Twisted

by Knight, Natasha

  He chuckles. I guess we both knew how it’d go.

  “Be there in a minute,” he says.

  I unzip her backpack, look inside. The notebooks. She wouldn’t run without them. Zipping it, I pick it up and sling it over my free shoulder, leave the duffel where it is and give her ass a slap for good measure before hobbling out the door with as much dignity as I can muster.

  I can’t take the fucking elevator with her passed out over my shoulder like this, so I find the stairs and climb down fourteen floors.

  Fourteen fucking floors.

  Well, thirteen technically, I guess.

  Maybe there’s some truth to thirteen being unlucky. It was for her.

  The coast is clear until I get outside where I pass two of the kitchen staff smoking. Matteo opens the back door of the car and I give the men a smile.

  “Never knows when to stop,” I say to them, suggesting she’s passed out drunk.

  They seem confused about what to do, but I don’t care. I have her loaded into the back of the SUV and we’re driving away before they can think.

  4

  Amelia

  I saw a movie once where these gangsters had this guy’s head in some sort of vice-like device, and the guy was screaming as they cranked the jaws tighter, cracking his skull, literally squeezing his brains out of his ears. It was disgusting, and I couldn’t look away.

  That’s what my head feels like right now.

  “Morning, sweetheart.”

  My ears are slow to absorb the words, to place the man they belong to.

  To remember.

  We’re moving. I can feel the vibration of being in some sort of vehicle.

  My face is resting against something cold but when I try to lift my head, I think it’s going to explode.

  I groan.

  He laughs and my head bounces against the cold, hard thing. Glass.

  “Wakey, wakey. You’re missing the best part.”

  I pry one eyelid open at a time because it’s like they’re glued shut. I raise my arms, and they feel heavy, like dead weights, but I rub my eyes, and when I open them, I see the deep orange glow of a sunrise through dense trees.

  The car hits a pothole, jolting me into the man sitting beside me.

  I gasp, bouncing off his hard body, and I turn to him and fuck, it’s real. Last night. Madam Liona. Charlie. Him.

  Gregory Scafoni.

  It’s all real.

  “What did you give me?”

  He wipes a gloved hand over the corner of my mouth, and I think I was drooling.

  “Muscle relaxer. I told you.”

  A car passes opposite us on a road that seems way too narrow for two cars. It’s lower than ours. We’re in an SUV. A different SUV than the one from last night though.

  And the passing car’s license plate, it’s different too.

  A narrow, long rectangle in blue and white with an I and a circle of gold stars. Panic has me pressing my nose to the glass to see the disappearing car, trying to make out the license plate because it’s not American.

  “Where are we?”

  He chuckles. “Relax. Christ. You’re so uptight.”

  I turn to him and a wave of nausea has me covering my mouth.

  “Shit. Stop the car,” he orders, and we come to a screeching halt and he just barely has me outside before I vomit along the side of the road.

  I’m doubled over. He’s holding me around the middle and one hand has my hair—or most of it—and we’re standing in about a foot of snow.

  “Where are we?” I ask again, but another wave hits and I puke again. “What did you do to me?”

  After a few minutes, I straighten, wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, tasting bile.

  The driver comes around, hands Gregory some sort of rag that Gregory uses clean my face.

  “Done?” he asks.

  As if I can control it.

  “Get her some water,” he says.

  The driver reaches into the car, takes out a bottle of water, opens it.

  “Rinse,” Gregory says, handing it to me.

  I do because my mouth tastes gross, but water isn’t going to get that taste out.

  I feel another wave but there’s nothing left. And when he puts me back in the car, I don’t fight. I don’t have any strength to. I just let him strap me in and sit there, feeling gross and cold because my feet and jeans are wet from the snow and my head throbs and I can’t get the taste of vomit out of my mouth.

  “My head hurts.”

  “Learn a lesson.”

  I glare at him. “I hope your balls hurt as bad as my head.”

  “There she is,” he says with a chuckle as we resume driving.

  “Where are we?”

  “About forty-five minutes outside of Rome.”

  “Rome?”

  He nods.

  I look outside again, read an unfamiliar traffic sign—a red circle with the number eighty in the middle. A speed limit?

  “Rome?” I ask again.

  “These are the outskirts. We’re not in Rome proper.”

  “How?”

  I was passed out. We’d have to have taken a flight. Immigration officials would have stopped him. Somebody would have stopped him.

  “Do you remember what I told you last night? About money buying everything?” Like last night, he looks at me like I’m slow.

  “People would have seen.”

  “Private plane. No one saw, no one who cares.”

  “You kidnapped me.”

  “You left me no choice when you a) tried to stab me and b) rammed your knee into my balls.”

  I look at his neck, at the tiny pinprick of a spot where I broke skin. I was a wimp.

  “Next time I’ll get it right with the knife,” I say.

  “If there’s a next time, you’ll think the way you’re feeling right now is a fucking vacation to how you’ll be hurting when I’m done with you.”

  He’s not smiling, or smirking, or grinning, or anything.

  He’s warning me.

