land?
I open my eyes and am startled to find myself in a large bed in a huge bedroom. The walls are a creamy white, and there are two windows against one of them. Heavy drapes the color of old paper are pulled closed, but the sun is trying to creep in from the split between the panels.
There is a large dresser that looks like an antique against the far wall and a sitting area with a lilac chaise. A small, round side table with three delicate legs stands beside it and another, larger one stands on the other side.
I sit up a little. The satin blanket falls away, and I realize I’m naked.
A peek tells me I’m completely naked.
Someone must have undressed me. Was the whiskey so strong that I don’t remember landing and don’t remember being stripped of my clothes after being carried into this room?
A momentary sensory inventory tells me I haven’t been violated—apart from this stripping of my clothes.
I pull the cover back up to my chin and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I switch on the lamp on the nightstand because apart from that strip of sunlight at the windows, it’s dark inside. The lamp is pretty, one of those Tiffany Venetian ones with a variety of colors of glass. The only other item on the nightstand is my pocketknife.
Whoever undressed me let me keep it?
I get up and tug the blanket off the bed, wrap it around myself.
There’s another door that I can see leads to a bathroom, so I go to it, creeping slowly, although I can’t imagine anyone’s hiding in there. And I was definitely sleeping alone.
Once I’m in the bathroom, I close the door and switch on the light. It’s big, big enough for a tub for two at one end, a separate stand-up shower, also for two, a walled-off toilet, and two pedestal sinks.
There’s a large window above the bathtub. It’s stained glass, and the sun casts a pretty purplish-blue light into the room. I discover it’s sealed, so it can’t be opened, and I can’t look outside to try to figure out where I am. Try to figure out how hard it will be to run away and disappear.
Although I can’t do that.
The tile along the floors and ceilings is a creamy white, and the fixtures are brushed nickel. A rack along one wall holds a dozen plush towels as well as a variety of shampoos, conditioners, body washes, oils, and anything else a woman may need.
And it is for a woman. Prepared in advance for the Willow Girl. I can tell from the smell of a few of the luxury products.
Wishing there was a lock on the door, I quickly use the toilet, then go to one of the sinks to wash my hands and face.
There’s a brand-new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste beside it. I unwrap the former, smear it with toothpaste, and brush my teeth as I take in my reflection, my bed-head hair, the shadows under my eyes. The fingerprints he left behind in the form of bruises along my jaw.
When I’m done brushing my teeth, I locate the wooden hairbrush I’d seen and work it through my hair, smoothing out the bed-head look. I set it down and open the bedroom door and stop dead in my tracks because the curtains have been pulled back t
o let in the bright sunlight and Sebastian is on the bed, in the space I just vacated, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, looking much more casual than he had last night in his suit.
Both of his arms are tattooed, which surprises me for some reason, and he’s leaning against the headboard and reading something on his phone, but when he sees me, he tucks the phone into his pocket.
“Where’s my dress?” I ask.
He looks me over with the blanket wrapped awkwardly around me and smiles. He seems refreshed, like he got some sleep and had a shower.
“I took it off when I brought you in. I thought you’d be more comfortable naked.”
“You thought wrong. I’m not.”
“Did you take me literally when I said to have ten drinks?”
“No. I just had one. Maybe two. Was it drugged? Is that why I didn’t wake up when we landed? Are you going to keep me drugged too?”
He chuckles, swings his legs off the bed, and stands. “Relax, sweetheart.”
“I’m not your sweetheart. Where are my clothes?”
He picks up the pocketknife. “This? Really? Hidden in your boot?”
I walk to him and go to grab it out of his hand, but he pulls it away and grips my wrist with his other hand.
“It’s mine,” I say, twisting to pull free.
He’s too strong, though. I won’t be free until he decides to let me go.
“And now it’s mine.”
He pockets it and releases me.
I stumble backward.
He comes toward me, and I take a step away, but my back is to the wall. He closes his hands around my arms, rubs them once.
“I’m not fucking stupid, Helena. You’ll only hurt yourself trying to injure me.”
“I want my clothes,” I say, knowing he’s right.
“I like you like this,” he says, letting his eyes fall to my chest where the satin is wrapped so uselessly around me.
“Did you touch me too?”
“Not yet,” he says. “I don’t get off on bedding women who are passed out drunk.”
“You’re good with kidnapping though?”
“I guess.”
He’s so fucking cocky, I want to smash his beautiful face in.
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