“No.” Her eyes soften, and she tips her head. “I just like to watch you sleep. For weeks, I’ve watched you now. Twitching with nightmares. Gripping the knife under your pillow. Whispering my son’s name.”
The room falls to a brittle silence, and it feels as if the temperature has dropped about ten degrees. A chill tickles the back of my neck again, crawling down my spine. “Why aren’t you …”
“Limping around?” She scratches at her own face, eyes lost for a moment, before she directs her gaze toward my ankle. “Oh, dear. You hurt yourself.”
“Yes. Mayor Boyd. He shot me.”
She gasps and rests her hand against my ankle from the end of the bed, setting my teeth on edge. The way she seems to study it has me drawing my knees up, sending her stare in my direction once more.
Trying not to be obvious, I slide my gaze toward the door again, catching the light beneath, and watch, waiting, for Lucian’s shadow to appear there. “There’s nothing wrong with you?”
“I suppose it depends on who you ask.” Head tipped back, she inhales a deep breath. “How curious that it doesn’t seem to reek of sex in here. With you lying sprawled out on his bed like this, surely he couldn’t resist.” Absent of the usual hobble in her gait, she practically glides closer me, her proximity sending a tremble through my muscles. “Such a telling aroma. Thick and heady. I remember the scent of sex very well. When you’re married to the biggest man-whore on the island, you become something of a hound dog. He fucked just about anything in a skirt. Would’ve fucked you, eventually.”
I shake my head, and she slaps her palm over my face, steeling my muscles.
“He would’ve fucked you. Yes, he would’ve. Whether you wanted him to, or not. He fucked Amelia mere hours after Lucian. How do you think she ended up pregnant?”
Oh, my God. My back stiffens as shock spirals down my spine. “Roark was Griffin’s son?”
She lowers her hand. “I didn’t think so at first. The paternity test came back positive for Lucian. Initially, we were just making sure it wasn’t her own father’s child, since Boyd always had a thing for very young girls. Most of the genetics between father and son are quite similar, though, I later learned. It’s when I requested further testing that I learned the truth about Roark. That child went from beautiful grandson, to stepson, overnight.”
The way the sparkle in her eyes dims to something darker sends a feeling of dread to my stomach. “Did you kill him? Did you give him those pills?”
The disturbing smile on her face doesn’t disappear with the question. “She was pregnant again, you know. Considering Lucian wouldn’t so much as touch the poor girl, who do you think the father might’ve been?”
“Did you kill him?” I ask again, desperate to know.
“She stopped taking her pills. Didn’t want to affect the baby growing in her belly.” Eyes spacy and unfocused, it’s as if she’s reliving the memory. “There is nothing more cunning and determined as a scorned woman.”
“Answer the question.”
“I couldn’t bear the humiliation. And poor Lucian. Believing Roark was his only son. It was too much. I snuck into Roark’s room that night, because Lord knows, that child feared everything. Wouldn’t come anywhere near the doll on Amelia’s nightstand.” The feathery touch of her fingers running up and down my arm sends goosebumps across my skin. “I fed him the pills. I watched him choke. His face went pale as freshly fallen snow. When Lucian entered the room, I hid in the boy’s closet. And ten minutes later, my humiliation was no more.”
The sound of shattering dishes snaps my attention to the doorway, where Lucian stands, his hands balled into fists at his sides,. “What have you done?”
“What I had to. You don’t think I know what your father pumped his money into? What he was so desperate to hide from me?”
“You killed my son.”
“Your brother. He wasn’t yours, Lucian.”
“He was my fucking son! The only thing I ever loved.”
“He would’ve destroyed your life. She was destroying your life, and he was the reason you almost died that night.”
Brows lowered, he steps deeper into the room. “I’ve tried to forgive you all these years. For forcing me into marriage. Forcing me into that bullshit institute.” Lips peeled back, he snarls and stalks closer. “What have you done?”
“Your father put you in that Institute. Not me. He put too much faith in that doctor. They both swore you’d forget that woman after a while.”
Woman? Amelia?
It seems to dawn on him, and he lifts his gaze to Laura, eyes darkening with betrayal. “Solange?”
The woman whose name Lucian spoke when he seemed to be having a hallucination a while back. When I asked about her, he told me she wasn’t real. She was a different affliction, he said.
“The sound of her name still makes me want to wretch.” Laura grimaces, as if she might just do that. “I knew from the very beginning she was trouble. The way she paraded around you and your father.”
“She was real.” Uncertainty bleeds through his voice, as if he doesn’t trust the answer.
“Of course she was real. It’s a wonder to me that you ever fell for all that brainwashing.”
Eyes narrowed, he stares back at her, his mind seemingly lost to unseen images. “You … never acknowledged her.”
“Why would I acknowledge the woman? She was nothing to me.”
Brows pinched tighter, he lowers his gaze, as if more images are coming to mind. “The staff … they always gave me strange looks.”
Laura scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Of course. The two of you looked ridiculous together. It was obvious to everyone that she was obsessed with you, Lucian. The way she’d pet you and fawn all over you. She couldn’t keep her hands off you.”
He rubs his hand over his head, back and forth, as if he might rub the hair right off. “She’d disappear for days at a time. Days.”
Rolling her shoulders back, Laura clears her throat. “I became privy to a cage your father kept in his chambers. Locked away in some secret little room. He’d lock himself up with her for days at a time, fucking her like his little pet, when he wasn’t torturing her. I’m surprised you couldn’t hear her screams through the walls.”
A strange numbness settles over me, and I can’t even begin to imagine what has settled over Lucian with this revelation. To think it even possible that he could’ve been brainwashed for so many years, into believing that woman didn’t exist. And for what purpose?
“You … you tried to convince me she wasn’t real.” Clutching his skull, Lucian paces at the end of the bed, while I sit trying to piece together the how’s and why’s of such a thing. “Do you have any fucking clue what they did to me there? Their methods of making me forget!” His bellow bounces off the walls, and I flinch at the flourishing anger in his voice. Judging by the cold disgust creeping across his face, it must’ve been torture. “All the drugs they pumped into me!”
“All your father’s brilliant idea. He figured since you suffered years of hallucinations with Jude, what was one more?” She sighs and mindlessly toys with a loose string on my shirt, making me lean away from her, eyeing the opposite side of the bed for escape. “Not like I’d ever let you run off with that dirty child molester, anyway.”