Once I’m bound, they stand me up. The one I kicked wasn’t the one who had reached for the towel. He raises an arm to slap me, but my uncle grabs it.
“Not her face,” he says. “Don’t mess up her face.”
But when the soldier makes a fist to punch me in my belly, he doesn’t interfere. He just looks on as I double over, the wind knocked out of me so I can’t even scream.
Once is enough, but he does it a second time, before I’m lifted, doubled over, and carried out through the house. I see Alec on the floor at the opposite end of the room. He’s cradling his arm but he’s alive. The rest of Cristiano’s soldiers are lying on the ground dead or dying. I wonder how I didn’t hear the bullets, but I know a moment later when we get outside. Another soldier is dragged to his knees and executed with a bullet to the back of the head. The gun is fitted with a silencer.
I’d scream but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this. Not even the second or third. And it all happens so fast. The icy rain on my naked skin, my feet scraping against stone, shin slammed into the back of the car as I kick my legs, bound to make a mermaid’s tail. I’m lifted and dumped into the trunk of a waiting car.
35
Cristiano
It’s a dream. I know it. There’s a texture to it. An echo in the sound. I know it and it still doesn’t make a difference. This fucking nightmare, this chapter of my life, will always own me.
Except that this time, something’s different. But I can’t figure out what it is.
The marble is cold beneath me as I watch the blood circle widen. Deep red on pristine white.
They’re already here. My brothers. My father. I can hear them, but I can’t open my eyes to see.
I hear her too. My mother.
I drag my eyelids open. The first thing I see is my own reflection in the mirror of blood. My face white as the marble should be.
I should have died. Why didn’t I die?
They’re on their knees. Michael’s already dead. His eyes are open but he’s already dead.
That echo comes again and then I hear it. I hear him tear her dress. See her pushed to her knees in my periphery. See her hands slip in Michael’s blood.
She’s wearing a red dress tonight. She wasn’t wearing red that night. But maybe that’s blood on the dress and I can’t see straight.
I want to wake up. I want to wake the fuck up. Too much whiskey. My uncle was right.
“I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much.”
No. That’s wrong. That’s Scarlett’s voice. She doesn’t belong here. Not in this dream.
But she’s here and she’s crying. Sobbing. Calling for me. Asking for help. Pleading for it.
And I can’t move. But when I open my eyes again, I see him. I see Marcus on her and all I can do is lie there in my own blood. All I can do is watch him do it just like the last time.
“…won’t hurt as much.”
But it’s not my mother on her knees before him. It’s not her in the red dress.
I claw at the floor, hands slipping in my own blood. And she’s calling for me. She’s begging me to help her. To make him stop. And I can’t fucking get to her.
“…won’t hurt as much.”
He hurt her. That’s why she’d drank so much the first night because she expected pain. I remember it now.
I wouldn’t have hurt her.
“Scarlett.” Does she hear me? “I’m coming.”
But I’m not. I can’t. All I can do is watch her face lying in Michael’s blood. Tears streaming from her eyes as Marcus moves behind her. Until the end. Until the very end when he brings the knife to her throat and whispers something I can’t hear. Something that makes her mouth fall open as he grins like Satan himself and slides the knife across her throat. And I swear I hear it. I hear the ripping of skin. Hear the pouring of blood.
“No!”
I jolt upright and the moment I do, it’s like I rammed my head into a fucking brick wall.
“Fuck.”
I look around. Remember.
After I left the house, I went to a strip club. I don’t even know why. I’m not even a little interested in those women. And then there was whiskey. A lot of whiskey before someone called my uncle and he came. I tried to strangle him when he called Scarlett a whore. He pulled a gun on me.
Which explains why I’m in my room at the Naples house with a fucking pounding headache. I’m actually not sure if I’m hungover or still drunk.
I get up and have to hold on while the world rights itself.
“I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much.”
I get to the bathroom, take a piss then wash my hands and my face. I look like hell. Like death barely warmed over. I’m surprised the mirror doesn’t crack.
“I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much.”
Scarlett’s voice repeats that sentence for the tenth fucking time. I remember when she said it. How I thought it sounded odd. And I think about last night. About how I felt when I was inside her. When I realized the truth.
Betrayed. That’s the feeling. It hardens you.
“I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much.”
I open the medicine cabinet and swallow four aspirin. It won’t help, I already know.
I’m just walking out of the bathroom when the bedroom door opens. My uncle is standing there with a strange look on his face. He’s not dressed in his usual suit but in his pajamas. I’m not sure I’ve seen him in anything but a suit since I was a kid.
“What time is it?”
“Early. Seven.”
I glance to the window. The sun is a line of deep orange in the break of dark clouds that still dirty the sky. I turn back to my uncle, sobering up as I take in the pajamas, the expression on his face.
Warning bells ring in my ears. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I hear myself ask.
“There was a problem.”
My heart races as my brain processes. “What problem?”
“You should have told me where you were going.”
“What. Problem.”
“Sit down.”
“Fucking tell me.”
“There was an ambush.”
“What?” My stomach bottoms out.
“All the soldiers are dead.”
Dead. “Scarlett?”
“They were probably looking for you.”
“Scarlett?” I ask again through gritted teeth.
“It’s a good thing you weren’t there.”
“Scarlett!” I demand.
“Gone.”
36
Scarlett
We drive for hours. Or at least it feels like hours. All I hear in the trunk of this old, beat up sedan is rain. All I feel is every bump, every tiny stone, every pothole on the road.
My wrists are bound behind my back. My shoulders and arms ache and the zip ties they bound me with cut into the skin of my wrists. I’ve managed to turn myself, so my feet touch one of the rear lights. I’m not sure what I hope to accomplish though. Kicking out the light? And then what?