by Amelia Wilde
FALLEN ROSE
Amelia Wilde
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
About Midnight Dynasty
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter One
Haley
The dark presses in like a hand over my mouth, but I have to breathe.
Have to get out of this blood-soaked nightmare echoing with drowned breaths. With tortured gasps. With the sound of Leo trying to breathe while his lungs fill with blood.
The dream is fading fast. But everything feels wrong. I feel less like I fell asleep and more like I was put here against my will. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
My hand connects with something soft. Let it be Leo’s shirt. Where is he, where is he?
There’s nothing solid underneath. I push it away and it becomes a blanket thrown away from my body. A flutter of air as it flies away from me.
I’m on a bed, but it’s not his bed.
Trapped by the sheets. My limbs are sluggish but not as useless as they were in the dream. I push my hair back from my face with numb hands. Both legs over the side of the bed. I could go back to sleep, which is fucked up, honestly. I’ve been sleeping for a long time. That’s all I know. My eyes burn. Even my shins feel weird. There’s a pounding in my head.
And this is not Leo’s room.
It’s lovely. Airy and pastel. Mint green and white. Accents in emerald. Every piece of furniture has been meticulously placed. An elegant chair by the window. A padded bench at the foot of the bed. A matching dresser with a round mirror. I can see myself in it.
I look rumpled. Confused. Terrified. Because I should be.
This is Caroline’s house.
It has a scent to it I recognize. I can’t name it but I know it. I’ve smelled it before. Something rich and luxurious and utterly fake. How the hell did I get here? My mind struggles against black emptiness. I shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t want me here. Not when I’ve been with Leo. Not when she tried to have him killed. Not when I stayed. I stomp through my memories like I’m retracing my steps for a lost set of keys.
I can figure it out later. For now, I have to get out.
On unsteady legs, I rush for the door. The last time I was here, I was at a party I didn’t belong at in a borrowed dress. Now I’m twisted in Leo’s shirt and my leggings. A tank top underneath. I don’t have socks, and I don’t have my shoes, but I don’t care.
The doorknob turns under my hand. Solid wood swings toward me, forcing me back into the room.
Caroline breezes in.
If I didn’t know what happened to her, I’d never have noticed the tense set to her shoulders. Everything else about her is polished. Perfect. Constantine. She’s wearing a loungewear set with a blue cashmere wrap and an expression of pure concern.
I freeze in the middle of the floor. The scent was her perfume. It’s light and expensive and everywhere.
It makes me sick.
The wrap whispers on her clothes as she reaches for me. I’m too frozen to stop her. Cool, small hands on the sides of my face.
“Haley, darling, we’ve been so worried.” Bile surges to the back of my throat at the sound of darling in her mouth. And she’s not done speaking. One of her thumbs idly strokes my cheekbone. “I heard what Leo Morelli forced you to do to save your father. I’m so sorry you didn’t think you could come to me. Don’t worry, sweetheart, you’re safe now. He can’t steal you away again. You’re under my protection now.”
Her hands slip down to my shoulders.
It’s too much and I wrench myself away. There’s nowhere to go, not really, but I can at least take a big step back. Caroline’s eyes stay big and round and concerned. “He didn’t force me to do anything. You brought me here. I didn’t want to come.”
The corners of her mouth turn down, and she shakes her head a little. “Sweetheart—”
“I’m not your sweetheart.” My skin prickles, going cold with Caroline’s presence. She’d be so pissed if I threw up on her nice carpet. “I want to go home. I want to see my father.”
She clucks her tongue. “You will. Of course you will. And you won’t have to worry anymore. I’m going to take care of everything. Aunt Caroline is here now.”
Caroline steps forward, taking up the space I took back. I should run. I should shove her out of the way and run. But instead my muscles lock down tight, freezing one by one from my toes all the way up. Even my breath feels colder. Caroline isn’t tall. She doesn’t tower over me. I don’t know what makes me so afraid I can’t move. The glint in her eyes, maybe. Or the sickening scent of all her money and power. Her fingertips meet my cheek, and then she brushes a lock of hair away from my face. Her gaze traces my features like she’s seeing me for the first time.
“I’ve neglected your little family for too long. It wasn’t your fault.”
The prison unlocks and I push her hand away. I’m too slow. Everything takes longer than it should. Breathing is harder. Thinking is harder. Leo, falling. The stretcher rails slipping out of my hands. Eva putting her hand to her eyes in the family waiting room. A long, silent ride home. Leo saying run. The black of his coat against the white of fresh snow. I’m burning. His fever. The half-conscious grip of his arms around my waist. He came back. He woke up.
And then.
The text messages. Why did I walk out into the snow without waiting for Gerard? If I’d waited, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have met Cash outside Leo’s gate. I wouldn’t have been standing there when—
“No, it’s not my fault.” I meet Caroline’s eyes with fear and anger rough-and-tumble through my gut. “None of this is my fault. You are forcing me to be here. You’re doing what you said Leo did. You kidnapped me. You had a man drug me.”
