After what felt like an hour of stop-and-go traffic, they finally parked the car. Beads of sweat dripped down my neck, and I craved a tall drink of ice water. I waited. And waited. And...waited.
"Let me the fuck out, Anthony!" I screeched. I was going to claw his eyes out when I got out of here. Someone slammed their palm on the trunk. "Fuck you!" I yelled once more.
Minutes passed. It could have been hours, but I wasn’t sure. The space seemed to get smaller and smaller. My breathing turned quick and shallow. What if I ran out of air? What if I stopped breathing? What if they left me here to bake in the summer heat? Who would take care of Grams?
And then the trunk opened. "You disappoint me, Juliet," Anthony said.
"And you piss me right the fuck off," I growled before scrambling to get out of the trunk. I was incredibly sore and felt dizzy from the heat.
"Aw, don’t hate me. I have a surprise for you," Anthony replied as Malice walked up to me, holding out a water bottle. I reached to grab it from his hands, but he moved it out of my reach, opting to unscrew the top and take slow steady gulps until the bottle was nearly empty. Then, only then, did he hand it to me.
"Dick," I growled before tossing it back with a hiss. Not enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Once I was done with the water, I took a look around. We were in a residential neighborhood that had seen better days. The wooden homes with chipped paint had overgrown shrubs in their yards and kids toys lining the drives. "Where are we?"
"Guess," Anthony replied while bouncing on the balls of his feet. Malice looked at his watch.
I stared at the house we were parked in front of. It did look familiar. "Wait…," I whispered while walking up the drive. "Is this the Kansas City Butcher’s house?" I squealed, as if Anthony had dropped me off at a Harry Styles concert and not the house of a mass murderer.
"The one and only," Anthony replied.
Malice eyed me like I was crazy.
"Can we go inside?"
"Yes. I figured we could take some photos, too, for your podcast landing page," Anthony replied before pulling out a high quality camera.
"This is fucking epic!" I yelled. I almost waltzed up to Anthony and Malice to wrap them up in a hug, but then I remembered that they tossed me in a trunk and drove me here, and decided I was still very, very angry with these assholes.
"Shall we, m’lady?" Anthony asked while holding out his hand.
I squinted at him. "Let’s do this thing," I mumbled before waltzing alone inside. Malice chuckled under his breath.
The home had been sitting vacant for many years, because it was covered in dust. Anthony hummed while opening the windows so we could see while I walked around. "I’ll get the camera set up!" he yelled while fumbling with the settings. Malice followed after me.
"So this interests you?" he asked tentatively.
I answered his question with one of my own. "You want to actually get to know me?"
He tried not to smile. "Keep your enemies close and all that." Malice then cleared his throat. "Anthony told me about your mother and the significance of Gwendola Lane. You never got any lead at all?"
I looked down at the linoleum floor and shook my head. "Never."
"You sure she wasn’t a deadbeat?" Malice asked. It was such a typical bullshit question. The police had asked it. The news had accused her of it when we went to them to get her missing persons case some exposure.
"She loved me," I whispered.
"Love is a weakness," Malice whispered while running a finger along some faded yellow wallpaper that was peeling.
"I disagree. You act like you’re speaking from experience," I replied.
"More as a spectator. I watched my parents’ love for one another get themselves killed. My mother was his greatest weakness, and my father had plenty of enemies. It was almost too easy how quickly they took her down. My father was shot while sobbing over her body. He didn’t know how to protect his own, was too blinded by care to do what needed to be done."
I looked in the kitchen at Anthony, who was taking photos of the countertops and floors.
"You care about your siblings," I noted. "Are they your weakness?"
Malice gritted his teeth and stared at me, pure venom in his expression. "I have no weakness. I take care of my own—"
"Except when you don’t," I interrupted. It was a low blow, but Malice needed a harsh reality check. "You aren’t invincible."
"I saved him though. I can save all of them. I can protect all of them."
I slowly reached out and brushed my knuckle over the back of his hand. "You’re proving my point, then," I whispered. "Love isn’t your weakness. It’s made you stronger. More cunning. Adaptable. Brutal. Determined."
"Oh my God! Is this a blood splatter?!" Anthony exclaimed, breaking the severity of the moment. I smiled. "Nope, spaghetti," he later added in a dejected tone.
"Go enjoy your creepy murder exploration with Anthony," Malice finally said after a long moment. "I’m going to wait in the car."
I watched his back as he exited the room. Anthony snapped a photo of me. "Beautiful," he whispered while staring at the digital screen.
25
I slept in Malice’s room last night. I felt awkward and out of place, but he had work to do, so I was alone. It was better than sleeping in Anthony's death dungeon. I had considered it, but when I went to scope it out there, I wasn’t sure what horrified me more: the three bodies sitting in refrigerators or the fact that Anthony's mattress was about two inches thick. No judgment, but I absolutely refused to sleep in the same room where I killed a man, on a bed that looked like it was made for prisoners.
Plus, the whole reason I left was to feel normal again; sleeping in the death dungeon where it all began wasn’t going to do me any favors. At least he had a fitted sheet and wasn’t sleeping on a bare, stained mattress. When I left, Anthony made a comment about having one of the rooms upstairs remodeled so that we could, and I quote, "cuddle."
Despite feeling exhausted, I woke up and got dressed for the day. I had the entire weekend off from Eden's Place. Malice made clear that I would eventually need to go back to work, but he understood my need for a break. He even smiled a bit when he suggested taking the weekend off, as if it thrilled him to piss off his brother. I hadn’t seen William since the pearls incident. I couldn’t determine if I wanted to see him or if the space between us gave me mental clarity. Loving William back would be the easy answer. He cared about me. He knew me. But I didn’t want to face the demands I didn’t have an answer for.
After getting dressed in high-waisted shorts and an oversized T-shirt, I French braided my brown hair and put some mascara and concealer on. My cheeks were rosy because of the constant stream of thoughts flowing through my mind. Malice had been vulnerable with me yesterday. Anthony was both intrusive and romantic. Having them both together and their undivided attention on me was equally thrilling and terrifying. I wasn't expecting to have as much fun as I did at the Kansas City Butcher’s house. We spent a good hour taking pictures and jotting down notes for my podcast. Anthony even wanted to be a guest host. And all the while, Malice watched us with his inquisitive eyes. He didn’t wait in the car like he said he would. He openly observed us, like he could figure me out. There was something about his gaze that made me feel warm. I felt like he could break me apart with one glance.