I shift my gaze from the papers to him. I guess I’m not surprised Santiago has my medical records.
“Just a diagnosis when I was young.” My mother had decided treatment wasn’t necessary. I just had to “get over it.” Her exact words. Because treatment would make the condition public, and she couldn’t have that. I was flawed enough. My dad argued about it with her but ultimately gave in.
“I see,” he says, looking through more of the papers in that folder before taking out an electronic pad and asking me a long list of questions.
I’m not sure what to expect, but I spend the whole morning with Dr. Hendrickson. After a physical exam where he hid his shock well at all the bruises because even for me, this is extensive, we spent time on simple exercises, some of which I’ve found online but never really committed to doing. I didn’t mind so much about those, and I thought about a bargaining chip with Santiago. I didn’t tell the doctor that I’d been kept in a locked, blacked-out room for weeks. I’m not sure what Santiago had told him, but there would be no point. Even if he was horrified, what could he do? Call the police? They are in Santiago’s pocket. IVI would never allow a Sovereign Son to get into trouble with the police. It would be too inelegant.
Instead, I asked him about swimming, told him how it used to help. And I didn’t have to mention going outside. He brought that up himself and said he’d add that to his discussion with Santiago.
Once he left, Antonia let me have lunch in the kitchen with her, but she had to take me back up to my room after that. I know she felt awful about it. That’s the only reason I didn’t fight it. I’ve gotten her into enough trouble.
So instead, I went back upstairs to my dark room, stripped off my clothes and handed them to her to lock away, and resumed my place on the bed to wait.
* * *
I don’t know how many hours pass before Santiago enters my room again. I’ve already had dinner, and I’m wide-awake, waiting for him. I don’t know if it’s the grin on my face that makes him pause just as he enters the room, but for exactly one millisecond, I feel like I have the upper hand. The element of surprise. I’m almost gleeful, and it’s strange. Almost like a madwoman. I’ve rehearsed all day how I’ll tell him that his seed isn’t up to the task. That all this fucking and still no heir to the devil’s throne. Some more crude things too. Anything to unman him. I know he’ll punish me for it, but it will be well worth it.
“Wife,” he greets, looking around the room at the additional candles.
“Husband,” I match his tone and narrow my gaze, letting a smirk play at the corner of my mouth.
He grins too and walks over to me.
I don’t move, keeping my relaxed posture of half lying down, half sitting up.
He pushes the hair back from my face, cups it to turn it slightly so he’s looking at my right eye, studying it for some reason. His strange words from last night come back to me.
“Just remember when you look upon yourself next week, loathing your own reflection in the mirror, you only have yourself to blame.”
I pull out of his grasp, the glee of moments ago faded. Turned uglier.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“You on your knees to start.”
My belly flutters as my gaze dips from his face to his crotch and back. Fine. He wants me to suck him off? I can do that. I may bite tonight, though. So I push off the blanket that’s barely covering me and drop to my knees before him. Before he can order me to, I reach to undo his belt.
He closes his hand over mine to stop me.
“No.”
“What is it? Don’t tell me you came in here to talk.”
His gaze is on the bed at my back. I turn to it. See what he sees. That tell-tale smear of blood.
I look back at him grinning wide, the feeling inside me ugly, not me. Not at all.
Santiago’s jaw tightens.
“What’s the matter, dear husband? Another month gone and after how much you’ve tried, I dare say done your best, there’s nothing to show for it? Have you considered having your sperm checked? Maybe the fire that deformed—”
He has me by the throat in an instant pushing me backward against the bed, my back bending painfully, his hand cutting off my air so I’m left sputtering. He looks like he has a hundred things to say to me. A thousand curses to hurl my way. But instead, all he does is haul me up onto the bed, sets his knee beside me, and eyes locked on mine, he closes his other hand over my sex.
He loosens his grip on my throat a little as I claw at his forearm. He must see I can’t breathe, but he doesn’t let go entirely.