Caroline gives a little laugh and it’s so polite and incredulous that a pinprick of doubt digs in. Is it me? Am I the one who doesn’t know what’s going on? The last few days at Leo’s house were a literal fever dream. A fever nightmare. Nothing existed except Leo and the endless stream of cool towels I put on his neck, on his back. Maybe we were both sick. Maybe I’m sick now. I test my own forehead. I don’t feel feverish. I feel like I was drugged. Because I was.
“We’re family, Haley,” Caroline says. “It’s my responsibility to take you out of a bad situation and bring you home. There’s no telling what could have happened to you.”
“You sent a man to bring me here against my will. You sent my brother—” I can’t talk about Cash. Caroline has never sunk lower than sending her henchman to attack Cash, except for once. “He put his hand over my mouth. He drugged me.” I get my hand up to my jawline and skim my fingers over the skin there. I don’t have to look into the mirror to know there’s a bruise—I can feel the sensitive spot where his finge
rs clamped over my face to hold the cloth over my mouth. “He did this to me.” I lift my chin, angle my face toward the light.
She gives a fake, shallow gasp, and then she’s reaching for me. I hold my breath. I can’t stand it. Her touch is cool and featherlight. Caroline turns my face, peering at the bruise. It’s not like how Leo touches me, it’s nothing like it, and I don’t know where he is. I’ve been here long enough for him to find me but he hasn’t. The urge to hit Caroline, to attack her, dies a hasty death under my fear.
I know what she’s capable of.
“It was probably Leo Morelli who did this to you,” she says. “Everyone knows he’s the Beast of Bishop’s Landing. Violent. Unstable. Dangerous.”
“You’re the dangerous one.”
She smiles, looking beautiful and cold. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s probably Stockholm Syndrome. You’ve been kept captive for so long you actually sympathize with your kidnapper. I’ll help you. I’ll help you until you understand the truth.”
This is not my home. I’m not this kind of Constantine. I never have been, and I never will be.
She strokes my cheek again, then takes my hand in hers. I pull mine back just as quickly, but she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink. “Let’s talk about what you need. Something to eat, first. I’m sure you must be starving. And some new things to wear. What would you like? I’ve seen some lovely winter dresses that would be so gorgeous on you.” Caroline waves her hand. “But don’t limit yourself. You can have anything you want.”
“I want to leave. I need to leave here. I need to be with Leo.”
“No, darling.” A sad, soft smile. “You only think you want Leo Morelli because he conditioned you to think so. He did so many terrible things, but they’re over now. He probably had sex with you against your will. But he—what? He gave you an orgasm, perhaps. So you think you’re not a victim, but you are. You were his victim, and now you’re safe.”
Except I’m not. Her touch lingers. A rush of goose bumps moves from my shoulders to my wrists.
I can still feel the five individual points where her fingertips rested against my cheek and her thumb turned my chin. Handprint-sized patches where she held my face. I have the horrified sense that I won’t be able to scrub them away no matter how many times I drag a washcloth over my skin. I could cut all my hair off and still feel her brushing it back like she had any right to do it. I could wash my hands a hundred times and still feel her fingers on mine.
All of this is nothing, nothing, compared to what she did to Leo. I’ve lived with this for thirty seconds. He’s had to live with so much worse.
Every day.
For so many years.
“I’m going to be sick.”
I don’t hear what Caroline says next because I’m heaving into a mint-green wastebasket next to the desk. She rubs my back the whole time, in calm, slow circles.
Chapter Two
Haley
I survive the rest of the day by counting heartbeats. Counting breaths. Anything that means time is going by. I try to keep it simple in my thoughts. If Leo has enough time, he’ll be able to get to me, and take me out of here.
Caroline comes in and out of the room. She makes a point of showing me to the en suite bathroom. A new toothbrush waits for me on the countertop along with a little clutch of products. Soon after she brings stacks of clothes. “They’re brand new, but I’ve had them washed.” I stare at the back of her head while she tucks them into the dresser. She would have had them washed and dried by someone else. Someone she pays. We washed our own clothes growing up, in a rickety washer and dryer that my dad kept around like a family pet. He chuckled while he fixed them over and over.
Leo has his clothes washed and dried, too. Mrs. Page is in charge of all that. Caroline wants me to believe that his house isn’t my home, but it is. It could be. I’ll always be a little bit torn between his castle and my dad’s house, but I can fix all that if I get back to Leo. If Leo comes for me. And he will. I know he will.
More expensive perfume wafts to the bed, followed closely by Caroline. “Are you feeling any better? I brought you a book. Sit up, darling. It’s not good to lie in bed all day.”
I sit up before she can touch me, and she puts the book into my lap.
It’s a nonfiction book about the power of forgiveness. A watercolor leaf decorates the front cover. “Is this a joke?”
