by Lana Sky
Put it back, Snow.
I snatch the ledger and slam it shut, dropping it into the drawer. It lands with a thud, only something creeps from the edge, dislodged by the fall. Crisp. White. A different piece of paper folded in half. I’m drawn to it without knowing why, risking everything to tug it loose. In the faint light, I can make out a crest printed on the other side of the page. From a bank?
Slowly, I peel it open, and my shaking hands stabilize the document long enough for a quick appraisal. It’s an email, but not from an official financial institution, I suspect. In fact, I don’t recognize the address.
This is all you need, the sender titled the message. The information added resembles a receipt of some kind, displaying transactions. Three figures are listed one above the other, each a monstrous sum. Beneath them is a single line reading Hollings account.
Sweat drips down my back as I fight to remember every figure, down to the last decimal point. Then I tuck the page inside the ledger and run from that room as if the devil himself is on my heels.
Chest heaving, I enter my room and collapse at the edge of the mattress. Could someone from inside the company have sent those numbers to Blake? Daniel? No. Even the thought of it is too much to bear. So I ignore the world.
Cold sheets make for a weak refuge. Still, I hide my face in them—a futile attempt to avoid the mess around me. Bloodied sheets. The lingering stench of sweat. Drops of dried fluid scattered across my floor.
He haunts this narrow space as thoroughly as he haunts me. The walls close in, threatening to crush me whole. In the end, I snatch my pillow from the bed and creep down the hall, into Mama’s study. To think. To rest my head. To hide.
Her room is the one place it seems Blake Lorenz has yet to desecrate. Her chair is still there in the corner, her books untouched. God, if I close my eyes, it’s like she’s here, a soothing presence on my damaged psyche. But she’s weaker now than she’s ever been. Just a faint echo shrouding my battered form as I curl up on her chair and imagine her reading me one of her sprawling tales.
Perhaps one about a princess at the whims of a monster. She’d win in the end, of course. She has to…
I’m startled into awareness by a feeling I can’t name. It crawls beneath my skin, arousing nerves and twisting my stomach. Then I smell him and my gaze swivels to the doorway, where he’s bathed in shadow.
“Dinner?” he questions mockingly.
My heart sinks as I scramble upright. Darkness paints the room’s interior, leaving the light from the hall as the only source of illumination. The orange glow highlights the dangerous silhouette of the man standing before it. Only the corner of his jaw and one eye are visible, glaring at my prone form.
I must have fallen asleep. The lapse of judgment stings, not easily rectified by jumping to my feet. “I-I’m sorry—”
“Get out.”
I stagger past him, retreating to my bedroom. Footsteps echo but don’t come near my door. Thank God. Trembling in anticipation, I sit with my back to the door and one ear pressed against the wood. He’s in Papa’s study, throwing, stomping, storming. Something breaks, shattering like glass.
Did he sense me again, intruding in his chosen refuge?
I wait, my heart hammering in my chest, but he never mounts the stairs. I listen all night for the sound of his approach, long after daylight creeps over the horizon and my room is brought into full focus. Only when sunlight kisses my windowpanes do I finally crawl from my position and rip the sheets from my bed, leaving them piled in the corner. I manage to find the closet containing fresh ones in the servant’s wing. It’s only as I struggle to fit them over my mattress that I let myself wonder just where he sleeps. Here? In Hunter’s old room or maybe Ronan’s? Perhaps he’s claimed a suite in the guests’ wing.
Or maybe he’s claimed the old, drafty wing Papa dwelled in until his last breath. Oddly enough, no other room seems fitting.
Vanishing thoughts of Blake Lorenz to the depth of my psyche where they belong, I shower only to redress in the same childhood frock. It’s preferable to being naked, and I don’t have the heart to test one of my new dresses. Not now.
Remembering my new role to play, I head to the kitchens and start on breakfast. The safest assumption to make is to prepare the same fare I have so far. Coffee. Eggs. Toast.
