CHAPTER SEVEN
My scream echoes throughout the entire house. I scream until my voice is hoarse. Until my ears are ringing. Until I’m sure even the most unconcerned parent will come, at least to make sure I stop. One minutes passes. Two. My voice turns hoarse.
The lock turns with a soft click.
I’m sitting on my bed when Mom opens the door. It’s enough to make me start, because I didn’t expect her to be home. It’s only been an hour since Daddy locked me in my room.
Her hair is up in a beautiful arrangement, her gown long. She looks beautiful. There’s a necklace of diamonds glittering around her neck, and it makes me wonder if they pulled out some of the black-market diamonds to make wear. Or if maybe she would consider that beneath her. Those diamonds are good enough to sell, good enough to use to purchase proper diamonds from the jewelry store.
“Emily,” she says, her voice sharp. “Why on earth are you making that racket?”
“Because something’s going to happen.”
Though I’m less and less sure about what that something will be. Dad’s down in the parlor with his gun on the coffee table, a one-man army defending his stash of diamonds. His paranoia has kept him safe from consequences all these years. What’s to say it will stop working now? But there’s no time for a new plan. Only improvisation.
Because that scream will bring more than an exasperated parent.
It will bring Niko.
Mom steps inside the room, setting down the key she used to open the door. Maybe if she had come and visited me like this on other nights when she went to charity events, things could have been different. Maybe if I had never seen Daddy kill that man…
But it would have always come to this.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
That makes me laugh, hollow and sad. “Is this what you wanted to happen?”
“I know you didn’t make a deal with Sergio De Fiore. You said that to make him stay put.”
My family is basically a briar bush. It’s impossible to make a move without being cut. “Yes, I knew he wouldn’t believe me. I knew he would do the exact opposite of what I suggested.”
“And once he calms down, he’ll see that you were only helping us.”
I look out the window, where the sunset peeks over the wall, where shadowed ivy splits strands of red sunlight. “And then what? Then he’ll be more likely to marry me off to some asshole who can control me instead of killing me off?”
The silence isn’t as shocked as I want it to be. After a long moment she says, “Your father says a lot of things when he’s angry. He doesn’t mean it.”
“He doesn’t mean it,” I repeat. “So it isn’t true that he planned that? Are you saying he lied?”
“Emily,” she says sharply. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
There’s the mother I know and love. And it’s true, I do love her. Despite the fact that she’s contemplated my murder with my father. Despite the fact that she’s helped silence me for over a decade.
Despite the fact that I hate her, I love her.
That love will come with me, however I end up leaving this house. Whether I manage to escape or whether I end up six feet under. It ends tonight.
“I told him the truth, but not the whole truth.”
“And what is that?” she says in her best mom voice. As if maybe I spilled some juice on the carpet. If maybe I told someone else that my parents are murderers and criminals.
“He’s so focused on the front gate that he keeps looking out the window. But the person who’s here to steal the diamonds. They’re already on the grounds. They have a secret way in.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“I’m telling you, Mom. There’s someone outside the window. They have a ladder. That’s how they’ve been communicating with me. It’s the gardeners.”
She rushes to the window, but I remain on the bed. I already know what she’ll see. Niko is climbing the window. Her shriek can be heard throughout the whole house. She rushes the hallway, not even remembering to lock me back in.
Maybe it doesn’t matter because she’s calling for Daddy. We have minutes. Seconds.
That’s when I go to the window.
Niko reaches the top of the ladder, eyeing her through the doorway.
“Are you okay?” he asks, searching my face as if for bruises.
“I’ve actually never been better,” I say, which is maybe the first real lie I’ve ever told. “But you need to get the diamonds now. Daddy will be up here any minute. This is the only chance. After this he’ll lock them up tight and far away.”
“I’ll come back for you.”
Except by the time he’s back Daddy will have me locked up tight and far away. Or more likely, he’ll turn that gun on the person who took those diamonds away. Me.
“I know,” I say, even though I don’t quite believe him.
Isn’t that ironic? That no one has ever believed me. And here in this moment when my salvation rests with this boy, this man, this something else, I doubt him.
He must sense my doubt, because he presses a hard kiss to my lips. “I will, Em.”
The screeching gets louder. My father’s footsteps thundering up the steps. “Go!” I say, urgent.
Niko is halfway down the ladder when Daddy shoves me from the window. A gunshot rings through the air, and suddenly I’m nine years old again. Suddenly I’m watching a man fall backward. Somehow knowing that he’s never going to get back up again.
And so much blood. That night changed my life forever.
Did he hit Niko? There’s a knot in my throat, because I couldn’t forgive myself.
“Damn it,” my father says, and I breathe for the first time in what feels like hours. Or seconds. He missed. Then he whips the gun to face me. “You.”
It’s my mother who stops him. She grabs his arm, yanking him to the side, proving she’s stronger than she looks in that ballgown. “The diamonds,” she hisses. “You left them downstairs?”
And then he’s gone from the room, leaving me to deal with later.
In the stillness that follows, my mother looks at me with a grave expression. I want to imagine that I see regret there, but I know that she blames me for everything. “I didn’t want this for you,” she says softly. “I tried to save you.”
“I needed you to save me when I was nine years old. When I told the truth and you called me a liar. When you convinced everyone I was incapable of telling the truth.”
“And let your father go to jail?”
There’s an entire mountain of anger inside me. I’ve only ever tasted it in bits of dust, but now I feel the full power of it. “Yes, he should have gone to jail. That’s what happens to murderers. You picked him over me a long time ago.”
“Do you think that boy is going to pick you?” she asks. “He only wants the diamonds.”
“I know,” I say, and in the cracking of my voice is the cold, hard truth. Maybe Niko cared about me a little bit. Maybe he cared about my body. But he won’t risk his safety to save me.
He’s not going to come back.