by Anne Malcom
A home in a monster.
18
It wasn’t a normal day.
I didn’t have those.
But it was my new normal.
It was also somewhat pivotal.
The day before I was going to reveal myself at the meeting I’d organized to acquire Kershaw’s company. And his data banks. It was the day before I was going to win. Get my revenge.
I wasn’t secure in my victory.
Only fools were.
I expected something.
Was waiting for something. Another blow.
It wouldn’t be physical this time.
He wasn’t going to make a habit out of doing what he’d done. Having someone get past my physical defenses to get me in my home. He just wanted to show he could do it.
But expecting blows, physical or otherwise, was normal for me.
Extraordinary things always happened in the midst of normal. Then it was the same for the life ending, heartbreaking, world-shattering events. There wasn’t a drumroll or musical build up like in the movies. No theatre. Just one moment I was striding through the foyer of my building, hearing my heels click on the ground. Trying to breathe around Jacob. His energy. Trying to act normal when the white-hot brand of his stare tattooed my back.
I was unable to become accustomed to Jacob, despite how long we’d been together, the days refused to lapse into a flat sort of monotony. With him, it was three dimensional, uncomfortable, agonizing reality.
So it wasn’t exactly normal. It was insanity. But wasn’t that what normal was? Insanity masquerading as monotony
Whatever it was, it tore through me with a sharp and utterly rancid taste of foreboding that made me abruptly stop, like I’d hit a concrete wall and people stuttered in their steps in my peripheral. Seeing Charlotte Crofton stumble was more than an anomaly.
That was the last I saw of them. Of the foyer. Of anything that wasn’t the black and horrible pain that ripped through my right side with the consistency of a serrated knife.
I barely noticed I was no longer upright but crumpled on the ground.
Then I wasn’t. I was in the arms of a piping hot furnace as they enclosed around me, then ran over my body, looking for an injury.
“Charlotte,” Jacob demanded, any form of blankness gone from his voice. It was stripped down to something primal that sounded decidedly like fear.
I recognized it because that was the taste of what I was feeling. Or at least a shadow of it. I had utter terror freezing me to the spot. Numbing me.
He moved my hands from where I’d been clutching my left side. I glanced down at his swift intake of breath that I guessed was relief when he didn’t find blood there.
It wasn’t relief for me.
I wished there was blood there.
Would have done anything for there to be.
Because the reality of why there wasn’t was just too terrifying.
“Molly,” I half-whispered, half-screamed as I tried to scramble out of his arms.
They were vices. “Boots,” he warned. “Stay still, baby. Where are you hurt?” His voice was full of shadows, of ghosts of the weeks before.
He was looking for bruises that had faded, cuts that had healed.
He wouldn’t find anything.
Not when I was torn apart from the inside.
I struggled. Hard. “Let me go!” I screamed like a banshee, meeting his eyes.
For once, no wildness lingered beneath them. It was lucid fear that replaced that.
I was the wild one now.
Because if he didn’t let me go, I’d claw his eyes out.
All sense of decorum or control had gone out the window. I had one destination, one goal, one purpose. To get out of his arms.
So I could get to my sister.
The rippling emptiness in the second part of me that had been there for as long as I remembered served as the most brutal of signifiers that it could be too late.
I refused to believe this.
I was still breathing.
Which meant so was she.
Because no way you could breathe if the other half of you was gone.
There was just no way.
My frenzied and uneven breaths served as hope.
“Let me go. Now,” I ordered. “I have to get to my sister.”
He didn’t listen. “You’re hurt.”
I glared at him, his gaze for once not having any kind of effect on me. There was no room for Jacob amongst all the pain I was in right now. “No. Not me. But you will be if you don’t let me up right now.”
His eyes flickered with something. Understanding maybe. I didn’t register. For once, my goal wasn’t unpuzzling him and his expressions. I scrambled out of his arms as soon as he let me go, yet he didn’t actually break contact. His hand clasped mine and pulled me up. Then he gave me a long look before walking us hurriedly to the doors.
I ignored everyone who stopped and stared.
I focused on my hand in his, he didn’t let mine go until we got there. Until I got into that apartment and smelled that smell and lost the second part of me.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
“No way in hell,” I said immediately.
He gauged it. My resolute certainty that there was no way I could stand down here at the foyer of Molly’s apartment building that stared at me in taunting menace.
He nodded once as if he expected such a response. “Stay behind me.”
I glared at him. “That’s my sister,” I hissed.
“And you’re mine,” he hissed back. “Stay the fuck behind me.”
Then he turned, one hand on me, one hand on the small of his back where I knew he kept his gun.
It took a long time yet no time at all to get up the steps to the loft.
Our footfalls echoed, every single one.
Jacob unearthed his gun when we reached her floor and the door was ajar.
He didn’t let my hand go, somehow managed to stop me when I tried to sprint forward to the door. To get to her and to run away from the cold sense of foreboding that settled on my spine with the sight of that door.
His eyes were clear. Empty. No wolf in sight. This was the man. The soldier.
