The Consequence

by Giana Darling

  “I didn’t think you would come,” I said as I approached her.

  She didn’t look at me, caught up in the massive canvas of Sinclair that dominated the small front wall that immediately faced the entryway.

  “I didn’t think I would either.”

  I nodded even though I was aware that she wasn’t paying me any attention. So, I stood there beside her staring at the portrait of a lover we had both shared at some point. The three of us hadn’t shared the same space since the day Sinclair and I had returned from Paris to see Cosima in the hospital but it was somehow more intimate to be staring at my image of him with Elena by my side. She was staring at the heart of the man I loved and therefore at the very heart of me. If she said something cruel now, as would have been her right, I knew it would eviscerate me.

  “It looks just like him,” she finally said, her voice softened by the Napoleon accent she usually tried so hard to hide. “Yet, I’ve never seen him like this. Does that make any sense to you?”

  I was careful to shrug casually even though it did make sense.

  “It would have been hard not to notice how much you love him if this was the portrait you were planning on painting for me.”

  I cocked my head as I stared at the beloved lines of his form spread over nearly three meters of canvas. There was nothing overtly sexually about the image, it was just a very beautiful man in a very commanding position, but if you looked closely, there was no doubt about the sexual power that emanated from him; the way his fingers curled around the edges of the broad throne, how the veins in his corded forearms bulged and in the slight but provocative tilt of his full, firm lips. There a glittering menace, a calculated coldness in his eyes that spoke to sexual deviancy instead of violence, at ruthless pleasures to be had if only you had the courage to let him exploit them.

  I knew this was the man that I loved, the man that I knew him to be but I had been worried about the subtlety of the image in the critic’s eyes. Would they see him in all his constrained glory?

  “It makes me realize how much I made him keep from me,” Elena said quietly.

  I shivered at the depth of remorse in her tone.

  “I saw this in him at first, all the sex wrapped up in this controlled, intellectual gentleman. I think maybe a part of me was even intrigued by it, the fucked up part of me that never got over Christopher’s abuse.” She sighed, crossing her arms tightly under her breasts as if she could physically restrain her emotions. “I can confess that I didn’t love him the way I should have. We could have been right together if either of us had been willing to be brave, to stand up to the other and actually talk about all the things that made us broken.” She shrugged. “I can admit that I could have loved him better but I will never forgive you from exploiting that flaw, for taking him from me so God damn ruthlessly.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, wanting to say something but having nothing to say.

  Finally, she turned to face me. Her eyes raced over every inch of my being, setting me on fire with her condemnation.

  “I always knew you had it in you. Mama, Seb and Cosima saw this fragile little girl with her head in the clouds and thought you harmless. Only I knew how dangerous a girl made out of fantasies could be.” She laughed darkly. “Apparently even knowing that wasn’t enough, even avoiding you for years, you made your way back into my life and made it a fucking nightmare just so you could have your bloody happily ever after.”

  “Elena,” I began, but she shook her head.

  “No, don’t. I came to say this stuff to you so that our family doesn’t suffer. I don’t love you, Giselle, and I think we both know that I never really did. I don’t forgive you either. You knowingly ripped my life apart. Our family will forgive you, society will forgive you and I think you’ve already forgiven yourself but my hatred is one consequence you will have to live with forever.”

  I nodded; too busy swallowing back the urge to cry to respond to her.

  She nodded curtly and turned on her heel to walk away to another painting across the gallery.

  I saw someone approach me out of my periphery but I knew if anyone talked to me before I got a handle on the emotions wrecking havoc with my system, I would dissolve into tears and the critics would have more drama to speak about than the scandalous nature of my art. With my head down, I sped towards the small back room, only stopping when I had slammed the door shut behind me. I cupped my hands to my mouth, trying to stuff the sobs back inside fruitlessly. Giving in to the misery, I curled forward into the only uncluttered corner of the room and squeezed my eyes shut.

  Chapter Twenty Two.

  “I’ve missed watching you.”

  I froze mid-sob, my chest expanded in a shuddering breath even as my heart constricted inside me. There was no other voice that could make me feel so afraid, so instantaneously. It was a voice that had haunted my youth and eventually, chased me out of Paris.

  Slowly, drenched in paralyzing panic, I straightened.

  Christopher stood across the tiny, darkened room. He wasn’t a large man, average height and build with an open, engaging face that was somehow quintessentially British. He had large, round eyes that were the soft blue of faded denim and that lulled you into trusting before he had even opened his mouth to speak. There was absolutely nothing threatening about Christopher’s appearance, which made him all the more frightening.

  “You are so beautiful with tears across you face, Giselle,” he murmured, cocking his head slightly to the side in a predatory way that made me take a step back even though I was already pressed against the wall.

  “You found me.”

  He nodded. “As I always do. I would urge you to stop running, as it inevitably leads to this moment but I have to admit,” his grin was sharp, “I’ve grown to love the chase.”

  I was silent as I waited for my limbs to thaw free of the shock. There was a tingling in my toes that I took as a good sign.

