23
Jericho
I spend that night locked in my study as my brother’s words repeat in my head. As her face floats into memory. As the photograph of the crime scene I can’t stop looking at stares back at me.
She’s no match for me. Zeke’s right. She’s not meant for our world. But she’s in it. He means to strike up a bargain with Joseph Manson? How old is that fuck? Sixty? More? She’s fucking nineteen years old.
There’s the vision of her face again. Her face when she came. How her eyes closed. How she tilted her head back baring her throat to me. How the vulnerable flesh of her neck tasted.
No match.
How my name sounded on the breath of her whisper as she came on my fingers.
My dick is hard. Fuck. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. How many women have I fucked over my lifetime? Countless. How many times have I given any of them, apart from Kimberly, a second thought? How many do I remember the name of? The face? The way they sounded when they called out my name?
All that was to have died after Kimberly. It had for a very long time. Fucking was release. That’s all. But now, with her—with her of all people—I can’t stop myself from remembering. From bringing my fingers to my nose to catch the fading scent of her.
Fuck. Maybe it’s been too long. I can’t remember the last time I fucked a woman. At the penthouse maybe? That woman in the short maid’s uniform shaking her ass at me. Can’t even remember her face much less her name. Just a fuck. But Isabelle Bishop? I’ve memorized every single detail.
I already jerked off when I got home. Twice. My hair is still wet from my shower. I should just go up to her room, help myself to what’s mine. Why I’m not, I don’t fucking understand. What do I care if she’s a virgin on our wedding night? I can bleed her now. Blood on the sheets is blood on the sheets.
But for some reason I don’t, and I tell myself it’s because there’s too much to be done. And there is.
I put the photographs back into the folder and take the single sheet that traces the transfer of funds from Carlton Bishop to Danny Gibson and back. I snap a picture of it with my phone. It’s all I need. And I type out a text:
You are cordially not invited to the wedding of Isabelle Bishop and Jericho St. James…
I attach the photo I just took. Because The Rite does offer Isabelle some protections. In order for a guardian to not overstep or take more than his due, any man who has been granted The Rite over a woman cannot marry that woman or form any bond without either her father, brother, uncle giving his blessing. Or, in the case there is no father, brother, or uncle, then The Tribunal gives their blessing. It’s to protect the woman from exactly what I’m doing. And I can say I’m glad the safety is in place for the sake of my own daughter. I know well what men are capable of.
But with this little nudge, Carlton Bishop will bless our union.
I send another text. Tribunal building. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning or I hand all the evidence over to The Tribunal to deal with.
I have no doubt he’ll come. His cowardice will bring him.
The clock in the hall sounds midnight. A knock comes on my door. The touch is too light to be Zeke.
“Come in,” I say, scrubbing my face.
My mother enters looking more tired than I feel.
“Why are you still awake?” I ask her.
“Why are you?”
I gesture to the liquor cabinet to offer her a drink. She shakes her head and we both sit on the couch in my office.
“The Bishops have none of my love,” she says.
“But…” I start for her, because that’s why she’s here.
“I expect you to treat her as I expect my son would treat a woman. Any woman.”
“Not like dad you mean?” I ask before I can catch myself.
She winces and instantly I feel guilty. I look away.
“I think you’ll do better than him,” she says, her voice hard. “I hope so at least.”
What Santiago said about my father’s death plays back in my mind. And not just what he said but the look on his face. The moment his gaze purposely settled on Zeke.
Our father died six years ago. He was not a gentle man. I knew that growing up. He wasn’t physically abusive with us, not overly so, but he wasn’t exactly the one you’d run to when you scraped a knee either. As much as he wanted to belong to the upper echelon of The Society, he also harbored a special hatred for IVI. I wonder if that longing wasn’t what fueled the hate. He had to work for every scrap they gave him. Buying into the rank of Sovereign Son was his fuck you to them. Because one thing our family has always excelled at is making money. A lot of it. Enough that even a secret society like IVI cannot turn their noses up at no matter the source of it.
He had mistresses. Many. I’m not even sure he loved our mother. But their marriage was beneficial to both. It meant funds for her father, and status for mine. Her father’s agreement to give my mother to my father was essentially no different than a sale of goods.
I didn’t know how brutal he was to her until after she lost her hair from the chemo. I wonder if Zeke knew. I think he did. And I know now that was just one indicator of what my mother endured over the years they were married.
For Sovereign Sons of The Society, the marking ceremony after the wedding is just as important a ritual as the wedding itself, as the bloody sheets, as obtaining the blessing of The Tribunal. It’s just the way it is within The Society. The marking is the physical placement of the Sovereign Son’s seal, in our case the two-headed dragon, on the back of the woman’s neck. It’s a show of ownership and has become, for the women—once placement has been endured—a show of rank.
There are two acceptable methods of marking a woman in this modern day. Fire and ink. That wasn’t the case in the early days when there was only one.
Both are still offered ritualistically during the ceremony although the old method is just that, ritual. Only a handful of men have chosen it even though the fires burn in their pits and the irons are heated through. Ritual. That’s all.
Our father, however, chose the old method.
I glance at the scarf my mother wears around her neck. The branding was to show her and all those present, a member from every sovereign family, that although her family was above his in rank, she would be beneath him in marriage. She would know her place from the first moment the glowing iron sank its searing metal into her flesh, and he burned his mark onto her body.
The thought of my mother kneeling before our father and enduring the pain, the humiliation, makes me sick.
She watches me. She knows what I’m thinking. It’s all I think about when I see one of her scarves around her neck. She’s never without one.
“The marking,” she starts and stops. That’s all she needs to say.
“Ink,” I tell her.
She nods, a visible relief to her features. Which only makes me wonder at my brother’s words of earlier. How much a monster do they think me?
“Everything is ready.” She stands. “And I will sleep now.”
I stand too. “I’ll walk you up.” I haven’t looked in on Angelique since I got home. We go upstairs together and part ways at Angelique’s door. I look after her, wondering about our mother. She is one of the strongest women I know. And she understands what Bishop did, the role he played in Kimberly’s death. And she does want her death avenged but she, like Zeke, has softened at the sight of Isabelle Bishop.