I’ve barely taken a loaf from the pantry when its scent hits my nostrils at full force. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten. In fact…the only substance to grace my stomach came from Blake Lorenz. Salty, bitter liquid.
Only a chunk of bread shoved almost down my throat can banish the memory. More. More. There’s no rhythm to the massive chunks I rip off with my teeth and attempt to swallow. Just desperate hunger. Just weakness. Just a pathetic need to hide from the specter invading my home and my head.
But food can’t fill the void. If anything, it grows wider, stretched like my stomach, churning and gurgling in disgust.
“You’re only beautiful like this,” he told me. “Broken.”
Vomit lurches up my throat. I barely make it to the sink before the first heaves come up unassisted. My fingers are needed to chase the rest out, prodding the back of my throat until I’m rewarded with a violent gag and more vomit. I purge myself of every bite, every piece of bread.
But I never once feel clean. Just dirty, filthy Snowy.
And then I hear him breathing heavily in the doorway, watching as I scramble to wipe my mouth with a rag fished from the counter. It’s nearly a minute before I gather the nerve to face him.
He eyes my wet mouth and my trembling hands. Then he cuts his gaze to the tray holding his untouched breakfast. “Bring it,” he snaps before leading the way into the hall.
I follow on unsteady limbs. Dizziness creeps in as my stomach cramps, annoyed at having been stuffed full and rapidly emptied. The tray acts as an anchor, keeping my body rooted to the floor as my head lolls and thoughts drift. The impenetrable back of Blake Lorenz serves as a moving target upon which to focus my wavering attention, always just beyond my reach.
“Set it down.” His voice reaches me like snapping fingers, jolting me from a daze. We’re in Papa’s study. He’s seated while I linger near the doorway. With effort, I lurch forward and place the tray on the edge of the desk. “Sit,” he snarls before I can escape.
Heart heavy, I obey and circle the desk to perch myself on the opposite end. His satisfied sigh ruffles loose strands of my hair, making them fan across my cheek.
“Read.”
A quiet thump alerts me to the book he places beside me. Blindly, I reach for it, opening to a random page.
Old handwriting catches my attention first as I lower my gaze to the topmost paragraph. Worn ink defaces the margins, notes and messages I’d long thought gone. Blinking doesn’t make them disappear as memories itch my vision like sandpaper. This book. This smell.
No one could recreate it.
“Where did you get this?” My voice breaks openly, my pain apparent.
“Did I say you could ask questions?”
I hear a drawer opening and the lazy scratch of a pen over paper next.
“Read.”
Streaming tears obscure my vision. My lips part, but nothing comes out. Just a low, plaintive cry I can’t contain. It’s his. This book is his, all of our memories contained within. My head swivels in Blake’s direction. How long has he had it? How long has he run his fingertips over the leather-bound cover, comparing it to mine?
How long has he waited to drop this bombshell?
“I said read.”
I can sense his gaze without seeing it. Ice runs down my cheek, imparted by his cruel attention.
“I won’t tell you again.”
There’s no need to guess which story he wants. My fingers woodenly flip to it even as my thoughts drift, carrying me years away from this room and the monster within it.
My voice echoes, sounding ethereal and disembodied. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…”
“You need
to stop giving a shit what people think,” Brandt told me as he pressed something small and square into my hands. “Read it. All of it, even the ad-libbed parts.”
My heart fluttered, confusion washing away any pain I may have felt as I turned to the story in question. My old nickname had the power to cut like a knife—but never with him. His constant support was conveyed simply in a single scribbled line near the story’s title: A million men couldn’t fix your ass, but I can. I always will.
“Did I say you could stop?”
Blake’s voice snaps me back to the present so suddenly that I brace my hand against the desk just to stay upright. Pain rips through my stomach, doubling me over. The book falls from my fingers, landing on the floor, opened to a random page. One containing our banter from ten years ago, mockingly traded back and forth for weeks. Months.
“Pick up the book, Snow.”
“I-I can’t.” The room spins as I slide from the desk and stagger for balance. My hand flies out, knocking books from a nearby shelf in a desperate grapple for leverage.