I gritted my teeth and went against every instinct to let him slowly lead us into the door with a kind of precautionary gait that cops used on crime shows. Everything was slow then, too slow.
But once we got inside, once the smell of bitter pennies and copper swirled into the air and made my stomach roil, everything was so fast.
Because I was no longer behind him. His strong, firm hand was no longer in mine and I no longer stood at the entrance to the loft.
I was kneeling beside the body of my sister, my knees immediately soaking into the pool of blood that surrounded her.
My shaking hands hovered over her for a second, hesitant, urging whatever horrific nightmare I was in to go away, to replace it with reality. Yet nothing happened.
Time sped up again.
She was in my arms and I was clutching her to my chest. Rocking her back and forward as I stroked her soft choppy hair.
It smelled of strawberries, strawberries and blood.
She must still be alive if she smelled of strawberries.
“I want to be alone in my misery.”
The words echoed around my empty apartment.
Well, it wasn’t empty.
Jacob was here.
He’d been dealing with the police. Getting rid of Detective Maloney. I’d already made my statement.
That was after Jacob had to forcibly remove me from my sister’s body.
I hadn’t made a sound. But I’d battled him as he’d tried to take me away from her.
Like she wasn’t already gone.
He’d ripped me away from the fantasy that if I held onto her bloody corpse, then she wasn’t really dead.
Jacob was good at that, showing me the ugly reality of things.
He’d held me in his arms, murmuring things I don�
��t remember in my ears, kissing my hair, his hold something between a cage and an embrace.
I didn’t time how long we’d been like that, surrounded by all the people that responded to calls of murder.
A lot more turned up when it became apparent who was murdered.
“Charlotte Crofton’s sister” somehow made it more important.
Because I was someone.
But Molly was someone. She was someone more than Charlotte Crofton’s sister. She was more than that by miles.
But it’s what brought the chief of police and the scores of reporters.
After however long Jacob held me, something clicked, something snapped inside me and my mind clicked to the audience, Charlotte Crofton took over. I slackened in Jacob’s grip, everything became stark and lucid.
I put on my mask.
I didn’t shed a tear.
I answered all questions succinctly and honestly. Patiently.
First at ‘the scene.’ Then at my apartment where the police thought I’d be more comfortable.
As if a location mattered in all of this.
But I agreed because I was playing my part.
I was courteous to Detective Maloney as he interviewed me on my sofa, even offered him refreshments.
“It’s the etiquette when guests are over,” I said. “Even though you’re not technically a guest, you’re the man investigating my sister’s murder, I’m sure it still counts as good manners.”
He’d flinched at my words. I wasn’t quite sure why. He was a detective, he’d seen a lot more than me, wearing my business suit and my sister’s blood.
Though my voice might’ve sounded quite disturbing, I guessed. Flat and dead.
I expected him to have some kind of air of ‘I told you so,’ a smugness about him, considering our last conversation.
There was nothing but detached pity.
He’d made the interview short, with all sorts of promises. I didn’t quite remember now, but I had made sure to be present during the conversation.
The conversation was done now, so I didn’t have to be present.
I wished I could disappear into the sofa I was perched on. I wished I could sink into the earth and never have to draw another breath in a world where reality consisted of my sister’s blood staining my suit and my skin.
But wishes were made by dreamers and idiots, granted by no one.
I knew better than to wish.
I just had to endure.
Somehow.
Jacob was kneeling in front of me, I blinked, trying to remember why he was doing that. What I’d said.
I didn’t need to be present with him.
He ripped off all my masks and he saw me for what I was. Which was nothing, right now.
“I want to be alone in my misery.”
That’s what I’d said.
Of course it was a total lie. I was terrified of being alone just as much as I was afraid of him being anywhere near me, showing me the true extent of my ugly reality.
“I know,” he said, resting his hand on my neck. For once, he didn’t grip it painfully like as was his habit when touching me. His gaze wasn’t gentle, though. I was thankful for that. “Everyone who is in true misery wants to be alone. People have surface sadness that can be solved by company. But despite popular cliché, misery does not love company. Misery seeks out solitude, which graduates to loneliness.”
He cupped my face, forcing me to look into those predatory eyes when I was nothing but prey now.
I almost flinched when I met them and there was something else besides the wolf inside them. There was something more than a little bit of the man.
“I’m not gonna let you be lonely in your misery, Boots.”
His words were soft now, and I wanted to rip off my ears so I didn’t hear them. But I’d still feel them. Him.
“I’ll kill him,” he decided, fists clenched.
I sipped my vodka. It was my third. I should’ve been feeling the effects of this. My thoughts should be soft, cloudy. But everything was stark, lucid, painfully so.
I considered it. The idea of Kershaw bleeding at my feet, by Jacob’s hand, was enticing. Something roused within my numb body, something like desire, need to see his blood spilled before me, as retribution.
Blood for blood was simple. Age old. Satisfying, violent. Painful. Permanent.
“No,” I said after considering it. “I appreciate that you want to do this for me. And meeting death with more death is tempting, but I’ll take care of my own problems. Of my own revenge. He won’t die. No. That’s not my style. I’ll destroy him, though.”
