I force myself to look across the room at the painting. I should have tried harder to access the curse. If I did, I’d have be warned. I might even have been able to uncurse it. I was able to unweave the one on the little girl’s portrait without my tool kit. This one is similar, with the added effect of the sword. Like Marion said, terrifying but not deadly—not unless your heart stops in terror, as mine almost did. Worse than the little girl, but not as bad as the eldest daughter.
The saxophone hides what would have been a sword in the original painting. Did I trigger it when I touched the sax? No. I did that earlier, and nothing happened. I don’t think there is a trigger per se. It’s just randomly activates on someone in range.
I take a deep breath and lift one foot to start forward, but I can’t bring myself to follow through. I know it’s just an illusion. Well, yes, there are also the cuts, which hurt, but they’re not fatal, right?
None of that matters. The Vengeful Boy is as terrifying as Eldest Daughter. I keep flashing back to seeing that sword coming at my neck, feeling it cutting into my neck, thinking it had actually—
My breath quickens until I’m gasping for air. I look at the painting, and I want to march over there and uncurse it. I want to be strong enough to do that. Honestly, though, maybe I’m making excuses, but I’m not sure toughing this out would be strength as much as pride and stubbornness. I’m safe here, in this corner, and Cullan will come down soon. I’ll take his damn money to get out. I just have to wait a bit.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-eight
Four hours.
I have been in this corner for four hours. My legs ache, and I’m hungry, and it’s after ten at night, and I haven’t seen Cullan. Haven’t heard anyone. Twice I tried venturing from my corner, only to be driven back by the boy with his sword. Once I gritted my teeth and ran to the painting, only to realize just how foolish that was. It takes time to hear a curse, much less unweave it, and that work requires my full focus. I’d barely caught the first strands of the curse’s music before I ran back to my corner, bleeding from three fresh cuts.
I’ve crept to the door again and tried getting it open. I can’t. I already knew that. I just don’t know what else to try. I’m trapped in a box with that door and a painting. I’d battered at the door until the curse triggered anew and the boy stabbed me in the back.
My watch says it’s almost ten. It feels so much later.
Are my sisters wondering what happened to me? I missed dinner, but they knew I was with Connolly and I’d said not to expect me. If I don’t show up, they’ll think I’m spending the night with him, which neither will question, being too pleased that we finally moved past friendship.
What about Connolly himself? There’s no way he went home, found an empty house, shrugged and settled in to binge-watch TV for the evening. His father will know this, which means he’ll have taken steps to ensure Connolly doesn’t wonder where I am.
The Connollys have my phone. It’s locked, but I’m sure Cullan Connolly has people who can hack it enough to send a text to Connolly.
Took a ride-share home. Sorry! There’s a lot going on, and I need a little quiet time. Talk tomorrow!
Connolly would get that message and think I’d been uncomfortable in his “marital home” and needed time alone to work it through. He’d grant me that time. Pop off a quick text saying he understood, and when he didn’t get a reply, he wouldn’t question it. He’d give me my space.
No one knows I’m missing. No one will know until tomorrow, and even then, is it possible for Cullan to delay the inevitable? Use my phone to tell Connolly I need more time. To tell my sisters I’m taking a day off with Connolly and can they put up a note in the shop, thanks! Eventually, they’ll all realize something is wrong, but Cullan could buy himself a good twenty-four hours before anyone knows I’m missing.
Twenty-four hours. Curled up in a corner. Hungry, thirsty and scared. Cut and bleeding.
I keep telling myself Marion and Cullan Connolly aren’t monsters. They can’t be, if they raised sons like Connolly and Rian.
I remember how Cullan lamented the traits Connolly inherited from his mother. A sense of fairness. More, too. I hesitate to say softness, because there is none of that in Marion Connolly. But have I misjudged the situation, just a little?
Cullan said Marion needs a reason to hate me. A reason to keep Connolly away from me, too? Connolly wants to be with me, at least as a friend, and so she casts me in the role of gold-digger to justify her interference. But is that enough? She’s not a stupid woman. There’s a limit to how hard she can sell herself that story in absence of proof.
If Connolly really did pay for my insurance claim, that would seem to be proof. Still, it’s a little wobbly, especially if he’d done it under the radar, making me think my insurance had paid out. That letter to the lawyer, though, would cinch it. That would be just the evidence she needed to convict me.
The letter is fake. I know that. Someone gave it to Marion, and it annihilated any doubt that I was after her son’s money and could therefore be swept aside, by force if necessary.
Cullan wrote that letter. I’m sure of it. Oh, he’d sigh at the need for such subterfuge, but he’d still do it. Write the letter. Have the investigator find it and deliver it to Marion. There, see? Kennedy Bennett is evil, and you must stop her, Marion, before she destroys your son.
I’m not evil. Neither, I think, is Marion Connolly. Oh, I do not want to cross her, in any way, but I don’t think she’s the gorgon she’s been painted as. That’d be Cullan Connolly. The bastard who siccs his wife on me as if she’s the family guard dog, while he lounges at his desk and then, once she’s run out of steam, he locks me in the basement with a cursed painting.
I don’t care if you’re not a gold-digger, Kennedy Bennett. I just don’t want you with my son.
No, it isn’t about his son. He doesn’t want me throwing a wrench in the gears of his so-called dynasty.
I’m fuming over that, letting the heat of my anger burn through my fear, when there’s a soft click across the room. I leap to my feet as the door opens.
“I’ll take your damn—” I begin. Then I stop as Leon walks into the room.
“If Mr. Connolly sent you—”
Before I can finish, the boy bursts from his painting and charges, sword raised. Leon flinches, only to steel himself, as if knowing it’s an illusion.
The boy swings his sword, the blade slicing through Leon’s side. The guard hisses, eyes widening in shock. He staggers back. I run to him, and yet, while that altruistic impulse blazes, it does not fail to notice—a heartbeat later—that Leon has staggered backward through the open door.
Leon is on the floor, eyes wide as he clutches his bleeding side. I vault over him and race down the hall.
“No!” he shouts. “Wait!”
I stop and turn back to see what he wants. Ha! No. I keep going, picking up speed as I bear down. Behind me, he scrambles to his feet, shoes squeaking on the concrete floor. Then the thump of his running feet. I reach the door and twist the knob. I’m throwing it open when he grabs me.
I kick and punch as he tells me I don’t want to do that, don’t want to go out there, he’s here to rescue me.