  “I think you like it too, sweet girl. You know that we are meant to be together but you run for both of our pleasure. Well, I forgive you for making it more interesting but now is the time to come together. I’ve searched for you long enough.” He laughed. “It took me too long to realize that you had reunited with your family. I never thought you would do such a thing.”

  I bit my lip, trying to calculate if anyone would hear my screams. Running for the door wasn’t an option when his potion put him closer to it. The sultry music playing throughout the gallery had a deep base so the chances of being heard were slim unless someone was right beside the door.

  Christopher’s face darkened as he stepped towards me, stalking so slowly that it would have been comedic in any other situation.

  “I’ve seen you with that man. It seems your taste for your sister’s men hasn’t waned but we both know that Daniel Sinclair isn’t right for you.” He stopped right before me, looking at me for a long moment before his hand snapped forward and tugged brutally at my hair. “He may give you the pain you like but he isn’t me.”

  “No,” I finally hissed. “Sinclair is nothing like you.”

  “What is the difference between us? He hurts you too.” Christopher pulled tighter on my hair until my neck was bent back at an excruciating angle. When he was satisfied with my position, he thrust his body against mine brutally. “You love to be painted just like your canvases, all this lovely white skin colored with mauve and yellow and black.”

  To illustrate his point, his hand curled over my wrist and pressed. I bit back my whimper of pain because I knew he would enjoy it.

  “You love the pain, you get off on it just like me.”

  He words stirred the rage sitting at the bottom of my gut labeled with his name. I had hated him for so long but I had feared him for even longer and the depth of my childhood trauma had overtaken the wrath but only for so long. Heat travelled through my previously frozen limbs until I vibrated.

  “I get off on the control. And you have absolutely no control over me, not anymore.” I prac
tically spat at him.

  His smile was disturbingly soft as he leaned back slightly to look over my face. “So beautiful. It’s good that we are together again.”

  “Fuck you.” I yelled, spittle flying in his face.

  He licked it from his lips, leaning closer to whisper, “Oh, I intend to.”

  Before I could move, his stood on my feet, anchoring me to the floor while one arm latched over my arms, constricting them against my torso. With his free hand, he quickly undid his belt and tucked the hem of my skirt into the collar of my dress, exposing my bare sex to him. I sobbed when his fingers brutally pinch my clit.

  “I never had your cunt. I wanted to save it for a special occasion, for when you were truly mine and now some other man has been inside you first.” He bit my ear so hard that I could feel his teeth break the skin. “I will have to punish you for that.”

  I squirmed violently against his hold and opened my mouth to scream. He didn’t try to stop me, even when I drew breath again and again to shriek for help. Instead, he laughed cruelly and pierced his fingers inside me in time with my screams. I was still wet from my previous interlude with Sinclair but I quickly dried up and his fingers chafed brutally against my delicate flesh.

  “Don’t fight this. We are meant to be together, I have always known that. Your mother wanted me to marry your sister but we both know she would never do. Even that gorgeous slut Cosima wasn’t good enough for me. I needed your purity, I needed to watch your corruption.”

  My throat was in agony as I continued to scream; the sound even lesser than it had been a minute ago. I was loosing steam quickly. Christopher’s erection bounced wetly against my hip. He was small, turgid and an angry red that disgusted me but it also gave me an idea. I wasn’t strong enough to fight him but I was strong enough to seduce him.

  I reduced my screaming to yelling, interspersed with a reluctant, and totally fake, moan and groan. Christopher watched me in rapture as I pretended to give in to his touch.

  “Yes,” I breathed, sagging in his arms. “Oh, I forgot how good this was.”

  Nausea rolled through me but I needed to be smarter that if I wanted to get the baby and myself out of there.

  “You love it,” he groaned into my ear. “Tell me you want me.”

  “I want you.”

  “Say my name.”

  “I want you, Christopher,” I said. “But I want you properly. I want you to take me for the first time in a bed, not in the back of supply closet.”

  He pulled away slightly to look at me suspiciously. I tried to widen my eyes in earnest and ground down on his fingers.

  “As much as I want you, I want our first time to be right. Please. There is no rush, you found me. We have forever now.”

  I prayed to God that I had been gone long enough for Sinclair to start looking for me.

  “You should never have run from me,” Christopher said, his face softening as he brought me into a hug. “I would have taken care of you properly. I would have sent you to whatever art school you wanted to go to. You know I love you.”

  I shivered but clung to him tightly to mask my revulsion. That was the thing about Christopher, he really did believe he loved me and he had never been physically violent towards me. The bruises and bite marks he had left me with were more a result of his desire to devour me whole, mark me as his, than from brute physical abuse. It was his sweet persuasiveness, and sometimes, when I was being particularly obstinate, his absolute authoritarianism that had made me succumb to his sexual advances. I was fifteen, the first time he had told me to get on my knees and show him how much I loved him with my mouth. It wasn’t something a fifteen-year-old girl, sheltered as I was, knew how to refuse.

  As if prompted by my thoughts, Christopher smoothed a hand down my hair before gently pressing on my shoulders.

  “Be a sweet girl and get on your knees.”

  My stomach rolled. It was extra sensitive because of my morning sickness and the thought of giving him head amplified it three fold.

