For the second time today, Sash feels like running away.
“What the fuck, Dante?”
“Sash, think about it for a moment.”
Sash puts her hand over her mouth and shakes her head. Dr Chaudrey looks at her with barely concealed concern and then back up to Dante. “The procedure is very safe”, he says, hoping to settle her.
“I can’t believe this.”
“Hear me out.”
Sash is still shaking her head.
“This is your idea of a surprise?”
“I’ll leave you to it for a moment”, Dr Chaudrey says, already on the way to the door. “We’ll be ready whenever you are.”
Without any signs on the building, Sash had no idea where she was being led. Even when she was sat down at the desk and introduced to him, by the way he dressed and the look of his office, she had no reason to believe this was his surgery. When she found out he was a doctor, she still had no reason to believe she was being brought here for an operation. She thought they were meeting one of Dante’s friends at his private house who happened to be in that profession. Why they were here was still unclear until Dr Chaudrey starting explaining the procedure and asking for her consent.
Hymen reconstruction. Again, Sash shakes her head in disbelief.
“Dante, what the fuck?”
She is clearly in shock. If she wasn’t rooted to the spot by it, she’d be half way back to New York by now. If it wasn’t such a strange concept to grasp, she might have reacted in a different way. Stunned silence is pretty much all she can manage right now, especially on top of everything else that has happened. The pregnancy test, Oliver, Dante’s myriad secrets. Her stepbrother has done some outrageous things in the past but this tops them all. She can’t believe that he’s spent the last week organizing for her to have her hymen reconstructed, thinking it would be something she’d jump at the chance to do. It’s unbelievable. The dancing was one thing, but this is a whole other level of deception. Just having the words hymen reconstruction go around her head seem so ridiculous, she can’t even associate herself with them.
“Sash, listen to me, don’t you see how perfect this is? We can do what we always wanted to do and were never able to.”
There is a moment before Sash finally finds the words to respond. When she does, they catch in her throat initially before they spill out, tripping over her tongue and her lips in rapid bursts. She’s mad and this is the final straw.
“You… you… you want to take my virginity? This is what this is all about? And what then? You run away like you did with Tess, like you’ve already done with me a hundred times. No, Dante. No. Not this. This is one step too far. We need to leave.”
Sash paces up and down and points at the door. When she realizes neither of them are moving towards it, she goes and sits back down.
Dante shakes his head.
“I’m never going to run away again. Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you. I would do anything to be with you. This is an expression of my love and our commitment to one another.”
“Our commitment? You want to take what I refused to give you. You want to change the past.”
“This isn’t just about me, Sash, it’s about us. I want us to have the one thing we never could.”
“The one thing I didn’t give you.”
“We made a mistake. I did and you did too. We were always meant for each other, and this is a way of us making sure we start again in the most perfect way possible. When we do this, and we make love for the very first time, think how amazing it will feel to know that we are doing exactly what we always wanted to do. I did this for us, Sash, I thought you’d be happy about it.”
He’s serious about this. Sash doesn’t know whether his disillusion makes it better or worse. Why are they even talking about this? Why hasn’t she already run a mile. What is keeping her here?
“Happy?”
Sash fixes her eyes on his. “I’m happy with you, Dante, don’t you get that? I couldn’t be happier knowing I have you and that we are together, but this? This is-. I don’t even know what this is. I can’t process what you are asking me to do.”
Now Dante is the one on his feet pacing around.
“I need this, Sash. Do it for me if not for you.”
Sash shakes her head again. In her gut she feels a whip of guilt, twisting her insides. She couldn’t give him what he always wanted. She can feel his hurt more viscerally than ever.
“Why? Why does it make any difference at all?”
“Because it eats me up inside. Because I can’t forgive myself for walking out on you. Because every moment of every day I regret it, and I would give anything to turn back the clock and have that moment again.”
Sash can feel her heart beating. This is her stepbrother laying himself bare. This is three years of hurt he’s carried around like a cross on his back. This is what she’s done to him.
“I love you. You know I do. I wanted it to be you, I always did, but this, Dante-.”
Dante closes the distance between them, already noticing a shift in the way Sash feels.
“It’s not too late, Sash. We still can.”
Sash looks away and then back to her stepbrother when he insists on it. She can see how important it is to him, whether she agrees it’s something they should do or not. “It’s all been about this, hasn’t it?”
Her voice is already softer now, as though she’s trying to understand him. “Bringing me here.”
“I just want us to start over. Go back to where we should have begun.”
He’s on his knees now by her chair, her hands in his, supplicating himself as much as he feels is self respectful to do. He knows his stepsister well, and gentle persuasion and reasoned argument have always worked the best on her. All he needs to do is show her how much he will fight to keep her and how much she is of value to him.
“Can’t you see, Sash? Can’t you see how much you mean to me?”
Sash turns her hands over in his, lays them palm up and observes her fingers. She runs her index finger along the life line in his right palm, and then traces the love line and the several other creases that lead towards his wrist as though trying to read an ancient map.
“Why didn’t you tell me before, so we could talk about it? Why didn’t you say this was what you needed?”