Holding my gaze, he pulls the little string of the tampon, and I feel it slide out, slick with blood, then he pushes his fingers inside me, and I force myself to grin as he brings them up between us, looking at the bloodied digits.
He growls a curse, wipes the blood off across my face, then shifts his grip to my arm and hauls me roughly to my feet.
“Deformed?” he starts, controlled, voice low, rage just there, just beneath.
“Let go of me.” I try to pull at his hand as he marches me to the door, ignoring my protests as he walks me to the stairs and down, picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder when I slip. I’m sure his grip is adding more bruises.
“Did you enjoy that?” he asks as he walks into his office and slams the door. “Had you been waiting to play your little trick all day? Practiced what you’d say. What insults you’d hurl?”
He plants me roughly into a chair in front of the desk.
I immediately move to stand, but he pushes me down. “Stay.”
“You need a dog, not a wife.”
“A dog would be more loyal than my wife, that is certain.” He takes the sheet of paper on the desk, turns it so it’s facing me, and slams it back down.
I look at it, and I gasp. I lift off my seat a little to peer closer as Santiago leans back to let me.
“Wh…what is this?” My mouth has gone dry, the blood draining from my head, a sudden cold leaving me shuddering.
“Pretty, don’t you think?” He picks up the sheet.
I look up at him, mouth open, not believing my eyes.
“Just remember when you look upon yourself next week, loathing your own reflection in the mirror, you only have yourself to blame.”
“What is it?” I demand although I know. My voice rises with panic. I wrap my hands around the seat of the chair, or I’ll bolt, and I don’t know what he’ll do if I try to run.
“It’s you. Don’t you recognize yourself?” he asks with a false laugh, an ugly, unhinged sort of sound.
“Santiago—” My voice breaks, cracking on his name, my throat too dry to speak as my gaze is drawn to that thing. That hideous drawing.
Because what it is is unimaginable. A tattoo. Like his. Just like his.
He wasn’t looking at my eye earlier. He wasn’t studying the strange pupil. That’s nothing next to what he’s got planned for me. He was looking at the canvas of his next work. A skull to match his.
He must know that I understand. I wonder if this is how he’d planned to tell me or if I’d instigated it. Taunted him. Poked the devil. Either way, when I stand, he doesn’t stop me. And when I topple the chair behind me and stumble, he simply watches grinning that grin, that wicked, evil grin.
“This will be your punishment, Ivy,” he says, more sober when he speaks.
“For the poison,” I manage, my voice sounding so frail next to his.
He nods once.
“You’re a monster!” I explode at him, clawing at the drawing wanting to tear it from him, wanting to rip it to shreds as if that would stop it from happening.
He laughs, catching me easily. Lifting me off my feet, he carries me the few steps back to his desk. With a sweep of his arm, he clears it, sending papers fluttering to the carpet as he lays me on it. Pushing me backward, he forces my legs apart and takes his place between them. As he undoes his belt, his trousers, that ink on his face makes him appear to b
e grinning as he leans over me even though he’s not. Not at all. His eyes are dark, almost black, and I see sorrow and resignation along with betrayal and pain, especially pain, inside them. When he pushes into me, all I can do is grunt, reach up to hold his shoulders, and take his thrusts as tears stream down the sides of my face.
“Look at it,” he says, forcing me to turn my head.
“No!” I fight him, reach up to claw his face.
He captures my wrists, and I pull against him, hauling myself up with his cock still inside me.
“Please, Santiago,” I start as I hear his breath grow more ragged and see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He releases my wrists and cups my ass to pull me to the edge of the desk. I push his hair back from his face. Our eyes are locked, and I study him as I take him and, cupping the back of his head, I draw him to me and kiss him. I kiss his face, kiss the skull side, feel the scars beneath the ink. I kiss the corner of his mouth, remembering how he bit my lip the last time, how he’d drawn blood, but I only kiss him. Kiss him full on the mouth as he leans us both back down not pulling away from my kiss, not biting.
