“Yeah, of course. I just wanted to check on her. What happened earlier is still bothering me.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve all done it.”
“Really? I can’t imagine you doing something stupid.” Aside from dispensing pills like a human gumball machine.
“Believe me, everyone in this house does something stupid at one point, or another.” She jerks her head toward me. “Go to bed. Tomorrow’s another fun day in the funhouse.”
With a snort, I make my way back toward the elevator.
“Hey,” she calls out to me and, after a glance back at Laura’s room, closes the space between us. “Be careful around him. Lucian. I wouldn’t get too friendly.”
“I wasn’t getting friendly. We were just casually chatting about his mom.”
“Nothing is ever casual with them. Everyone in this place is a master at hiding who they really are.”
“What is he hiding?”
Again, she looks back at Laura’s room. “Just watch yourself. I’m going to bed.”
Chapter 16
Lucian
Sixteen years ago …
Six hours with a tutor is about as thrilling as watching turtles fuck.
I’ve always been a fast learner, and never required the kind of hammering this tutor employs to teach. Show me once and move on.
Haven’t seen Solange today, and I’m anxious to meet up with her, to exhaust some of this pent-up frustration that has my muscles in knots.
Book bag slung over my shoulder, I enter my bedroom, but stop in my tracks on finding my father beside the bed. I let my bag fall to the floor, and he turns toward the sound. The accumulation of different sized knives I’ve collected over the last couple of weeks from the kitchen lies beside the BDSM magazine Solange gifted me. As I said before, I’m a quick study, and if I happen to find enjoyment in it, I’m even a bit enthusiastic. I’ve become something of a connoisseur of blades. Dull, sharp, jagged, smooth.
And I’ve managed to keep all this hidden from my mother, only pulling them out from under the bed on the times when I’m alone and keyed up. Imagining her face, screwed up in a cross between disappointment and repulsion, is enough to make me paranoid and cautious.
Somehow, my father having found it first is worse.
On instinct, I tug at the cuffs of my shirt, the phantom sensation of many slices I’ve made across my skin itching with my sudden discomfort.
“What is this, Lucian?”
Instead of answering, I lower my gaze and frown. Responding will do me no good. It’s obvious he’s searching for something that he can use as an excuse to leave another black eye on my face. Humiliate me in front of the staff and my mother. He’s never searched my room before, so why now?
He rolls up the magazine, and for a moment, I wonder if that’s what he’ll use to hit me this time, until he starts gathering up the knives, as well. He jerks his head toward those left on the bed. “Grab those. And follow me.”
Fuck.
He wants an audience.
I can see it now, all the maids, including Solange, the butler and cooking staff, all gathered in his office, with my knives and magazine laid out. He’ll ask who didn’t clean under my bed, who didn’t notice the knives going missing, just so there’s an excuse to have them there.
Reaching for the hilts, I grab a serrated steak knife and a much smoother paring knife. I’ve found the steak knife requires a lot of pulling and dragging, more damage and messy, difficult to control. I mostly use it for scraping the skin while I get off--never cutting. The best knife, I’ve found, is actually the dagger in my father’s hands. Particularly across the thigh. But that’s neither here, nor there, now that he’s found them.
I follow my father out of the bedroom, keeping my head low to avoid eye contact with anyone we might pass. We reach the elevator, and whereas there was a time I would plead for his forgiveness, to spare me whatever wrath is brewing inside of him, I don’t bother. I’ve grown to realize it’s useless where he’s concerned.
The silver doors open, and my father steps inside first. I follow after, and the doors close. Only, instead of pushing the button to the third floor, for his office, he lifts his hand and presses the signet ring to a button I always assumed broken.
I watch with curiosity as the button with the letter ‘S’ lights up. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
How many times I’ve toyed with that button, determined to know why it never lit up like the others. Where it took the elevator. Why I never saw anyone else attempt to access it.
Thoughts click into place, as I recall the one time I saw a group of men in black suits, business partners of my father’s, enter the elevator. My mother had summoned me to her sitting room, and I waited for the men to clear the elevator first. By accident, I pressed the button to my father’s office, which put me in a panic, but when the car arrived, and the doors opened, his office was empty. As if I’d imagined all those men in suits, like a sketchy dream.
My father twists around, facing the back wall. It raises the hairs on my skin, like any moment, he’ll turn around and stab me in the back with one of those knives.
The elevator comes to a stop, and a slight tremble snakes over my bones, while I wait for the doors to open. The sound of grinding metal from behind stirs my curiosity, and I turn around to find the back wall has opened on a cavernous room lit by sconces.
The catacombs, I bet, though I haven’t been down here to know for certain.
A thin gauze of cold air clings to my skin, when he leads me down hallways that seem to be made of stone. The clang of the metal knives is the only sound between us, over the steady thud of footsteps and the rush of blood pulsing in my ears.
We pass entrances that seem to lead to other tunnels, like a maze of them one could easily get lost in. My father comes to a stop in front of a wooden door brandished with brass moldings, like something out of the medieval era, but recently updated. Once again, he presses his ring to a panel on the door, and it opens to a small, dark room.
“What is this place?” I finally ask.
“Generations ago, your great-great-grandfather had this castle built on an Indian burial ground the locals wanted to bulldoze. He was granted permission to keep it and bury his own relatives here. It’s where we keep the bones of our ancestors.”
A light flips on, illuminating the room, in which a number of tools hang from the wall. Knives. Whips. Chains. Some I’ve never seen in my life. An old chair that reminds me of something from a dentist’s office sits smack in the middle, only this one comes equipped with straps, and some kind of contraption around the headrest that looks like the dental gear I wore when I was thirteen.
More clanging fills the room as he drops the knives onto a counter opposite the chair.
“They say it starts with animals, but that’s not always true. My obsession began with bones.” A piece of what looks to be the bottom jaw of something sits out on the counter beneath a cupboard that holds various jars, some filled with solutions and whatever soaks inside of them. “My father brought me here, and I was overwhelmed with the comfort I felt in this place.”
“What starts with animals?”