“You shouldn’t be here.”
The voice makes me jump and I spin around, clutching my heart.
They sound so much alike, Gregory and Sebastian. You’d almost mistake the one for the other.
Not me, though. Gregory’s voice carries a hint of malice in it. It’s just a hint, but I hear it.
“You don’t belong here, Willow Girl.”
I swallow. I’d step back, but I’m already backed up against the stone grave wall, and the iron candle holders are digging into my back.
He takes a step toward me, looks just beyond me, comes close enough to touch me. But he doesn’t.
“I got lost.”
I can’t move when he turns to me, when he’s so close I can feel the heat of his body and all I see are his eyes and the way they watched me that night.
“I don’t believe that,” he says, his voice quiet. Almost gentle. Not quite, though. It’s missing something to be gentle.
I wonder why he’s wearing a suit and remember how, before he took me down from the whipping post, he took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. A small kindness.
I meet his eyes, but I can’t read him.
“I’ll go,” I say.
“Did you do the math?” he asks, reaching for a candle and taking a lighter out of his pocket to light it.
My legs seem finally able to function again. I take a step away and watch him drip wax onto the stub of a candle in the holder at his father’s marker, then push his candle into it, uniting the two.
He turns to me. “Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Sebastian’s not firstborn.”
“Twins.”
Gregory nods. “Timothy was first. Only survived days, though.” He glances at Sebastian’s mother’s marker. “Killed her too, two years later.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sebastian didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head.
“His mother committed suicide. In here.”
I glance at the marker, read the date of her death, the month, the day. It’s the day her sons were born, just two years later. She killed herself on Sebastian’s birthday.
Gregory steps toward me and again, I’m locked in place. Trapped.
“Still not scared of me?”
I shake my head quickly. Too quickly.
“What do you think he’ll do when you learns you were in here?”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t know.” He slides his gaze over me. I’m wearing a T-shirt to cover the marks on my back, and a skirt. His eyes settle at my thighs for a minute, then a little higher. When he returns his gaze to mine, he cocks his head to the side. “He’ll be mad. Pissed enough to use the whipping post for what it’s meant for.”
I swallow.
Gregory suddenly smiles, and his whole expression changes. It’s disarming.
And calculated.
“The fact that he’s not technically firstborn means he’s not really head of the family. That role goes to the son who takes it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could want my own Willow Girl. Seems like fun.”
“You’re sick, you know that? Perverted”
“Maybe. Probably,” he adds, as if agreeing after a moment’s thought. “Still.” He reaches out to touch my face, and I bat his hand away. “I liked watching you come.”
I swallow, feel sweat pool under my arms.
“Maybe you like sick and perverted. I mean, you seem to like my brother.”
“Tell him if that’s what you want. He won’t do what you say.”
“No? How well do you think you know my brother?” He pauses for effect. “You willing to risk it?”
I study his eyes, try to read what he’s thinking.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep your secret. This way, you and I, we can have our own.” He places his fingers on my jaw, and for a minute, I wonder if he’s measuring the fingertips against the fading bruises. “Just between us.”
He’s fucking with me.
I pull away, force my legs to move. I get to the door before I turn around.
“I’d rather you tell him,” I say. “I’d rather take a whipping than keep a secret with you.”
It’s full dark when I run back to the house. I don’t stop once, not even when I lose one of my flip-flops. I go straight upstairs, up to my room, slam the door behind me.
I’m in such a panic, I don’t even notice Lucinda, not until I’ve trapped myself inside with her. She’s reclining on my bed, her feet crossed at the ankles, her dirty shoes on my comforter.
She’s holding a torn envelope, reading the sheet of paper. I think I recognize the handwriting, but she moves it too quickly for me to be sure and sits up.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” I ask.
She slides her legs off the bed, stands, and looks me over. I look down too, at my one bare foot, at the scratches along my legs and the dirt on my feet.
“I hope you didn’t track dirt into the house.”
She walks across to the window and pushes it open to glance outside.
“What do you want?” I ask.
She turns back to me, sets whatever she was reading on the dresser, and gives me a grin. “Have a good trip? A romantic little getaway?”
“Yes, actually. It was refreshing being away from you.”
“Well, aren’t we lucky to have you back.”
“What are you doing in here?”
Lucinda shrugs a shoulder, pulls open one of the drawers, and rummages through it. She picks out a pair of panties, a tiny pair, and holds it on her long red fingernail.
“Does he like you in this? Likes you to whore it up?”
I go to her, take the panties, and drop them into the drawer before shoving it shut.
“You have no right to be in here. Get out.”
“It’s my house. I can be anywhere I want.” She goes to the closet, turns on the light, but stays in the doorway to peek in, then looks back at me. “Libby whored it up too. Joshua loved that.”
I don’t want to hear this. As hungry as I am about my Aunt Libby’s time here, I don’t want to hear it from her.
“You know, Sebastian should share you,” she says, coming back into the bedroom and sitting down on the chaise like this was her room. “Joshua shared Libby. She took all three at once. One in her mouth, one in her ass and the other in her dirty cunt.” Her lip curls, and the word sounds more vulgar on her lips than it even is.