“Ivy,” he mutters against my lips, then kisses me back, thrusting harder, faster.
“Make me come,” I say, my hands on his face to make him look at me. See me. “Make me come.”
He shifts one hand between us, and the touch of his fingers to my clit makes me come as he watches me. I arch my back and push against him, then pull his face to mine again, making him kiss me again, taking his final thrusts, swallowing his moan as his release comes, body rigid, every muscle tight, cock throbbing.
When his eyes come back into focus, and he eases his grip, a drop of sweat falls from his forehead to my cheek.
He looks at me. We’re so close. Closer than ever.
“Why?” he asks, voice broken, desperate. “Why, Ivy?”
I brush back sweat-slicked hair. “I swear to you, I swear on my life, I didn’t. I did not do what you’re accusing me of.”
“Your life is no longer yours to swear upon.” He draws back, almost sobering as he does. He exhales a short puff of air and pulls out of me, and we both look at the bloody mess on him, on me. Not bothering to wipe it off, he tucks himself back into his briefs, his pants.
I sit up. “I swear, Santiago. Please don’t do this to me. Please don’t tattoo me.” My god. Saying the words out loud makes it sound even more terrifying.
“Don’t make you look like me, you mean? Deformed,” he emphasizes the word, and my face heats as I regret the word I’d used. I hadn’t meant to. I swear I hadn’t meant to. I knew that would wound him.
“That’s not…I shouldn’t have said that.”
“How repentant you are now when there is something for you to lose.” He touches my cheek with the knuckles of his hand. “Your beauty.”
I shake my head.
“Did you think you’d seduce me? You think me that weak? One kiss and I’d give in to you?”
“No. No, I wanted to kiss you. I needed to.”
He grows rigid, ice cold. “You’re a liar, Ivy,” he says slowly. “A cold, manipulative liar.”
My stomach turns. “No, Santiago, it’s not like that. It wasn’t—”
“Get out,” he says, turning away.
“I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. I was locked in that bathroom. I couldn’t get the door open. I—”
“No? You couldn’t get the door open?” he asks, moving swiftly behind his desk to pull out a keyboard and push a couple of buttons. As soon as he does, the monitors all light up. I watch the blurred lines come into focus, and I hear the sounds I remember from that night. Loud talking. Glasses clinking in toasts. Jazz music. The gong. I see Colette laughing with someone, a man. Her husband, I guess. And then I see him. Santiago. And I watch as from the corner of the screen a woman enters.
And my throat goes dry. “What is this?”
He doesn’t have to answer, though. I can see. Anyone with eyes can see. It’s me in my black and gold dress and my butterfly mask. Except it’s not. And I—she—walks straight up to my husband, and he seems momentarily surprised when I—she wraps her arms around his neck, but he takes her in his arms too, and when she kisses him, he kisses her back, and then the scene blacks out.
I blink once, twice. When I turn, I find him watching me.
“I…” I croak, touching my throat, then pointing at the empty screen, my hand trembling.
Irrefutable evidence, they had said at The Tribunal.
They must have seen this too.
“What’s that, Ivy?” he asks, all false sweetness.
“That’s not possible.” I take a step backward, shuddering. I hug my arms around myself. “That’s not me.”
“No?”
I shake my head. Back up another step only to stumble over the chair I’d knocked over earlier but catching myself before I fall.
“No,” I say, not even convincing myself as he replays it, and I’m forced to watch it again.
“But I have eyes in my head. The evidence is right here in front of us,” he says finally.
We watch in silence, and when it’s over, he switches the monitors off and turns to me.
“I will mark you so you will never forget what you did. What you tried but failed to do. So that when anyone looks upon your face, they will know your shame, and they will turn their backs on you. You are a traitor. A liar. A Moreno.” My name is like a slap. I flinch. “You make me sick, Ivy.”
