Master of the Opera

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “I see the cops are sitting outside.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m of sufficient interest that they want to see what I buy at Trader Joe’s.”

  He snorted, then searched her face. She kept hers smooth, no cracks for him to crawl into. “They treat you okay? I hated to think of you being down there all alone.”

  “I’m fine. It wasn’t too bad. I don’t know anything, so that helps.”

  “You know something.” When she straightened, he tilted his head, giving her that charming grin. “The lawyers said they asked about me. And that you talked to the cops before they got there. What did you tell them?”

  The fine hairs prickled on her arms, but she played it cool. And stupid. “What would I say? You don’t know anything. You’re only involved in all of this because of dumb ol’ me.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged, drinking his beer, his eyes on her. “Where did you go to pray last night?”

  She started to say “huh?” but stopped at the flat look in his eyes. Hard-edged, full of venom.

  “You didn’t have your car, so where did you go? Are you seeing someone else?”

  “No!” But she heard the lie in her own voice.

  “Because I’ll kill him, if you are. And then I’ll make you sorry. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not seeing anyone else.”

  He laughed, a hollow sound. “You sound oh so guilty. Tell me the truth. Confession is good for the soul.”

  Her sunny kitchen dimmed and exhaustion crept in, a headache throbbing in her temples. She rubbed one, aware of Roman’s cruel smile. He rose and patted her on the ass on the way to the refrigerator. “Want another one, sweet girl?”

  “I think you should go. I need to rest before dinner tonight.”

  “But we haven’t finished talking. You’re a terrible liar, you know. Makes me wonder whose blood you carry after all.”

  That remark chilled her further.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I think you know.” He raised an eyebrow and leaned against the counter; elegant, confident. “You’ve been doing your research, haven’t you? The merger of our two families will be quite profitable for us all. It’s fated.”

  “I don’t believe in fate.” But her mouth was dry around the words, full of sticky cobwebs.

  Roman popped the top on the beer and carelessly dropped the cap on the floor. “You don’t have to believe anything. You just have to be a good girl and do what you’re told. Are you being a good girl, Christy?” He helped himself to the bag of chips she’d planned to pack in her lunches. “I know what my fiancée told me—pillow talk, you know. You felt so guilty, confessing to me about your secret lover. Maybe he’s the one who hurt the lovely Carla, whose only crime was to piss you off.”

  She stared at him aghast. He tossed the bag aside and, in a lightning-fast move, grabbed her by her wrists, wrestling them behind her and crushing her against the counter. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away, struggling to get loose, so he sank his teeth into the cord of muscle beneath her ear, grinding his erect cock against her tender mound.

  Christine inhaled to scream and he spoke through his teeth. “Go ahead. Scream. The cops can’t touch me and I can always punish you later. Believe me—I know how to do it in ways that won’t show. You have belonged to the Sanclaros since you were born. Since before that—no matter what your stubborn father says. No one else will have you. I’ll kill you first.”

  She stilled and he chuckled, licking where he’d bit her. “Just a little love bite, huh, sweet girl? Now tell me the truth.”

  “There’s no one else.” She tried to make it sound true.

  He smiled and let her go. For a moment she thought she’d convinced him.

  Then he slapped her, hard.

  She clapped her hand to her cheek, helplessness and rage rising up, choking her. Roman studied her, filing away her reactions. “Have you read Story of O? A dirty slut like you would have, I’d think. In there they say you should never spank a girl a little bit, because she grows to enjoy it. No, beatings should be reserved to break her spirit. Otherwise you risk not having perfect obedience. That is what I require of you, Christine. If there was anyone else, you will never contact him again. You understand the consequences if you do?”

  She nodded, still holding her flaming cheek, feeling shattered by it all. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to see this through.

  “Good.” He smiled and kissed her on the nose. “Now, go put on a pretty dress, a decent one that I bought you, and do something with your hair. You’re coming with me now. Pack an overnight bag. It might be a late evening.”

