Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
If you can hear a man smile, I think I hear it. “Good night, my sweet Little Kitty.”
I curl into him, tucking myself against his chest, not minding the nickname as he wraps powerful arms around me, and I find there’s nowhere else I want to be right now. As I listen to the beat of his heart and feel the heat of his skin, there’s nowhere but here. There’s no one but him.
5
SANTOS
I’m sitting in the living room, watching the fire blaze in the fireplace. I turn the insignia ring over and over on my finger as time ticks by on the antique grandfather clock.
After Madelena fell asleep, I slipped out of the bed and went to get the surveillance footage with Odin. He’d had it hidden in Madelena’s old bedroom under some floorboards. I found an old diary in there but left it alone. I want Madelena to tell me her secrets. I don’t want to take them from her.
What happened between us up there was unexpected. At least what happened after I spanked her was. Spanking is an easy, harmless punishment, one that will make her think twice next time she considers doing something stupid that will harm either her or me. But the fucking afterward was unplanned.
I was aroused by spanking her. What man wouldn’t be? But I hadn’t intended on fucking her. It confuses the message.
Then after that came our conversation about the cuts. I don’t know what made me ask or what made her answer.
Her revelation about why she does it is interesting. She had no control over traumatic events of her life, and they just kept coming, a snowball growing into a fucking avalanche and taking her under. Not that her trauma was ever snowball-sized. She wasn’t that lucky. Cutting she could control. Pain she could control. I’m not sure I fully understand that infliction of pain on oneself when it’s not punishment, but it makes sense in a way, too.
If I think about the cuts I sliced over my arms and shoulders, that was different. I did have control, to a degree. Those were to inflict pain for punishment. It’s different than Madelena’s cutting to center the pain, give it a focus, make it manageable by concentrating it.
I take a deep breath in and sigh it out. That chapter is closed now for her. That’s what matters. That, and the fact that she gave me that little piece of herself. She let me see her.
And she thanked me for coming to get her. As if I wouldn’t. Still, the memory makes me smile, at least momentarily until my attention shifts to the pierced heart of my ring. Two swords. Was my father marking some betrayal? He was a strong man, and every strike against him only made him stronger, made his skin thicker.
Made him less forgiving.
Commotion in the hallway has me checking the time. It’s almost one in the morning. I hear my brother’s voice asking one of the guards where I am, and a moment later, he enters the living room.
“Anything?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “If he was there, there’s no physical evidence to prove it.”
“Good,” I say because this will be important for the Avery family.
He crosses to the bar to pour himself a whiskey. “Want one?”
“No, thanks.” I’m not sure why he always asks. He knows I won’t accept it. Not that I don’t want to. I just can’t have it.
He leans against the bar and sips. “Do you believe he was up there?” he asks me as I study him, thinking about what Madelena told me Thiago said.
“I don’t know why she’d make that up. She was pretty shaken up about it.”
“Well, good riddance, I say, right?” I don’t respond and he sips from his glass, eyes locked on me. “Don’t tell me you’re going to miss him.”
“He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“But he’s dead. I mean, if it’s true. And that’s what matters. One less person to cause trouble.”
“I’ll go to the Avery house tomorrow to see what’s up.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, actually. I need you to do something.”
“What?”
“I’m moving back into the house with Madelena.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows rise up in surprise.
“It’ll be better for her to be away from the lighthouse.”
“And you care about that why?”
“Because tormenting her gains us nothing.”
“But it is fun.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Just messing with you. It’ll be easier to watch her here anyway. Especially once she’s pregnant.”
My jaw tightens, and it takes me a minute to speak. “I want you and Mom to move to the apartments at Augustine’s.”
He’s mid-way to bringing his glass to his lips but stops. “Why?”
The front door opens then, and we both glance toward the hallway where we clearly hear our mother’s voice. I stand, shove my hands into my pockets, that bead burning a fucking hole in my brain. “Easier. You don’t like it here anyway,” I tell him as I listen to her heels clicking along the floor.