I thought about it.
Considered the blood I was yet to wash off my hands because I didn’t want to wash Molly away.
Death was too easy for him.
Jacob’s eyes hardened. He opened his mouth to say something, I braced for it, but the elevator replaced it.
Jacob was up and holding his weapon in one blink.
“Charlotte,” my uncle’s voice echoed through the foyer of my apartment. I was surprised he was here. I wasn’t surprised he knew. The whole of New York would be abuzz with the news. Good news traveled fast, murder traveled even faster.
It surprised me that he was even here.
There had been nothing but silence from him since I’d fired him. I’d kept track of him, and he’d left the country for a month, which may or may not have been to meet up with Kershaw. I didn’t care enough to look further into it.
But he was obviously back.
I didn’t answer him. His footfalls told me he was coming in our direction anyway.
Jacob’s body was stiff, but he lowered his gun.
Abe came into sight moments later. I was surprised to see his eyes were rimmed with red and his face was structured into an expression only to be described as sorrow. It was interesting, I’d never seen such an emotion on my uncle’s face. Not even when we buried his brother, my father. Or when he signed the papers to have my mom committed.
It was always a flat and cool expression. One I’d emulated and then perfected over the years.
I was still wearing mine and half of my world was gone. He’d lost his grasp on his. But he was weaker than me.
He rushed over to me, falling short as I didn’t stand to greet him. I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do anyway. Hug him? I hadn’t hugged another human being other than my sister in well over a decade.
He wasn’t an affectionate man. Nor an emotional one. His actions were out of character. Which could be explained by what happened. Death tended to take the mask off false people and show their weaknesses. But I wasn’t sure if death was taking off his or if he was putting on another one in order to keep up the act.
“Charlotte—” His voice was broken.
“Was it you?” I interrupted, my own tone smooth and cold.
He flinched. Physically flinched as if I’d hit him. Never in my life had I seen my uncle react outwardly to anything. It could’ve been an act. There was nothing to trust right now. Not even my instincts. Especially not my instincts. I was off-kilter, only half of me breathing, existing.
“Was what me?” he choked out.
I sipped vodka out of my water glass, tacky but it afforded more room for the liquid.
I didn’t taste it.
“Were you behind Molly’s death? It’s obvious that her murder was to do with the merger, since she is not a human being who could physically make an enemy that would want to do...” my voice trailed off.
Blood and strawberries.
Torn skin.
Flesh on the outsides of her body.
Her tattoos obscured as someone had flayed them from her skin.
“That,” I finished carefully. “No one would do that to someone like Molly unless it was for a purpose. A message.” I took another sip. A bigger one.
Still nothing.
“And you made it clear how far you were willing to go in order to make sure this deal went through,” I continued, eyei
ng my uncle evenly. “Made it clear blood didn’t mean anything to you. So it stands to reason that if it didn’t matter who you shared it with, you wouldn’t mind spilling it.”
My voice was flatter and colder than I’d ever heard it. It probably should’ve scared me. I had nothing to be afraid of anymore.
He was gaping at me. I knew Jacob was staring at me. He’d been doing that the entire time. Apart from his handful of words as Abe arrived. Before that, there had been nothing. No empty words to placate me. No empty comfort. He watched me pour the glass to the top, didn’t say a word, and he wasn’t saying a word now about me accusing my uncle—the only family I had left—of ordering the brutal murder of my sister.
He was used to people doing depraved things, likely.
I knew he was waiting, watching. For Abe’s reaction. To catch a whiff of a lie in his inevitable protest. I also knew if he did, that he’d kill him right there in front of me.
I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I only hoped if it came to that, he wouldn’t get blood on the rug.
Abe was gaping at me. His face turned gray. So gray he looked like he might faint. It looked natural. But what was natural?
“C-charlotte, how could you even—no...” he trailed off, his words fractured. “I took you in,” he said little more than a whisper. “I watched you both grow into two different and extraordinary human beings. I love Molly—” He choked out a painful sound that resembled a sob. “I loved Molly. I would never.” He paused, long and hard, regarding me with his red-rimmed eyes, his gray face.
No doubt he was watching for some reaction, examining my own dry eyes, my placid expression. I’d graduated past him in my business endeavors, and it seemed I’d done the same in my emotional ones.
There was most likely something wrong with me. Even Abe, who I’d been so sure was some kind of sociopath, was having a violent emotional reaction.
I was having that same violent reaction. Inside I was screaming. Tearing at my flesh from the inside out. But that was a me I’d banished to the depths of my mind. She was screaming deep from within some well, never to surface.
“You really think I could do that?” he asked, voice a whisper.
“I think greed makes anyone capable of anything,” I replied. “Greed and defeat. Dangerous combinations. And someone wanted to hurt me. They had to know me well enough to know the one and only way to do that was to get to Molly. Anyone who knew my surface would think to destroy the businesses I’ve built from the ground up, put my everything into. Most everyone who would want to destroy me would destroy my world. Only people who had intimate knowledge of me would know that to destroy me, you would have to destroy my universe.”