  Stunned, she went to get dressed, grateful for a last reprieve of privacy. At least she’d managed to convince him. She was going to the Sanclaro compound.

  “Oh, Christy?” Roman called from the other room. “Call your father and tell him about the engagement. He’ll know what to do next.”

  6

  They drove out to the Sanclaro compound without speaking. Of course, with Roman’s techno music blaring at top volume, conversation wouldn’t have been possible. He seemed in fine good spirits now. Now that he figured he’d won.

  He’d made her change three times, clearly enjoying putting her through her paces, like he was training a dog—sit, stay, roll over, beg—until he was satisfied with the dress she chose. Long-sleeved, with matching ruffles at the wrists and high collar. With the black stockings he’d insisted on, he’d managed to make her look like a maiden aunt.

  The cops followed behind, and Christine wondered what they made of her and all this.

  Inside, she trembled.

  So much for her warrior-priestess self. One slap and she crumpled in fear. She hated herself for it. She could no more stand up to Roman than she could to her father. Just the tone of voice Roman had used had turned her into a crumbly thirteen-year-old again. Nothing had really changed.

  She tried to firm her resolve with the image of the Master—not his bear self, but the man she’d made love with—speared through with the Sanclaro silver cross . . . even though it filled her with a paralyzing dread.

  A tear escaped and ran down her cheek. Roman saw it and turned off the stereo. Her ears rang in the abrupt silence. He sighed and reached over to take her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.

  “Don’t cry, sweet girl. You’ll see that this is all for your own good. This will be the salvation of your immortal soul.”

  “My soul?” she echoed blankly. The scrolled, wrought-iron bars of the Sanclaro gates caught the sunset light, the silver crucifix gleaming with red highlights, as if painted with blood.

  “Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” Roman intoned. “You have been wandering in the wilderness, without guidance, without your real family. Right now you feel confused, but soon you’ll see that all we’ve done, all we’re doing, is because we love you.”

  Her father had said that—that he wanted her in his sole custody because it would be best for her. Her mother’s itinerant lifestyle and liberal/media-elite ideas would only corrupt Christy’s thinking. With a pang, she missed her mother, needed to talk to her. Her mother would know what to do. Had her mother known about the Sanclaros and whatever agreement they had with her father? It would explain so many things.

  “You don’t really believe in demons, do you?” she tendered.

  Roman cast her a sideways look. The grand house loomed ahead, ablaze with light, music wafting on the evening breeze.

  He squeezed her hand and let go, patting it. “The Sanclaro family is old and has many secrets. We don’t discuss this in public, but we have things to teach you. It’s time for you to reach your destiny—under my loving and protective guidance.”

  He parked the car in front of the wide, curving staircase that led up to the hacienda doors, the police unit crunching on the gravel as it pulled up behind them. “Wait here—I’m going to talk to the cops about you, see if we can stand for your good behavior. Then I’ll escort you inside.
”

  She waited, tense, her thoughts working furiously. Above, the hills rolled up to the pinking sky, a flare of copper catching the light. Peering at it, she felt as if she knew that shape and color. It reminded her of the opera house. But could that be? She’d still never driven herself here, so she wasn’t totally clear exactly where the Sanclaro estate sat in relation to the city. It was a long, looping drive, around hills and through a canyon, and—yes, they absolutely could be in the valley below the opera house, on the sunset side.

  And the music she’d thought came from the hacienda instead floated down from above. Someone rehearsing a duet—the light and dark voices winding together, now clear, now torn apart by an errant breeze.

  Geologically speaking, we’re not that far from there.

  The roads tended to follow the valleys, making big loops around the high ridges. That was the opera house, from the other side.

  The car door popped open, startling her. “Come on,” Roman grunted, taking her arm and nearly pulling her out of the car. The police officers waited nearby, deliberately relaxed smiles on their faces.

