Tears well in her eyes but she doesn’t look away. Doesn’t attempt to pull free.
“While your uncle stood by and watched.”
Those tears begin their procession down her cheeks, thick and wet. But she still won’t look away. Good. She and I both need to look at things with eyes wide open.
“I could force you, Scarlett. I could humiliate you. Hurt you.”
I feel her swallow when she lowers her lashes, letting those tears rush out.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” she asks, voice quieter than usual.
“You don’t make this easy, you know that?” I let her go, step back, and run my hand through my hair.
“How did you know?” she asks, her voice tight.
“Your uncle told me.”
“Of course, he did. Did he tell you he tried to stop them? Because that would have been a lie.”
“I know the kind of man he is.”
Silence, then, “What do you want, Cristiano? Why are you here? I’m going to do what you said, what we agreed. So why bother talking to me now after the way you treated me last night?”
“Do you remember what I said last night about my enemies?”
I see from her face she does. It was graphic. Overdone, I admit.
She nods.
“I need a friend, Scarlett. Just one friend.”
She studies me, confused. I get it. I’m confused too. Is this what I’d intended to say when I came in here?
She snorts then, shaking her head and wiping errant tears off her cheeks.
“Why do you do this?” she asks.
“Do what?”
“Mess with me. First there’s what happened last night. You almost kill me, then you…you kiss me and,” she pauses, breaking eye contact and pushing her fingers into her hair. “After you do what you do, you order me out of your study like I’m used up. A piece of trash.”
“You’re not a piece of trash. I never said that.”
“It’s how I felt. How you made me feel.”
“Well, that wasn’t my intention. I was protecting you.”
“Protecting me?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head again as if dismissing that. “Then you drag me upstairs practically pulling my arm out of its socket and lock me in here. Then this morning you come in here looking all guilty—”
“Guilty?”
“And manhandle me again, then ask me to be your friend? Are you schizophrenic? Is that what this is?”
I chuckle. I shake my head this time.
“Have you gone off your meds, Cristiano?”
“Be careful, Scarlett.”
“Because if you think I’m your friend, you’ve surely lost your mind.”
I fist my hands at my sides, force myself to breathe. This was a mistake. Saying what I just said—god what the fuck even possessed me to say it?
I need to get out of here before I hurt her because man does she know the buttons to push.
“You and me, we’re enemies. Enemies to the end,” she says, a new energy fueling her words.
“To what end?” My self-control is gone in an instant. Before I can think, I slap my hands to the wall on either side of her head so hard and so loud, I’m sure there’s a dent.
She jumps, deer-in-headlights eyes on me. There’s only fear in them now.
“You want to be my enemy, Little Kitten?”
I watch her throat work as she swallows.
“You got it. Enemies until the end. Know that you’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.”
Only when I push off do I hear her audibly exhale.
She wobbles and slides down the wall a little before locking her knees to stay upright.
I fist a handful of hair to make her look at me. “You just make sure you look pretty for me and you say those two little words. Because if you don’t, I’ll break your brother’s neck in front of your eyes and throw his broken body at your feet. Are we clear?”
She stares at me with terror in her eyes. Stares at me like she’s looking at the devil incarnate. And maybe she is.
“Are we fucking clear?” I scream and she whimpers, cowering. Cowering away from me. And fuck me.
I release her, slam a fist into the wall.
I hate myself right now. Hate myself because what have I become? What kind of monster am I?
“Ah, fuck you Scarlet! Fuck you for doing this to me!”
27
Scarlett
“Fuck you for doing this to me.”
Right.
Because I made him threaten to break my brother’s neck. I made him into this crazy man who has a personality disorder.
Who’s scary as fuck.
I suck in a shaky breath. He wants me to look pretty tonight? That’s not happening. My eyes are puffy and red, skin blotchy from crying all day long and over what? Him? God. Something is seriously wrong with me. Maybe it’s me with the mental disorder.
“I need a friend, Scarlett. Just one friend.”
I pick at my cuticle and try to forget how he looked when he said that. How he sounded.
How much more screwed up can things get?
Someone knocks on the door and I expect Lenore with another tray of food. She’s tried twice now but it’s not that I don’t want to eat. It’s that I can’t.
It’s close to five so I guess it’s a soldier making sure I’m getting ready. I’ll be ready. I won’t look pretty but I’ll put on a dress and show up and say those two words. Period.
“Come in.”
But when the door opens, Noah’s standing there looking fresh from the shower, wearing clean clothes and smiling at me.
“Noah!” I hop off the bed and run to him, jump into his arms. I swear he’s grown taller just in the last few days.
He hugs me back. “You’re going to crush my ribs,” he says.
“Oh, God it’s so good to see you.” An onslaught of tears springs from my eyes.
Alec clears his throat. “Chopper leaves in half an hour. Your brother will bring you to the roof.” He looks at Noah who nods.
“What’s this? Are you working for him already?” I ask my brother.
Noah doesn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Cristiano wants to know if you need anything,” Alec says.
“I just need him to go to hell. Can you tell him that for me?”
He clears his throat. “Thirty minutes.”
Once the door is closed, Noah walks in a circle, taking in the room. “Have you been living in this lap of luxury while I’ve been in that cell?” He picks up a plastic toy and cocks his head to the side. “How old does he think you are, like five?”
“It’s his sister’s room. And he moved the lock to the outside. That’s why I’m in here. You agreed to work for him?”
“What choice did I have? And besides, he hasn’t been horrible to me. Better than my own brothers, at least.”
“Well, shit. Isn’t he wonderful then?” I grin sarcastically, probably looking like some maniac. “Because our brothers set the bar pretty damn low, Noah.”
“This is our world, Scarlett. It’s been our world. You need to stop fighting it and figure out a way you can live inside it.”