“She didn’t have a choice,” I say.
She smiles a cold, cruel smile. “She came like a whore. She was loud, louder than you are. Or don’t you come? Doesn’t my son make you come?”
“He’s not your son.”
She seems surprised I know that. “Did he tell you that? Fascinating.”
“What’s fascinating about that?”
“Since he’s feeding you piecemeal, I’m just surprised he chose that little tidbit. Although Sebastian’s always been clever. Too clever. I suppose it would endear you to him to know my weak sister, his mother, hanged herself.”
I hear hatred in her words, the tone of her voice, and it’s directed toward her dead sister.
“What’s wrong with you? She lost a son.”
“Oh? How do you know that?”
I don’t answer, not right away. “Sebastian told me.”
“Really? He doesn’t tell anyone that. Not even his Willow Girl. Even if he is smitten. You’re a sneaky whore.”
I don’t reply.
“My husband was smitten too. Truth be told, he loved his Willow whore. She was meeker than you. More obedient. Although maybe that has to do with my strict regimen of discipline. Kept her in line.”
“You beat her.”
“Disciplined her. There’s a difference.”
“Call it what you want.”
“I saw that girl with her mouth stuffed full of my husband’s cock more than without it.”
&
nbsp; She’s looking away like she’s reminiscing, like it’s a fond memory.
“He’d make me prepare her for him. Make me shave her pussy the way he liked. Wash her. Make me watch him fuck her. But in exchange, I disciplined her as I saw fit.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “Boredom.”
“Were you jealous of my aunt? Is that why you hate us?”
She studies me, calculating her cruelty, measuring the destruction of her words.
“Maybe. Maybe I was jealous of his affection for her. The tenderness he showed her after her sessions with me. But not jealous that he’d rather fuck her than me. I don’t need a man. I never have.”
“Yet you live with three of them, and from what I see, Sebastian rules.”
Any suggestion of a smile vanishes. She gets up, comes toward me, stands inches from me.
“Did you know he didn’t have to do this? Didn’t have to take a Willow Girl?”
I set my jaw, hold her gaze.
She’s a liar. I know that.
“He chose this. He can stop it at any time even. It’s his right. Yet he chooses not to. He chooses to keep you here under his thumb. Chooses to continue the tradition of passing you down from one brother to the next to the next. He chooses this for you.”
“I don’t believe you.” It’s not true. It’s not. He has no choice. If he didn’t do it, Ethan would get his turn.
“I don’t care what you believe. Truth is still truth. And it all just comes down to one thing. Money. He releases you from your obligation, and he forfeits his place as head of the Scafoni family. He loses everything. Sad little world we live in, isn’t it, when money is worth more than a human life?”
She sets her long fingernail under my chin and raises it a little. We’re eye to eye.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want, Willow Girl. I’m actually here to give you a letter that came earlier.” She gestures to the dresser where she’d dropped what she was reading when I came inside. “Got here two days after your arrival. Must have slipped Sebastian’s mind to deliver it.”
I see victory in her eyes, and I think about our notches, Sebastian and me. I think Lucinda would win this one. I know it before I even see what’s inside the letter.
I walk away from her, pick up the letter and envelope. It’s addressed to me, and I recognize the handwriting. It’s from my sister, Amy.
I check the postmark, and she’s right. It arrived when she said it did.
My heart races. I know it’s bad news. I know it before I turn it over to read it.
“Luckily, I found it in his trash can and fished it out. I thought you should have it.”
I open the sheet, see the few lines of Amy’s note. Watch the newspaper clipping fall to the floor.
“There’s a boat waiting for you. Remy will take you to the airport. Flight leaves in two hours. You get one chance to get out of here, Willow Girl. Don’t fuck it up, and don’t let anyone see you.” She digs into her pocket. A moment later, she sets a passport, I assume mine, on the table by the door.
“Why would you help me?”
“I’m not helping you. I’m helping myself.”
She then walks out, and her words trickle in slowly as I read Amy’s note. And as I bend to pick up the clipping, a tear blots the ink.
Chapter Twenty
Sebastian
“You need to watch your girl,” Gregory says as he takes a seat across from me in my office. “She’s going to get herself into trouble.”
“Saw the marks you left on her wrist.”
“She bruises easily. What’s the vitamin that’s missing if you bruise easily? Maybe it’s because she doesn’t eat meat.”
“Don’t be a dick, Greg.”
He scratches the back of his neck. “I want a piece, Sebastian.”
“No.”
“Why not? It won’t be the first time we shared a girl. Hell, you practically offered her the other night.”
“I said no.” I move my hands onto my lap, feel them fist. I can’t read what he’s thinking. My younger brother is too good at masking his thoughts. I know growing up he had to be, but it’s not how we are, he and I.
“What’s changed?” he asks.
“I’m keeping her, Gregory. That’s what’s changed.”
