“The stairs aren’t finished, obviously, so just be careful.”
The stone stairs are in pretty good shape, but the banister had rotted and needed replacing so there’s just empty space where it should be. The walls are papered in a deep, textured blue. Amelia runs her fingers along it as she follows me up the stairs.
“This place, it’s like time forgot it,” she says when we reach the second-floor landing.
“People say it’s haunted.” I walk to the last set of double doors at one end of the hallway.
“Is it?”
I shrug a shoulder, open the doors and gesture for her to enter.
She stops as soon as she does.
The room is beautiful. I designed it myself with four huge leaded glass windows, heavy, ceiling to floor drapes in charcoal and a custom bed at the center with built in nightstands on either side. It’s huge and modern and old at once with its wide wooden base. There is a small table and two chairs against the opposite wall but otherwise, the room is bare.
And it’s very obviously not a guest room.
I walk in, close the door and set her backpack on the bed.
“Bathroom’s through there,” I say, pointing. “You should find everything you need.”
She walks toward it, notes the book on the nightstand, the jacket hanging over the back of a chair.
The bathroom door closes, and I hear the lock turn and I do a quick mental scan of all the things in there she can try to attack me with. Then I think of searching her and that thought makes me smile.
She comes back into the bedroom ten minutes later looking refreshed. She’s washed her face and brushed her teeth. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail.
“Whose room is this?” she finally asks.
“Mine.”
“But you have toiletries for me?”
I nod.
“How long were you planning this?”
“A while.”
“I’m not sleeping in your bed.”
I smile, stalk toward her.
She drops her arms, which were folded across her chest, to her sides. I know it takes all she has to stay where she is and not back up when I’m standing toe to toe with her.
“My bed is exactly where you’re sleeping.”
“No.” But her voice comes out weak.
I put a finger to the middle of her chest, walk her backward to the wall, pin her to it.
She puts her hands to my chest to keep that little bit of distance between us and has to crane her neck to look up at me and all I can think is how small she is. How defenseless.
How mine.
“I won’t…” her voice breaks and she has to clear her throat. “I won’t sleep with you.”
I look her over, the oversized sweater hanging off her shoulder again, lower too, exposing the swell of one breast. I let the knuckles of my hand brush against it, hear her breath catch as her chest heaves. I return my gaze to hers.
“You will. And you’ll want it. You’ll want it more than you will like to admit.”
“Let me go.”
“You don’t want me to let you go.”
She shoves against me. It’s kinda cute.
“I see it in your eyes, Amelia. See how your pupils dilate. See how your lips part and your pretty little tongue darts out to lick them. Preparing them for me.”
“I’m not…they’re not—”
“I even bet if I reach inside your panties…” I let that trail off and slide one hand down over her belly, undo the top button of her jeans.
She clamps both hands over mine, nails digging into skin.
I give her a smile, push my fingers just inside her jeans, just into the waistband of her panties, barely tickling there.
She makes a sound, tries to pull at my wrist.
A full minute passes before I withdraw my hand and step away, releasing her. I draw my sweater over my head, hearing her gasp when I do.
“Are you going to pull any more knives?” I ask.
Her mouth is open. Her eyes glued to my chest. And I imagine it’s startling, what she sees.
I go to her, touch her chin with one finger to tilt her face upward.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“You…your...” her eyes slip to the ink covering much of my chest.
“I need a shower and I’m hungry. Are you going to pull any more knives?”
She drags her eyes upward and shakes her head almost absently.
“Why?” she asks. She doesn’t mean the knife.
A weight comes over me, like lack of sleep and the trip and the island and the last few months…everything is finally taking its toll. Like now that I’m home, everything will come crashing down around me.
I study her, search her eyes, wanting to see myself through them.
Wanting to see what she sees.
“Because it’s the night that changed everything.”
6
Amelia
It’s the night that changed everything. Not only for Helena and Sebastian, but for him and me. It’s the night that led us here.
I stand there stupidly mute listening to the bathroom door click closed. To the sound of the shower switching on.
He seemed weighed down. Tired. Like when I asked him why, he was just so tired.
I walk across the room to my backpack and take out my notebooks. I sit on the edge of the bed—his bed. Glancing through the sketchbooks, I find the one I’m looking for because I know exactly which one he used. At least for the image I recognized. The ones on his back, I only had a flash of the chaos of ink there.
It will take hours to study his skin.
Days.
I sit looking at the sketch, tracing it with my fingertip, tracing each of the ancient wooden blocks, the smudges of my sisters’ faces.
Seeing them, the Scafoni bastards.
The shower switches off, but I barely register it because I’m trying to make sense of what he’s done. And when the door opens, I look up at him and he pauses for a second, like he’s surprised to see me here. Where would I go?
He has a towel slung low around his hips and his hair is wet and standing up all around his head and all I can do is stare for a long minute. Stare at the past inked on his body, because that’s what this is.