“I—”
“And my ink to mark your face, to deform you, is the sentence I decree upon you.”
14
Santiago
"How are you feeling?" Councilor Hildebrand peers up at me from beneath his spectacles.
"I live to see another day," I answer flatly.
He nods and then glances at the file before him. The three councilors of The Tribunal are seated behind the ornate desk on the dais in the courtroom reserved only for meetings such as these.
Since the explosion, I have come here once a month to meet with The Councilors, elders, and other remaining family members who lost someone that day. It was undoubtedly one of the worst attacks on a single IVI sector. We lost ten Sovereign Sons that day and twice as many elders.
Unlike a civilian case, a Society case never goes cold. We have all been assigned our own duties to further the investigation, and regardless of the slow progress, we reconvene here to discuss the findings on the same day every month. A process that will continue until The Tribunal deems the perpetrators have been found and punished accordingly.
Duty would dictate that I tell them I already know exactly who the perpetrator is, and he's lying in a hospital bed, too cowardly to face his crimes. But I decided long ago not to bring my suspicions forward unfounded. I didn't require The Tribunal's approval to punish those who I know in my bones bear the guilt of the blood that was shed that day.
I may never know how many Moreno family members partook in the scheme, but the only fair sentence is that which Eli has given me. An eye for an eye. And perhaps it is selfish, but I am not willing to relinquish control of their destruction, which is exactly what will happen if I were to bring their names forward.
First, there would be a long waiting period while The Tribunal considers the evidence. And then there would be a meeting between the surviving family members and a vote of what should occur. They would all want a piece of Eli and his family. And I am not willing to settle for a piece. Not when I am the only man who left that building, clinging to life as everyone around me burned.
It will be my face Eli sees should he ever wake. My eyes will haunt him in the afterlife when I erase his existence from this earth. I can settle for nothing else.
The Councilors bring the meeting to attention, offering each family a turn to speak. Progress reports always pass by quickly, with little intel at all. Yet each man who speaks on behalf of the dead offers up the tiniest of crumbs, all meaningless, in an effort to prove that they too have not forgotten.
When it is my turn to speak, I tell them the same thing I do every month. I have leads I'm following up on, but nothing concrete. I can feel the eyes of the others on me. I may as well be a ghost in this room. They are all wondering why I survived, and their beloved family members did not. I never look their way. I never speak to them directly. I volunteer what is requested of me, and then I take my leave.
Only today, when the meeting adjourns, Councilor Hildebrand requests me to stay behind, as I suspected he would. I have not been summoned before today because they prefer to hold court at the same time, and their schedules do not bend to accommodate anyone.
Once the room is vacated of the other members, Hildebrand looks down upon me, speaking on behalf of his fellow Councilors.
"We would like to discuss the matter of sentencing for your wife, who is due back in court shortly."
"Yes," I reply. "I'm aware."
"My fellow Councilors and I have prepared several recommendations for her sentence, which we will lay forth now."
I wait in silence as he opens Ivy's folder. My throat burns, and heat crawls up the base of my neck. I know what they will recommend. I am not unfamiliar with the expected sentence for the attempted murder of a Sovereign Son.
"There are three recommendations," Hildebrand reads from the document. "Death by a poison of the Tribunal's choice. Death by hanging. And the last alternative is the loyalty test."
I swallow the acid in my throat as I consider their options. They are as harsh as I expected, with the only option that has even a potential of survival being the loyalty test. An excruciating dance of torture Ivy would have to endure as I look on without uttering a word. It is The Society's way of reaffirming loyalty. Should I break and ask them to stop that which my wife is sentenced to endure, they would kill her. Should I watch on in silence, she may survive if she is strong enough. None of these options would please me, and I make it known.
"I have an alternate suggestion."
"You have prepared a recommended sentence for your wife?"
I force a nod. "I have."
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