“Pick up the book, Snow.” Footsteps vibrate from the floor, coming from behind me.
“I can’t!” It’s only a few feet away, repelling me like a physical presence. Brandt Lloyd’s ghost dwelling near the desk. I always will, Snow. I’ll always be on your side.
“Pick up the fucking book.”
I blink and a monster appears, wearing Brandt’s face.
Narrowed blue eyes meet mine in warning as he braces his hands against the desk. “I won’t say it again.”
I flicker my gaze to the book’s cover, but I’m already scrambling through the doorway. Can’t stop. Unsteady feet carry me into the hall, as far from the book as my wavering balance will allow, while tears continue to fall down my cheeks, mingling with broken sobs I can’t suppress.
“Get the fuck back here!” He’s following me, radiating anger. “Snow!”
I turn, feeling for the wall. Then I run blindly, clinging to anything within reach. A wooden sideboard. A picture frame. The banister. A doorway. Terror keeps me moving, even though it’s futile to try. He finds me before I can find a haven to escape to.
His hand latches painfully around my shoulder, yanking me around to face him. We’re near the kitchens, in a shadowy space beyond any light source or window.
“You cry for him now,” Blake acknowledges, his voice a hiss. “But were you crying then? Huh?” He smooths my hair back and bats most of my tears away. As I blink, his face is brought into focus, a mask of pure hatred. “Do you want to know what they did to him? At that place? How they treated a convicted pervert?”
No! I try to turn my head, but his touch turns brutal, yanking me back to face him.
“They burned him,” he says, murmuring each word into my ear. “With cigarettes. The guards used to pass them out just for that, you see. On his back. On his legs. Once—” He leans in closer, and his nails dig in to keep me pinned to the wall. “Once, they tried to show him what rape felt like—”
“Stop it!” I flail, striking his chest. Not one blow draws anything more from him than a chuckle.
“You tied the noose around his neck. You killed him. Say it.”
He cups my mouth, forcing my lips apart.
“Say it,” he coaxes in a mockingly gentle tone. “‘I. Killed. Him.’”
“I killed him…”
Blake frowns as if he hadn’t expected the words to come so easily. But how could they not? I’ve whispered them to myself almost daily. They trickle from my lips a second time just to hammer the point home.
“I killed him.”
His grip loosens a fraction and I twist out of his reach. I nearly make it into the kitchens before his voice lashes out behind me, a stinging whip. “Wait.”
I have no choice. Even as my heart aches in agony, my soul remembers his promise: my torment for Hollings shares. So I stay here, balanced on the tips of my toes, clutching the wall for support.
“Let’s hope you fit into one of those dresses tonight,” he remarks coldly. “We’re going out.”
Out? I cringe at the possibilities. Old Roman leaders used to parade their captives naked in chains. I wouldn’t put such an act past him. But the bravery to question him doesn’t come by the time I hear him retreat to return to Papa’s study.
However, I remain frozen in the hall, half crouched over the floor. Pain and misery form a lump in my throat, impossible to swallow down. Whenever I try, I’m reminded of the earlier episode with the bread.
Let’s hope you fit into one of those dresses.
My breaths quicken as I feel my stomach, pinching fat with every inch I travel. My hips. My thighs.
It’s like I gained a million pounds overnight.
With renewed determination, I haul myself to my feet and make my way out into the side gardens. Then I run, kicking up fallen leaves with every step I take. My bare feet throb, my chest heaving with effort. I run through the gardens and down to the lake, but in a morbid circle, I return to the same point beneath the shadow of the manor. I’m just another ghost on the Hollings Estate, doomed to forever dwell in every piece of wood and stone.
Just like Mama and Papa.
But they never literally had their sweat and blood drip into the very foundation of the house.
Panting, I finally return to my room, wincing as blisters form over the soles of my feet. Moisture slicks my shift to my skin. God forbid, I’ve ruined it already. I gingerly take it off, scrutinizing the fabric for flaws before leaving it folded by my bed. Then I shower, running the water as hot as I dare.