  “Do you need assistance, Ms. Davis?” one inquired, with a significant glance at Roman’s grip on her arm.

  “She’s fine,” Roman snapped. “As you’ve already been told.”

  “We’d prefer to hear it from Ms. Davis, if you don’t mind,” the other officer told him, steel behind the smile.

  She could ask for their help, Christine realized. Roman would be angry, but the cops would protect her. Protective custody, Sanchez had suggested. Now she wondered if he’d suspected this. She could escape this way—run from the Sanclaros and her father. Which would mean abandoning the trapped spirit under the opera house, too.

  “Perhaps we should speak with Ms. Davis alone,” the first cop suggested. “Over here, Ms. Davis?”

  Reluctantly, but with a fierce warning glare, Roman released her arm, and Christine went with the cops, walking a short distance with them, as if out for a summer stroll.

  “Are you being coerced or abused, Ms. Davis?” The one who’d asked if she required assistance cut to the chase.

  If she said yes now, they’d take her back to her apartment—and she might never discover what the Sanclaros knew about the Master. It would be the coward’s way out.

  “No, I’m fine.” They looked at her dubiously, and she knew she sounded like the girl who gave in to her father, who wore Roman’s cursed ring. Stop being weak, she ordered herself. Overcome it. “I appreciate your looking out for me, but I’m in no danger.” She really hoped that was true.

  The first one handed her his card. “You have your cell phone? Good. We’ll be right out here in front. If you’re the least bit worried or afraid, call or text my cell. Text 911 to me and we’ll come right in.”

  “Trust your instincts,” the second cop urged her. “There’s no shame in asking for help.”

  “Thank you.” The emotions of the past few days threatened to swamp her with these two officers so earnestly concerned for her safety. They watched as she programmed the number into her phone. “I’ll call if I need you.”

  “Can I be of assistance, Officers?” Domingo Sanclaro jogged down the hacienda steps, looking like Ricardo Montalbán in his white suit.

  “Mr. Sanclaro.” The first officer tipped his cap. “We’re here to see to Ms. Davis’s continued well-being.”

  He sized them up, dark eyes glittering with ill-concealed malevolence. “Do you impugn the reputation of my family?”

  “No, sir. Just following orders, sir. We were instructed not to let Ms. Davis here out of our sight, but your son informs us that we’re not welcome inside the house.”

  “My son is correct. Unless you have a search warrant, you must leave the grounds immediately.”

  “Is that what you want, Ms. Davis? It’s not too late to come with us.” The cop ignored the rage suffusing the elder Sanclaro’s face.

  “Thank you, yes. I’ll be in touch.” She tucked her phone into her pocket, glad the granny dress at least offered that.

  The police officers turned back down the drive while the three of them watched, Christine flanked by the Sanclaro men. In the low heels Roman had chosen for her, she felt short and vulnerable. Part of her wanted to run shrieking after the cops to save her. The other part—a confident part that had survived after all—made her stay.

  “Well, Christy.” Domingo Sanclaro looked her up and down. “It’s always a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to your new home. It’s good that you understand.”

  Roman took her hand and tucked it possessively in the crook of his arm, then slipped her phone out of her pocket and put it in his own. “She does. As you predicted, your arguments were most persuasive—she’s ready to take her place in our family.”

  Domingo smiled, his glittering teeth white. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, right on the bruise his son had put there. “Of course they were. My future daughter-in-law is no fool. Now come along; dinner is ready and Reina will be displeased if we continue to linger.”

  * * *

  They all sat around an enormous wooden table that seemed straight out of the Spanish Inquisition. The dining room, lined with oil portraits of the illustrious Sanclaro ancestors, was full of shadows. A stern-faced woman stared down at Christine from one, the opal ring prominently displayed in the center of the painting. The reproduction of the twins in the museum had looked richer; in real life the old oils had cracked in the desert heat. It probably should have been properly archived. They seemed to stare back at her as she ate, Angelia and Seraphina, with their father’s Castilian nose and the broad, flat cheekbones of their mother.