For a split second, her mask of concern slips and Caroline’s eyes narrow. The blue there turns cold enough to freeze my spine. This is the woman who whipped Leo so badly he could have died from it. There’s nothing to stop her from doing the same to me. She might do it anyway.
I was foolish to talk to her like that.
Caroline blinks and the mask is back up. The corners of her mouth turn into that sad smile. “Of course not. Just something that’s helped me change my way of thinking.”
I don’t read the book, but I pretend to read it. I put on the best show of my life, guessing how long it will take to read each page and then turning them at what I hope are accurate intervals.
It might as well be a book full of Leo’s name, over and over again.
Caroline brings soup in a bowl and sits on the end of the bed while I eat it. It’s a tasteless chicken noodle. She asks me if it’s all right, and I tell her it’s good.
When I tell her I’m tired in the early afternoon, it’s not really a lie. Whatever her bulldog used to knock me out clings to my veins. My eyelids are heavy with missing Leo. With hoping he’ll be here soon.
“Okay, sweetheart,” Caroline says. “I’ll check on you before dinner.”
I count a hundred heartbeats after she leaves, then swing my legs over the side of the bed. She won’t be back for an hour at least. If she thinks I’m sleeping, I could slip away. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have shoes. I might not be able to get to Leo’s house barefoot but I can get to my dad’s. I rub at my eyes on the way, willing them to stay open.
The doorknob doesn’t turn.
I wrench it harder on the off chance my arms are weak.
It doesn’t move.
The back of the knob is completely flat, and my stomach turns over again. Caroline planned all this down to the last detail. I’m certain her guest bedrooms haven’t always locked from the outside.
Or maybe they have. I don’t know. Maybe she regularly keeps people in these rooms and no one knows about it. She’s Caroline Constantine. She could do anything. She could keep me here forever, and no one would ever know. I pace back across the room and rush back to try the door again.
Locked.
But no. Caroline wouldn’t keep my presence here a secret. She would tell people so they could praise her for rescuing me. Everyone would be on her side. No one suspects her of anything but being rich. Why would they? Leo’s the villain in the story of Bishop’s Landing. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t live here anymore. That he hasn’t for years. He’ll always be the evil villain, and Caroline will always be a benevolent queen.
I’m driving myself crazy. I can’t think like this. I have to keep it together until Leo arrives.
I drift into a dream about Leo’s house. It’s even bigger in the dream. Winter sunlight streams in through the windows on the second floor, illuminating the empty halls. Every room is empty. No Leo in his bedroom. No Leo waiting in the guest bedroom I slept in. No Leo disappearing around a corner. His office, maybe.
Where is his office? I pass the guest bedroom again and again. Finally I stumble over the big stairs at the front of the house and go down at a run.
Now that I’m closer, I can hear him.
I can hear him trying to breathe.
Failing to breathe.
My shoulder hits the doorframe with a thud and I get a glimpse of him on the floor, eyes wide, a pool of blood spreading around him.
“Leo—”
A door opens close by and I jolt upright in the bed. “Oh,” Caroline says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
> No. She meant to kidnap me, and then keep me here so we could “reconnect.”
She doesn’t leave again. Caroline never raises her voice but she is incessant.
The topic always comes back to Leo. It’s so wrong to lie to someone, don’t you think? The way Leo lied to you. It’s so unfortunate what happened to you, Haley. What he did to you. Criminal, really.
I’m not sure when, exactly, it changes. But it does. Caroline stops saying things like you must have missed your family so much and starts saying things like you were so scared.
You were so afraid.
You were so terrified.
She says it while I eat a turkey sandwich for lunch. She says it while she watches me put on the makeup she’s chosen in the mirror. She says it while I look mindlessly at a rack of clothes she’s picked out and point at one.
You were so scared, Haley. He was so cruel to you. You had no choice but to give in to his demands.
Caroline repeats these things so many times they start to sound…
Reasonable.
It’s close to the truth.
I was afraid of Leo. In the beginning I was so scared. Who wouldn’t have been? Everything I’d heard about him painted him as vicious. Ruthless. Bloodthirsty.
The rumors were close to the truth. He can be vicious. He can be ruthless. But he is almost never bloodthirsty. He does what he has to do in order to stay alive and keep the people he loves alive. The Leo I met, the real Leo, thought guns were for cowards. He thought violence should be reckoned with. If you’re going to kill someone, do it with your eyes open. He said that to me after he killed three men who tried to rape me in an alley.
There is real rage in him. Real pain. Real violence. But he struggles with it. He works so hard to keep it in check.
He does.
No matter how many times Caroline says he was an awful, violent person to you.
Which is close to the truth. Or only part of the truth. The other part is how much I wanted him. How much I want him now. Leo Morelli has never once touched me like I was fragile or breakable. He has always touched me like I belonged to him. Like he wants me more than anything in the world.