“I thought you’d understand. I thought you’d want it too. I’m sorry. I fucked up again.”
Sash sighs. There is a moment that passes where a tear forms in her right eye, tumbles over her lower eyelid and spills out across her cheek. She wipes it away when it begins to tickle. This time Dante is the one to feel the balance of power shift in his favor.
“I’m shocked, that’s all. I didn’t expect this. After this morning, It’s a lot to take in, you know. You’re asking me to undergo an operation. That’s a big thing. Seriously, Dante, it’s fucking huge. I didn’t even know this option even existed. I mean, what if it goes wrong or, you know, I mean, how different can it feel anyway? You feel incredible inside me just normally.”
She strokes the side of his face and puts her hand under his chin, desperate to see the storms in his eyes once again. It’s clear how much she means to him, Sash can see it.
“It’s a simple procedure. I would have told you if it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have brought you here at all if it was something that wasn’t easy to go through. It’s nothing, really. Not even intrusive. It really is simple. That’s why-. I don’t know, I just thought it wouldn’t be an issue, that’s all. Like going to the optician to get a pair of glasses or the dentist to have your teeth whitened.”
Sash can’t help but smile when she sees the corners of her stepbrother’s lips curl up.
“That easy, huh?”
“That easy.”
“Look, I guess, I don’t know, maybe just the shock of it, maybe because I just didn’t expect it. One thing is the operation, the other thing is needing to have it done, you know.”
Dante gets back up on his
seat now, shifting it and hers, so they are face to face. There is something Sash finds appealing about that simple movement, as though by doing it, Dante demonstrates more than at any other point that he will always protect her. Their knees are so close they are almost touching, and Sash can feel that electric buzz of desire run through her again.
“Sash, you’ll be a virgin again, what’s there not to like about that? You know how many girls dream about that?”
“Being a virgin hurts.”,
Dante can see her mood has lightened enough to joke around.
“You don’t see how symbolically important that is for us? Plus, it doesn’t hurt forever. Maybe initially. I mean, you’ll know more than I do. Don’t you want me to be responsible for that hurt? Didn’t you always?”
“Yes”, Sash says coyly.
“It’s a one hour procedure”, Dante says confidently, as though Sash has already made her mind up to definitely go ahead with it. “Dr Chaudrey is the best at this in the whole world, that’s why we’re here in L.A and not back in New York. He’s performed this operation almost every day for the last fifteen years. It’s simple. Nothing can go wrong. You’ll feel a little tender afterwards but nothing more. They don’t even give you a general anesthetic. Think about it Sash. Think what it will mean to me and what it’ll mean for our relationship.”
An agonizing moment passes. Three times Sash begins to say something before cutting herself short and beginning again.
“You really want this, don’t you?”
“Sash, I need this. If you give me this, I will give you anything that you want. I promise.”
Sash is back up on her feet. She stands at the window to look out on the street below and the city in the distance. A young boy runs around on the grounds with his father, while a woman, whom Sash presumes is the mother, talks on her cell phone. A dog sniffs hedgerows while Sash counts as cars and cyclists go past. It’s a normal day in a normal world.
“Anything?”
“You name it.”
Sash turns around to him. “I want people to know about us.”
Dante hangs his head at the end of a long sigh. “Sash, you know we can’t, we’ve already spoken about that. It would ruin us so much we’d never be able to be together anyway. There would be no point.”
“I don’t mean telling the whole world, but I don’t want us to run around in secret for the rest of our lives either. This is burning me up inside, Dante. I don’t have anyone I can talk to about us. I’ve fought these feelings for you for a long time and hidden them deep down inside. I’ve struggled along alone and that has been so difficult for me. I want to tell Abbey and I want us to tell our parents. If I do this for us, you have to do that for us too.”
Dante considers this a moment.
“Your dad will absolutely freak out”, Dante says, his lips curled up into a smile.
“Dad will understand. It’s your mom that’ll freak. Abbey too. You know she’s had a crush on you for years.”
Sash comes back to her chair to sit down. This time she pulls it as close to her stepbrother as possible, their legs interlinked.
“You’ll let me take your virginity if I do that?”
Sash shrugs her shoulders. “Don’t think it’ll be that easy, mister. I’m not a slut. You’ll have to wine and dine me first, I want it to be special.”
Dante can’t keep the grin off his face. He wants to get up and dance. He wants to punch the air in celebration. Finally, he’s going to get what he has always wanted. Finally, he’s going to take his stepsister’s virginity. He knew he could do it, he knew she’d come round to him eventually.
“Don’t worry about that”, Dante says. “I’ll make sure it’s more special than anything you’ve ever experienced before.”
Chapter 29
There are three people on Caulder’s list. The names are written in a near illegible scrawl that reads like a reminder of what to buy from the supermarket. They are, in no particular order, Isabella Gardener, Henry Cooper and Alex De Montfort.
Caulder is a man lacking in certain emotions, and this kind of job suits him well because of that. He’s able to detach himself completely from the consequences of the tasks that are asked of him, no matter how despicable they might seem to everyone else. Despite the nature of his work, Caulder has a close family, is a well-respected member of his community, and is considered by many of his friends, even the ones that know loosely what he does, to be trustworthy, balanced and fun to be around. Of course that depends entirely on the dynamic of the relationship you find yourself in with him. One word that suits him perfectly in all situations is ‘thorough’.