He never gave me a time, a fact I refuse to let myself dwell over. What feels like a lifetime ago—though it’s only been a few days—preparing for an outing was an ordeal that would take hours. Tonight is no exception.
Or so I tell myself.
He may have cut my hair and taken my clothing, but I’m still Snowy Hollings. My name still means something, though I’m not sure what. I search my hollow reflection and grimace. Poor, pitiful thing. Just a few days after his brutal shearing and my hair looks even worse—jagged and sticking out from all angles. This short, my curls have no definition. No purpose. The only way to salvage an ounce of elegance is to smooth my hair back and secure it with a cream-colored headband fished from a drawer.
Blake Lorenz stripped my room of all clothing, but he left my toiletries untouched. I find enough makeup to dust my sallow cheeks in blush and darken my eyes with eyeliner. Mascara completes the look. For a second, I consider lipstick, but then I remember his last use for my mouth and change my mind. I couldn’t bear to waste a single coating of Dior on some part of his anatomy.
Frankly, these four walls, guarded by Blake Lorenz, are starting to take their toll. Days out of society and I barely know what I’ll do when I return. Should I smile as Blake suggested? Run and hide?
Sneak away to see Hunter and tell him what I found?
What Blake Lorenz most likely let me find. The suspicion itches away at my skull. The man does nothing without calculation. He left that page for me to discover on purpose. The real question is why.
And I don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss, Mama used to say in response to the gossip swirling around Papa’s latest unseemly dealings. But, as she was in so many things, I’m afraid she’s wrong.
Pain is bliss—being on the constant verge of tears. At least through my blurred vision, I can’t see the hell burning around me.
Or the devil himself.
He comes to my doorway before I’m fully dressed, and I pretend not to notice him there. With shaking hands, I run a brush through my hair again and rearrange my makeup—anything to avoid looking up. But I’m quickly finding that he can only be ignored for so long. His scent seeps into my lungs, compelling me to seek the source out. Hesitantly, I observe his reflection, which looms behind me, and my heart stops.
Dressed in black, he’s befitting of the hellish character I dubbed him as. His hair glistens, slicked back lazily to fully reveal his
piercing gaze, which rakes over me from head to toe. He lingers on my slight curves, his mouth a stubborn line—but the corners twitch, betraying his faltering control.
“He loved you, you know.”
I tense at the words. Are they a joke? His face reveals nothing, though his gaze seems to focus inward. Within the blink of an eye, he’s staring miles beyond me.
“He loved you, even if it wasn’t in the way you wanted. He…he thought the world of you.” His voice thickens, startling me with its intensity.
My heart throbs in my chest, a guilty, pitiful thing. Suddenly, I’m forced to clutch the counter so hard that my knuckles whiten.
“I’m not perfect.” I don’t know if I’m talking more to him or to myself. I wasn’t worthy of his love. Not then. Not now. “I was never perfect.”
“He still trusted you.” The weight of his disgust washes over me, apparent in every fiber of his being. His hands shake. If he touched me now, he’d hurt me. I know it. “He believed in you—”
“Then…” My voice cracks on a bleating note. No, a part of me wails. Not now. I’ve gone so long without dredging up the past or trotting out any pathetic excuses. But the dam of questions breaks. I can’t hold them back anymore. “Why didn’t he respond to my letters, then?”
I look back, hoping to find the answer written in his harsh features. But I find nothing. Just…confusion? His frown becomes more pronounced, his eyes narrowed to pinpricks.
“What letters?”
I shake my head and turn back to the mirror. “I told him,” I hear myself croak, though there’s no point in explaining. “I told him everything. I told him—”
“You never sent him any letters.” His voice deepens, so assured. So confident.
“I did. I did…”
And Brandt Lloyd didn’t believe in me enough to trust that I would never betray him.
“What did they say?”
I look at him sharply. The angry flush I’ve come to associate with him drains from his cheeks, leaving me breathless. He looks so different stripped of rage. So…human.