“One of my notebooks was missing. I thought I was crazy,” I say. I remember looking everywhere. That’s when I stopped taking them out of the apartment. Started sketching on bar napkins because I couldn’t stop sketching. “Was it you? Did you take it?”
He doesn’t answer me, but he doesn’t have to. The evidence, it’s there. On his chest.
I set the book aside and get up, go to him.
He still has his glove on. Did he shower with it?
But the tattoos draw my attention away from the oddity.
I look more closely, reach up to touch the ink, feel the soft, warm skin stretched tight over hard muscle.
A spark of pure electricity has me snatch my hand back with a gasp.
I look up at him.
He felt it too, I know it. I see it on his face.
I go to walk around him, but he doesn’t let me. He turns with me, grinning down at me.
“Let me see,” I say.
“It’s not for you to see.”
“It’s what happened. On that island.” I know it.
He doesn’t answer, but his expression changes, the smile vanishing.
That weight is back.
And I’m locked out.
He walks away, into the large closet. When he returns a minute later, he’s wearing a black sweater with dark jeans and is combing his hands through his hair.
“Did you catalogue it?” I ask.
“Don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s ink. Just ink.”
“No. It’s more than that. I know it.”
“Do you?”
“I want to see.”
“I told you, it’s not for you to see.”
He goes to the door, opens it, gestures for me to go
ahead.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you do it?”
He doesn’t answer me but steps out into the hallway.
“I asked you a question.” I follow him.
He stops, half turns like he’s bored. But then something else takes over, something darker.
“Ever hear the expression curiosity killed the cat?” he asks, walking me backward until my back is, once again, at the wall.
“I just want to understand.”
He brushes the knuckles of his hand down over my cheek, lifting my hair to whisper at my ear: “It’ll only make you want it more, Amelia.” His voice is deep and his words seductive and taunting at once.
“I don’t want it.”
He studies me, like he’s reading me.
“I see you. I see what’s inside you.”
“You don’t see anything. You don’t know me.”
“No?”
He sets his big hand on my stomach. It spans almost the whole of it.
I don’t move. I barely breathe.
“You know what I want, Amelia?” he asks, dipping his head lower so the scruff of his jaw scratches my skin. “I want nothing more than to shove you against this wall, rip off your jeans and fuck that tight virgin pussy of yours. I want to feel you bleed. I want to feel the warmth of virgin blood spill all over my dick.”
I make a sound, like a mouse, and his breath at my ear makes every hair on my body stand on end and his words, his words terrify me and excite me, and he’s right. I do want this, in some twisted, freakish way, I want exactly this.
“Did you want to be her? The Willow Girl?” he taunts.
He slides his hand downward, down toward my jeans which are still unbuttoned, and I feel each tooth of the zipper as he drags it down. Feel the slow, deliberate movement of his hand slipping into the waistband of my jeans, my panties.
“Did you want to be the one he chose?” His hand dips lower, fingertips finding the seam of my sex.
“Stop.”
“The one he fucked?”
The way he says the word, the almost clicking sound of the ck, it’s like he can taste it.
He curls his fingers into my folds. It’s the first time anyone’s fingers but my own have been there. Have touched me there.
And I can’t breathe or think or fight.
“Huh? Is that it? You wish he’d chosen you instead of your sister? Dragged you to that island? You wish he’d made you?”
I look up at him and all I can feel are his fingers on me and it’s hard to think, to breathe, to do anything but look up at him.
He’s got a strange look on his face. His eyes appear darker, the turquoise specks bright in contrast and so intent on mine, like he wants to burn his gaze into me, to steal the thoughts from my mind.
“Do you want to be made to, little Willow Girl?”
“No.” It’s weak and he hears it.
“Because you’re wet.” This last part, it’s a long, drawn out whisper I feel more than hear and I squeeze my eyes shut in shame because he’s right.
My hands which should be pushing him away are resting against his chest and when he hooks a finger inside me, I whimper, and I know that’s what he wants.
He brings his mouth to mine and he kisses me, but he doesn’t dip his tongue inside, not yet, not even when I open to him. Instead, he pulls back, takes my lower lip between his teeth and bites just a little, just enough to cut, to draw a single drop of blood.
I’m clinging to him and he’s rubbing my clit and it feels so good and that sound I hear, it’s me.
I shouldn’t want this.
I shouldn’t want him.
But then those caresses turn hard, pain and pleasure alternating, pain dominating as, with his fingers inside me, he draws me up on tiptoe.
“You know what I think?”
I don’t say a word. I can’t.
“I think you want to be fucked,” he says, a hint more anger to his words. More violence.
I swallow, shake my head. But he just twists his fingers inside me.
“Stop,” I try.
“I think you’re dying to be fucked, in fact.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Do you like being hurt? Your sister did.”