If there is anyone who can find out who is responsible for the images and the ransom demand, it’s Caulder.
Isabella lives in a large, open planned apartment in a converted warehouse on the east side of Manhattan. She’s worked for Dante for as long as Wonderland has been open, working her way up from occasional dancer to everyday manager, demonstrating excellent business acumen on the way. She is a close confidant, and Dante trusts her completely, but that is beside the point. Caulder trusts no one, which is why he is here.
The first thing Caulder does after picking the three locks to gain access, is sit down in the egg chair that hangs from the ceiling with a thick length of rope, and contemplate the room. Large oak cross beams link structural sections and pipes hang from exposed brick walls like intestines. In one corner sits the large, cushion adorned bed, while another occupies several sofas and a giant, flat screen TV. There are books stacked up along the edges by the huge sash windows, and art work framed in elegant detailing, hanging off industrial hooks. Chains swing loose from the ceiling in sections, some gathered up to hold elegant lamps or other elements of modernist decoration.
Caulder takes off his shoes, taking care to tuck the laces inside and place them by the door. He pulls on latex gloves, cracks his knuckles and begins his search, moving from area to area methodically. Out of kitchen drawers he removes utensils, operation manuals, and teatowels, all of which he examines carefully before putting back. He goes through closets, drawers, cabinets and boxes. He removes clothes, runs his hand along brick work to look for hidden gaps and sections, lowers himself carefully to look under the bed and meticulously examines the ceiling with an intense beam torch.
Out of a box stashed prudently in the bathroom, he pulls sex toys and lubricants, antidepressants and other exotic medications, all of which he handles without a single break in concentration . Behind a hanging portrait he finds a safe, the lock to which he has open in around six minutes, which has money and expensive jewelry inside.
When he is finally finished, the apartment has been turned over completely to his satisfaction and he’s back in his swinging chair, he takes out his notepad and pen, and crosses off Isabella’s name.
He goes to the fridge, drinks orange juice from the carton, takes a loud leak in the toilet bowl, and puts his shoes back on by standing up and balancing himself perfectly one leg at a time. With the thick door closed behind him, he resets the locks and heads back to his car.
At Alex’s apartment he does the same. There, amongst an office drawer of assorted electronics, he finds a digital camera, where close inspection of the memory card reveals nothing out of the ordinary. He opens her computer, scans her files and copies a large chunk of them onto a pen drive. In the waste paper basket, he finds screwed up post it notes of captured chunks of passing thoughts and unimportant reminders, alongside torn bills and discarded paperwork. In the bathroom upstairs, he cleans his teeth with her toothbrush, while her cat, Ivan, watches him suspiciously from out in the corridor. Back in his car, he scratches her name off the notepad.
Henry sips at cold coffee. On the table in front of him sits an antique radio, broken into a hundred pieces and scattered about folded newspaper. Ghost lies at his feet, caught peacefully in postprandial sleep. Outside, his car swallowed by the shadow of a large tree, Caulder waits. On the seat next to him, taken from a hidden c
ompartment in the trunk of Henry’s Sedan only moments before, sits a large manila envelope, out of which stick the white borders of several printed photos.
Chapter 30
The light around Dr Chaudrey’s head looks like a halo. Sash can’t help but think it appropriate, considering that what he is about to do to her would be viewed in some cultures as a miracle. Even in her own limited understanding of the advances of modern life, Sash can’t help but feel like she’s about to be blessed, and that Dr Chaudrey is less of a doctor and more of a modern day saint. How many girls can say that they have lost their virginity twice?
Dante watches his stepsister eagerly. In less than two hours, she’ll be as pure as she was when they first met. At her side, he holds her hand, while Dr Chaudrey and his team of assistants, one of whom Sash notices has kind eyes, hover above her, getting her ready for the operation.
Sash feels comfortable in their company. The room is clean, the procedure, she has been reminded again, extremely simple. Dante is by her side. The woman with the kind eyes is brushing the hair away from her head like her mother used to do. They are going to administer general anesthetic only because it’s more comfortable for Sash that way. When she wakes up, she’ll feel a little tender but nothing more. After a while, it will pass. She’ll notice nothing uncomfortable or different with her body. Dante has promised to take her for a romantic, candlelit dinner. He’s promised to wine her and dine her and then fuck her brains out spectacularly, and just the thought of it makes her melt.
She can feel her eyes getting heavy, the light blurring at the corner of the room. The last thing she remembers before she falls asleep, is Dante’s phone ringing and her hand slipping away from his as he goes to answer it.
***
In the hallway, green paint peels near a crack in the wall. Dante turns his mobile phone over in his hands as he looks at it, trying to think what to do. It’s the same thing he’s been doing for the last hour and still hasn’t reached a conclusive decision. One hundred million dollars is a lot of money to pay for silence. It’s a lot of money to risk for that silence too. Again the question comes to him, how did they know?
Donkey Doubled: A Twin Stepbrother Menage Romance Page 52