  And I don’t doubt he’ll do exactly what he says.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Home. I told you last night. I hope you’re not always so forgetful.”

  “You drugged me, you jerk.”

  “You left me no choice. I spent a lot of money on you last night.”

  I scrunch up my forehead, remembering the details.

  God, would I have gone through with it if he hadn’t been there? Would I have really gone with Madam Liona? Had sex with some stranger?

  No. I can’t think about that.

  “You haven’t even thanked me for saving you from whatever pervert had bought your virginities. Christ. What a word.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Why did I do it?”

  I nod.

  “Because I’m a selfish man. I want you for myself.” Again, he’s dead serious, but different. Not threatening violence. Something else.

  Something dark but also lonely.

  Like there’s something empty about him.

  I feel a sudden chill and my stomach hurts. Not like I’m going to puke again, though. More like the way I felt after the reaping.

  Wanting.

  It’s the strangest thing. I can’t figure it out.

  All I know is it’s wrong.

  The car slows, and I hear the clicking of the turn signal as we take a sharp turn and begin to ride uphill, the road bumpier, unpaved, too narrow to allow for any error in judgment.

  Gregory shifts his gaze out the front windshield, and I do the same.

  It’s winter so the trees are bare. Snow covers the ground and clings to every branch creating an almost postcard-like winter wonderland. The deep orange sunrise has given way to clear blue skies and I know it’s utterly still out there. Like you’d hear the flapping of a bird’s wings still.

  I look at Gregory Scafoni. The stubble along his jaw is thicker.

  “How long have I been out?”
/>   He shifts his gaze to me. “Overnight.”

  We take another turn and he studies me.

  I blink, look away.

  “I do like your hair like this.”

  I turn back to him. “Because I look like her?”

  I don’t know why I ask it. This is part of that strangeness. That wanting. Longing.

  His eyes narrow and it’s like he’s reading me, like he’s understanding something.

  I return my attention to the snowy scene outside, wipe a hand across my wet eyes hoping he doesn’t notice.

  There is something seriously wrong with me.

  The SUV slows as we approach the rusting, open gates along the ancient stone wall of a huge property.

  All around is white, a thick, heavy fall of snow and dense trees, an overgrown garden leading up a winding path to a house I can only see the roof of for a long time. A huge house, an estate, an ancient half-ruin like the stone walls of the perimeter and the tired gate.

  And all I can think is how beautiful it is.

  How haunting.

  Like something time forgot.

  Two of the four chimneys smoke, and where snow doesn’t cling, I see the terra cotta colored walls associated with all things Italian. There are three floors and on the topmost, the windows are shuttered with wood nailed into the ornate, almost Arabian looking frames.

  A large balcony spans the second floor. Snow drapes the huge, twisted branches that weave themselves through the wrought iron railing. There, the wooden shutters stand open, the windows like eyes watching our approach.

  And it does feel like that. Like the house is watching us come.

  We reach a huge fountain I can almost imagine flowing water in the spring and summer except that it’s crumbling. But it’s almost more beautiful for the decay.

  The driver curves around it to stop in front of the house.

  Wide stone steps, three of them, lead up to the porch, which is as wide as the balcony above. It’s dry underneath, the snow hasn’t penetrated here, and I can see the pretty color of the wall, like that of the sunrise this morning.

  There’s a fire burning in the large outdoor fireplace and when the door opens, an older woman walks outside wiping her hands on her apron and I smile because for a moment, for a single, fleeting moment, I forget where I am, who I am with, how I got here.

  I forget that I am a captive.

  A Willow Girl to the beautiful, ruthless Scafoni bastard beside me.

  All it takes is the opening of the SUV’s door and Gregory’s hand like a vice on my arm pulling me across the seat and out of the vehicle to remind me, though. He catches me when I stumble, but he’s not looking at me.

  His eyes are locked on the house and mine are locked on him.

  Home.

  He’d said we were going home.

  I shiver when an icy gust of wind sends snow up the still-wet legs of my jeans and I hug my arms to myself and Gregory finally turns to me.

  “Welcome to Villa de Rossi, Amelia Willow. I hope you’ll be very unhappy here.”

  5

  Gregory

  I walk Amelia up toward the front entrance. She isn’t struggling but that’s probably a combination of feeling weak from the drug and the impossibility of her new situation.

  In the beginning when I’d first decided I wanted her, I thought I’d have to make her. And I still do, to some extent, but there’s something else too. Some part of her, it’s drawn to this.

  To the Willow Girl legacy.

  To me.

  It doesn’t mean she won’t fight me, though, and it doesn’t mean I don’t want her to.

  She walks ahead of me up the stairs. Her hair will need to be fixed. She must have taken scissors and just cut straight across the back. Chopped off most of it. I’m keeping the dark though. And not because it makes her look like Helena. It doesn’t.

  They share similarities in features, not coloring, obviously, but the upward turn of their noses, the arrogant set of their cheekbones, the almost doll-like perfect profile. Some mannerisms too, especially the stubborn way they jut out their chins when they don’t like something.