  “We should go before someone sees us,” I urged.

  He smiled softly, petting my cheek. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I have protection.”

  “What?”

  I watched him reach behind his back and pull a small handgun from his waistband. I didn’t know what type of gun it was but it struck me that Cosima would know, she had been the one so well versed in the Mafia men that came to visit our house in search of Seamus.

  “Why would you bring a gun?” I asked, anything to keep him talking but also because he had never been a gun carrier before.

  “Nothing will get in the way of me having you again, Giselle.”

  There was calmness in his eyes, a surety that spoke of absolute conviction and total insanity.

  “Get on your knees,” he repeated, pushing harder at my shoulders this time.

  I swallowed painfully and did as he asked, hoping even as I undid the zip on his pants tooth by tooth that Sinclair would find me.

  His pants dropped to the floor and his hand was wrapping one of mine around his shaft but still no Sinclair.

  Minutes later, when more things, not the worst that could be happening, but bad, were happening, still no Sinclair.

  Christopher’s gun was the hand that held my head to him.

  I counted to sixty.

  Still no Sinclair.

  Christopher was moaning when finally, I heard the door open.

  I was pressed to the wall with him in front of me but I could see sudden movement as the newcomer moved swiftly towards us. I braced myself against the wall when a scream tore through the air. Christopher stumbled, falling against me so I was brutally smashed against the wall. But I didn’t care because someone was attacking him.

  I rolled to the side when there was enough space and whirled to face the commotion.

  Still, there was no Sinclair.

  Instead, the body that clung to Christopher’s and pummeled him with furious fists, was my sisters.

  Elena continued to yell, a warrior’s cry that pierced the air better than any of my previous screams. She was wrapped around his upper back, landing punches to his neck as he tried to pull her off. She leaned forward and bit savagely into his ear lobe, ripping away with her teeth still clenched. Christopher shrieked in pain as she pulled a large chunk of flesh from him and spit it over her shoulder. He tried to dislodge her by slamming her back against the wall but she used the moment to push off and heave her weight the other way, which disrupted Christopher’s balance. He almost recovered but I scrambled to my hands and knees and threw myself in the way of the foot that sought to secure his equilibrium. I watched as they fell hard to the floor, terrified that she had taken the brunt of the impact before she scrambled over him, straddled his chest with her knee pressed into his neck.

  Then she beat him.

  And I mean, she brutally laid into his face with her fists, rearing back with her whole body to put ultimate force behind each exact blow. I watched her, hypnotized, as she turned his face into a bloody, pulpy mess.

  I was vaguely aware of chaos at the door to the room, of yelling and people rushing forward to pull Elena, screaming and thrashing, off of the comatose Christopher. People came to crowd me but no one touched me. They were talking to me but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t take my eyes of my sister.

  Elena finally settled in the corner, panting in Cage’s restraining embrace. Her eyes were, surprisingly, on me.

  Something passed between us, through that momentary connection forged over threats and violence. The man bleeding on the floor between us had groomed us both. It had never brought us together, mostly because the similarities his influence had formed in us were too damaged for us to connect over. Besides, from the very beginning, he had pitted us against each other and even when he had gone, we had continued to live out the competition he had constructed for us. He had fucked us both, mentally and physically and in even fucked up way a person could fuck up two people. It was Christopher, not Sinclair, w
ho had torn us apart. I’d always known that but it became clear, in that moment, to both of us, I thought, that since the moment Christopher had entered our lives, we were doomed, our sisterhood was dead.

  But in that moment, when her eyes, so similar but darker than mine, bore into me, they were filled with a protective fury for me as well as her own righteous wrath.

  No one fucks with you, but me. Her eyes seemed to say.

  I tilted my chin to her. I’ll take whatever you have to give me.

  I meant it to. She was allowed to hate me, it made sense and I was happy to give her a villain. We would never been friends, we would never be anything but sisters by blood, not by choice. I knew it and I accepted it. But she had attacked Christopher and it had at least a little something to do with me.

  So, no matter what I’d done, no matter how she might act, I knew that Elena loved me. Not a whole not, not in a way that she had chosen. But she loved me.

  I’d never known before this moment, that she did.

  “Giselle,” a familiar voice pulled me away from our moment of clarity but I let it because I could hear the panic there.

  “Giselle,” Sinclair said again.

  He was crouched in front of me, between me and the prone body of Christopher. He had one hand on the man’s throat, checking his pulse maybe, and the other was busy righting my clothes. He was on lockdown, his eyes cold and hard like marble, inhuman. His hands were perfunctory against my skin as they checked to make sure I was unharmed but there was a haste to his movements that belied how fucking terrified he was.

  “Sin,” I murmured.

  He ignored me.

  “Sinclair,” I repeated.

  He paused, his eyes doing an intense sweep of my face but skirting past my gaze. I grabbed his hand and put it to my cheek.

  “I’m okay,” I whispered because there were tons of people in the room now and this was a private moment, an important one.

  I watched his Adam’s apple bob once, twice. He struggled and I watched the fury, the pain and terror roll through him. I drew strength from it, from his obvious love.