My gaze flies to his. “Stop it!”
“Just one question. Are you dying to be fucked by me or will any Scafoni bastard do?”
I shove at him, finally.
“Stop!”
He doesn’t budge but he shifts his grip so he’s rubbing my clit again and this time, the sound I make is a moan and it’s from deep inside me and I hate him. I do. I hate him.
“Which is it?” he asks.
Is he so unaffected while I unravel before his eyes? While he so easily pulls me apart at the seams?
Because those months in Philadelphia, it’s like I knew it was him. Like I’ve known all along it was him following me. Like a sixth sense.
Like this was always going to happen.
I let my hands slide lower, over sculpted chest and rock-hard abs and then I feel him and he’s not unaffected.
No, not unaffected.
I wrap my hand around the steel rod of his cock threatening to tear through his jeans and I lick my lips and he’s still rubbing my clit and I’m so close, and when he closes his other hand around the back of my neck and pulls me into him, I drop my head and let my forehead rest against his chest and I’m panting and the sounds I’m making, they’re foreign to me.
I should fight him.
I want to want to fight him.
But when I try to pull away, he shifts his grip to my hair and forces me to look at him and he grins.
“Is this what you want?”
I’m pathetic.
I can’t even find my fucking voice.
His eyes narrow and he chuckles but there’s no joy in the sound. He draws his hand away, brings it to my face, wiping his fingers across my cheek, my mouth, leaving a trail of wetness.
My knees buckle and I’m on the floor and he drops down with me and, with that same hand, pulls my head into his chest.
It’s only when my face is buried there that I let go. That I weep. I sob quietly into him, my hands flat against him, shoulders racking, wanting to push him away, knowing I should. Fuck. I should.
But what he said, it’s the truth.
He knows it. I know it.
It’s wrong.
I’m wrong.
Perverse.
Twisted.
But he’s right. And maybe it’s shame that has me taking comfort here, against the warm strength of my enemy’s chest, my face hidden from him.
My shame hidden from me.
At least momentarily.
He pulls back, stands, and it’s like someone’s pulled the blanket away it’s suddenly so cold.
“Take care you don’t fall in love with me, Willow Girl.”
I hear his words.
I feel them.
My head is bowed and the stone beneath my knees is smooth and icy and I squeeze my eyes shut like maybe I can disappear. Like maybe if I can’t see him then he can’t see me.
I think he’s going to say something. Humiliate me further. Kick me, maybe. Kick me while I’m down.
But then he moves. He just turns and walks away, walks down the stairs and I watch him go and he doesn’t even look back. Not the briefest glance.
Can he even stand to look at me?
7
Gregory
“She doesn’t eat unless she eats with me.”
“I can take a sandwich up—” Irina starts, already holding a plate in her hands.
I look up from my desk. It’s been hours since that episode. Amelia hasn’t been down and Irina, a typical Italian mother, wants to feed her. And as much as I appreciate her concern, she’ll do as I say in my house.
I won’t make the mistake my brother did.
I won’t coddle my Willow Girl.
Matteo walks up
behind her. He gets one look at me, takes her gently, shakes his head no as he leads her away.
I get up, pick up the bottle of whiskey. It’s early but fuck that. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours and I’m fucking tired.
Not bothering with a glass, I take the bottle and walk out into the corridor, around the corner and down the hallway to the library, to where the house is darker, still waiting to be updated. It’s colder here too, but it’s because everything is still shut off here. No heat.
In the library, I pick my way over the rubble using the colored light that’s filtering in from the stained-glass window. Snow circles overhead and I look up to see the hole in the glass. I don’t think it was there the last time I was here but maybe it was, and I wasn’t paying attention.
I stand for a minute watching that white, powder swirl, like dust, as the wind blows it in.
This room, it’s strange. I don’t waste my time thinking about ghosts. I don’t give a fuck if the house is haunted. But I admit, the feeling in this particular room, it’s different.
I take a drink from my bottle and step over construction materials and dust and make my way to the back of the deceptively large room to a door that looks older than the house itself. A solid heavy, dark wooden door.
I take out my key, it’s an old fashioned one but that too I don’t want to change. I unlock it, push it open, take out my phone to light the way. No electricity down here.
There’s an immediate drop in temperature, a dampness that smells like rot, like the room under the mausoleum on the island.
I take comfort in it.
It makes sense, I guess. For someone as cold as me, as rotten on the inside, a place like this, it’s home.
I follow the stone steps down into the catacombs. According to the maps, they go on for miles. Supposedly you can access the village through them, but I haven’t yet explored them that closely.
There’s just one room I like to go to.
I shine the light down the dark tunnel. Water drips somewhere in the distance, the sound echoing off the walls. Something scurries away as I take a step, looking into the rooms I pass, empty caves, really, this one used to store wine, that one food, the other I don’t know. All unused now. Unusable.
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