  Matteo goes to his mother, Irina. He greets her with a kiss on her cheek. It’s strange to see him like he is with her. He’s twice her size and my right-hand man. I trust him with my life. But with Irina, he’s a little kid again.

  “Irina,” I say.

  Matteo steps aside and Irina smiles back to me, saying something in Italian, looking me over, asking if I’ve been eating well enough. It’s been several weeks since I’ve seen her.

  I kiss her cheek and let her hug me. Lucinda, my own mother, never hugged me like this. Irina is more a mother to me than Lucinda ever was.

  But Lucinda lacks any warmth. No room left for it with all that hate churning inside her.

  “This is Amelia,” I tell Irina in Italian.

  The older woman smiles warmly, looks her over too, says something about feeding both of us properly.

  “Amelia, this is Irina, Matteo’s mother.” I realize I never actually introduced Matteo.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says. She rubs her arms for warmth.

  “Go inside,” I tell her.

  She hesitates, glancing back the way we came.

  I step toward her, rub her arms, squeeze to make her look at me. “You can freeze out here or go inside where it’s warm. Your choice. I don’t really care. But those are your only choices.”

  She mutters something but follows Irina in.

  I take a moment to walk the length of the portico, stand before the large stone fireplace to warm my hand—the one that wasn’t burnt—as I take in the work done while I’ve been gone.

  The house is more than a century old and has sat empty for most of those years. I’m restoring it to its original grandeur, but I only started the project a year ago even though I’ve owned it for more. The weather has slowed down construction.

  I’m actually the second owner. After the circumstances of the original family leaving Villa De Rossi, the bank couldn’t give it away. It’s rumored to be haunted by the De Rossi family, both Mother and daughter.

  It doesn’t bother me, though. Ghosts don’t scare me. I’ve lived with them all my life.

  Besides, this is my house now.

  My home.

  Not theirs.

  The house on the island, any of our properties, they’ve never felt like mine. Or like home. The way Scafoni law is written, although we each inherit a certain sum once we come of age, the first born, or, as is the case now, the oldest living son, is master of the estate of Scafoni.

  I snort.

  It’s a fucking lottery, that.

  Besides, he’s not technically first born. Timothy is. Was. Hell, maybe Sebastian wrapped that cord around Timothy’s neck while they were still in the womb. Maybe he was a fucking killer before he was even born.

  I shake it off.

  I have my money. None of that matters now.

  After what happened on the island, I had an attorney draw up paperwork demanding my share. Demanding I be free of Sebastian. Threatening I’d return to the island to lay claim to his precious Willow Girl because in the end, she isn’t marked. She’s still fair game.

  Hell, maybe that’s why I did it, why I grabbed hold of the branding iron. Not to save her at all, but to keep my options open.

  Sebastian couldn’t wait to be rid of me. Made me sign a counter-agreement that I’d never have contact with Helena again before he agreed to my terms.

  I wonder if Helena knows about that.

  Or if she’s the one who requested it.

  There’s a nagging thought that what I’m doing now, it’s because of her.

  Did I take Amelia to hurt Helena?

  Or to somehow, in some ridiculous twisting of my warped mind, did I do it to be close to her?

  I grit my teeth and pull off the leather glove to make myself remember. I look at the marred skin of my hand. The uneven texture, the crescent so clear.
/>   His mark.

  His even though it was me who saved her from the iron. Not him.

  And she still chose him.

  No. I refuse to go down this road again. I fucking refuse.

  Fuck Helena.

  Fuck them both.

  I hold my hand up to the fire and feel the excruciating pain of it again. Feel the searing of the iron as I closed my hand around it and gripped it tight to me, the pain like nothing I’ve experienced before or since.

  The doctor says I shouldn’t feel a thing. That the nerves are dead.

  But I feel it.

  I feel it like it’s happening again right now and as much as I want to pull my hand away, I force myself to keep it in the heat, until it banishes thoughts of her, of that night, of the island, of those months.

  Fuck Helena and fuck Sebastian.

  This has nothing to do with either of them.

  Nothing!

  The door opens, and Matteo clears his throat.

  I turn my back to him, slide my glove back on.

  The sun is high, and a square of snow slides off the roof, landing heavy and loud just a few feet from me. Like it’s just been pushed. Like a ghost shoved it to remind me that I’m here. That I can get my head out of my ass now because the past is finished.

  Because I have what I always wanted. My own Willow Girl.

  I go inside, a tight smile on my face. I’m tired. It’s been a long night and I didn’t get any sleep.

  Amelia is standing in the foyer in front of the man-sized fireplace warming her hands. She’s looking at the frescoed ceiling. It’s not yet been fully restored, but the original bright colors of the flowers—a garden overhead—is striking. There are more like it throughout the house. Always gardens. Always bright flowers in full bloom.

  Strange what’s preserved and what decays.

  “Some parts of the house are still under construction,” I say. “You need take care not to go to those areas.”

  “How old is it?”

  “Over a hundred years.”

  “Wow.”

  Irina says something about food. I tell her to give us time to freshen up and take Amelia’s backpack.

  “Come with me.”

  She follows me through the large living room with its matching fireplace, peeks at the dining room table already set for lunch.