  They had grown up without her temporizing influence, connected to their crippled god as their priestess mother had been put under the cruel and ruthless hand of their conquistador father. Perhaps he had loved his daughters, the extension of his empire. But the cold expressions on their faces belied that hope. They sat, side by side on an austere pew, in black dresses like nuns, their hands overlapping to show the twin opal rings. Looking at them, Christine couldn’t remember which was which.

  Domingo sat at the head of the table, of course, with Roman at his right and his wife at his left. Christine sat next to Roman with Angelia across from her, wearing a demure white cotton dress. With her long, soft black hair held back by a pearl headband, she seemed to be an angel indeed. The rest of the long table stretched down at least twenty more place settings.

  Just an intimate family dinner at the Sanclaros.

  They ate chicken mole and fresh guacamole, the other two women chattering happily about the upcoming wedding and other family. They seemed determined to set Christine at ease, complimenting her hair and her dress, and telling charming stories about Reina’s nieces and nephews.

  Christine nodded and smiled, acting the role Roman and his father had assigned her, while she turned over the family history in her mind. Some detail of the wedding ceremony niggled at her, combined with what Hally had explained about circles and bindings. Then she knew the right question to ask.

  “How can the wedding be here?” she asked. Reina closed her mouth primly, and Christine realized she’d interrupted a story about the most precious niece’s First Communion in the gazebo, where Roman and Christine would be married. “Shouldn’t we be married in a church, under the eyes of God—on consecrated soil?”

  Domingo gave her a long look. “Our land is already consecrated. All of Sanclaro property has been blessed and dedicated to the One True God.”

  “Oh.” And wasn’t that something. “How did that happen?”

  Roman frowned at her, shaking his head slightly, and she shrank back, not having to fake a ripple of fear.

  “The Sanclaros owe their fortune and prosperity to God,” Angelia recited, sounding far younger than seventeen. The puppyish way she peered hopefully at Domingo for approval gave Christine a tremor of revulsion. Too familiar. “Right, Daddy?”

  He didn’t answer his daughter and sh
e sat back in her chair, wilting like a flower without water. Instead he addressed Christine. “Never doubt that God stands behind the Sanclaros. We will do whatever it takes to maintain the purity of the family. Now, let us retire to the chapel for prayer.”

  The prayers were interminable. They all knelt on hard stone that came from a dismantled monastery, she was informed. That should have been interesting. If the Sanclaro ancestors had been part of trapping the Master, then any kind of religious artifact could do it. Hally had said to look for circles or stars. Or stones set at four points of a circle, like she’d drawn to protect Christine in the cave.

  But these stones were only gray and hard, the little chapel a windowless room, barren of anything but a plain wooden cross, the height of a man, hanging on the blank wall.

  Domingo led them in reciting the same few phrases over and over, until the Our Fathers and Hail Marys ground into her brain, numbing her into a trance. Twice she fell asleep, and Reina viciously pinched her arm to wake her. Roman glared at her in warning from the men’s side of the small chapel.

  Finally, Angelia was tasked to show Christine to her room. It was a pretty room, with glass-paned doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the front drive. Those doors, however, were closed and bolted. So much for fresh air.

  “Am I a prisoner?” Christine asked, driven by exhaustion into speaking the thought aloud.

  Angelia closed the bedroom door and leaned against it, pulling off her pearl headband and shaking out the soft sweep of black hair. “Pretty much. It really depends—how stupid are you?”

  7

  “Excuse me?” Christine gaped at the sharp-eyed girl, who no longer looked docile at all.

  Angelia sighed. “Maybe you are that stupid. Never mind.”

  Christine held up a hand, realizing as she did so that it was Hally’s gesture. “Give me a minute to catch up.” Was this some new gambit of Roman’s? Get his sister to work on her next? “Why don’t you tell me what you’re talking about, Angelia?”