He studies me for a long time, then nods. Gets up. Without a word on what I just said, he walks out of my office. I watch him go, and I know it’s not going to be this easy. No fucking way, not with him.
I get up and head upstairs to Lucinda’s room. I knock. A moment later, I hear her call to enter. I do.
She’s sitting at her desk, her back to it. I close the door behind me and go inside, sit on the sofa across from her. I look around her room. She’s got the second biggest one, second only to mine. I moved her out of the master once I took control of the family. Lucinda and I, we have a long and ugly history.
“Sebastian,” she says, getting up and pouring two whiskeys from the bottle on the corner of her desk. She hands me one. “You never visit me here.”
“I want to talk in private.”
“Can’t imagine what about.” She settles back into her seat and takes a long swallow of her drink.
“I know, Lucinda.”
She cocks her head to the side, and that grin, that victorious smirk, I want to wipe it from her face.
“What do you know, Sebastian?” she asks, raising her drawn-in eyebrows high.
“I know about Ethan.”
For a millisecond, there’s a flicker of panic on her face, just for the tiniest fraction of time. If I didn’t know her so well, I would have missed it.
“I don’t want to hurt him—”
“Late for that, isn’t it?” she interrupts.
“That’s why I’m here to talk to you.” I ignore her jab, push through.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You going to make me say it?” I ask.
She stares back at me, her face stone. She sips from her drink, clears her throat, remains silent.
“Fine. I’ll say it. I don’t know who his father is, and I don’t care, but he doesn’t have a drop of Scafoni blood in him.”
Stone turns to ice.
“He has no right to any Scafoni inheritance. None of it. Not a penny,” I continue. I want her to be crystal clear.
Her face is red when she finally speaks. “And after what you did, it will kill him to find out he’s not your brother.”
I break eye contact, because she’s right. I swallow what’s in my glass, stand, walk across to where she’s sitting to refill it. I don’t look at her when I say this next part.
“That’s why I’m here. You’re his mother. You can’t want that for your son.”
I take my time returning to my place on the sofa, and when I sit back down, I see she’s thinking. Calculating. And I’m not sure at all she’d put Ethan’s well-being above her own.
“This is about the girl. The Willow whore with the pig’s blood on her sheath. You broke the rules, Sebastian. You were supposed to take a virgin.”
She’s right. I have one on her, she has one on me, and we can destroy everything for each other. In fact, the only person left standing if we did would be Gregory. And I feel a weight settle in my gut when I remember his eyes from just minutes ago. The way he acquiesced so easily. The way he walked out of my office, so accepting.
He’s biding his time. He’s going to let things play out because he knows how this will end. One way or another, he’ll get his Willow Girl because even if I am able to diffuse the Ethan/Lucinda situation, Gregory has a right to her.
“I consider Ethan my brother, you know that,” I say.
“Since when? Since the accident?” She puts that last word in air quotes.
“You never encouraged a relationship between us, not from day one.”
“Oh boo-hoo.” She stands, turns to refill her glass. “You need inne
r-child therapy, Sebastian? Go tell someone how horrible your mother was to you.”
“You’re not my mother. You never have been.”
“Grow up.”
“I did. I grew up fast under your cane.”
“You were always a filthy boy. You needed the cane.” She pauses, grits her teeth, lifts her chin and inhales a deep breath.
“Don’t push me on this, Lucinda.”
“What are you offering?”
“Ethan won’t have Helena. He won’t touch her. You take him off the island for a few months, take him somewhere he likes to go, tell him whatever you need to tell him to change his mind about the Willow Girl. When he’s understood it, you’ll both be welcomed back, and he will never know the truth about his parentage, and you’ll keep your place here, your status. Your allowance.” I wonder if this last one isn’t all that matters to her.
She grins. “What about Gregory? Have you thought about what he wants? What he’ll do once Ethan is out of the picture? You think he won’t contest the fact that she’s not a virgin? That you’re not technically firstborn. That you broke the rules? He’ll have you disinherited before you can profess your love to that whore.”
“What the fuck do you know about love?” The huskiness in my voice surprises me.
“Hit a nerve, did I? You’re so easy. As easy as your whore.”
“What are you talking about, Lucinda?”
She ignores my question, goes to the window, and pushes the curtain aside with one long, bony finger, one corner of her mouth curving upward. She then turns to me.
“One time,” she says, “I’ll make the deal with you. Take Ethan off the island. Away from this place. But he gets to have her once. One time. You can even dictate which hole he fucks.”
I’m on my feet, hands fisted at my sides. I stalk over to her. She backs up, but that look in her eyes, the one that screams victory, it mocks me, and I can’t fucking stand it. Can’t stand her. I close my hand around her throat and shove her against the wall.
“He doesn’t lay a single finger on her. Not one.”
She smiles, even as her eyes redden, bulge, my hand squeezing her scrawny neck.
“Your hate makes you ugly, Lucinda. Makes you old. An old, jealous bitch.”
She’s got her hands on my forearm now, is trying to drag me off. She’s struggling for breath. I give one more squeeze before releasing her, watching her sputter and cough.
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