by Lana Sky
A Touch of Dark
Painted Sin Book 1
Lana Sky
A Touch of Dark
A Touch of Dark By Lana Sky
Copyright © 2019 by Lana Sky
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by Charity Chimni
Editing by Mickey Reed Editing
Formatting by Charity Chimni
Proofreading by Charity Chimni
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
A Word from the Author
About the Author
Also by Lana Sky
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
I hate that stupid saying, but sometimes it’s the only one that fits—poetic justice, in a sense. My father used to be a monolithic figure in this city, a giant in his own right. But then he fell pretty damn hard, inspiring a million cliched headlines.
Ex-Judge Under Fire.
Racial Bias Suspected in Overturned Murder Conviction.
Today’s doozy read: Killer Vindicated?
Some asshole brought a stack of the latest tabloids to the office and left them in the damn boardroom. To provoke me? Torment me? No matter the reason, any other day, I’d do the daughterly thing and burn them all.
Unfortunately, it’s already pushing midnight, and I was able to sequester myself in my office only a few minutes ago. Locked behind the frosted glass door, the fake smile I’ve been sporting for hours falls flat.
Tonight, my father’s drama has to take a backseat for once. What was that line he always spouted?
A man is only as strong as the cracks in his mask.
He loved uttering that one from the bench more than any other saying. As one of the harshest judges in the state, he excelled at peeling back the façades of those in his courtroom and revealing the monsters lurking underneath: Criminal. Liar. Sociopath.
Until now.
Overnight, he’s gone from hero to hypocrite and his advice doesn’t feel so warranted anymore. Some people wear masks for a fucking reason.
Mainly to hide behind.
Nerves creep down my spine as I finally feel along the wall for the light switch while looking everywhere but at my desk. Alone, I can’t suppress what is so easy to hide around a room full of analysts hanging on my every word. None of them suspected what this day truly means to me—at least apart from the “I’m a workaholic” cliché.
How had Sharla from accounting put it? “You must be the only woman in the world who loves when stuffy meetings derail her birthday plans, Ms. Thorne. Like, seriously.”
She had a point. The date on the calendar is an ominous reminder: I can’t avoid my present forever.
Happy birthday to you.
That awful tune echoes in my mind as I face my desk and spot the beautiful gift someone left beside my computer monitor. A rectangular box wrapped in black paper and topped with an ebony bow.
I know that security footage or the guard downstairs will refute the suspicion that anyone came into my office while I was gone, but there is no erasing his presence. My nostrils flare, catching the familiar scent of sweat and cologne, and a grim sense of nostalgia washes over me.
Happy birthday to you.
I flatten my hand against my hip to stop from reaching for the phone. No. I don’t need to call my therapist tonight. I’m a big girl. According to that fucking book she made me read, “mentally healthy” people can find the positive in any situation. Think happy thoughts and such.
Like, there will only be ten death threats waiting on my office voicemail once I gather the nerve to check. There’s a positive. Score one for optimism.
You and your whole racist family can go fuck yourselves.
I hope you get raped like that Borgetta whore, you bitch.
I’m sure they’d love your daddy in prison.
The insults serve as a fitting soundtrack as I unwrap my present. Surprise. Like every year, I’ve received a bottle of vintage wine—but it’s the thought that counts. Keeping in the spirit of optimism, I choke down my customary sip. Three years of receiving the same brand and I’ll never get over the bitter taste. Or the name of the vintage, printed in red on a black label: Enduring Tradition.
I continue to sip as I run my fingers over the ebony business card the bottle came with—but I wait until my breathing steadies before flipping the card over. White font forms a simple message:
To another year. — Simon
My hand shakes as I pour more wine into a two-dollar mug scavenged from a drawer. It has a smiley face on the front, beneath the headline: You’re never lonely with a…
I contort my mouth while eyeing my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows across from my desk. The woman staring back at me looks regal in her black Versace cocktail dress—a congratulatory present to myself that I now regret. The wine is worth more.
Adding insult to injury, I look exhausted despite the smile. Nothing like the beaming, prize-winning marketer gazing from the framed photo behind me. To be fair, she’s a creation achievable only with the finest coating of makeup and tweaking in photoshop. Juliana Thorne is her name, and I barely know her.
A paragraph-long blurb on the company’s website reveals all anyone needs to understand anyway. Selling lies is her one talent, and her résumé is the only interesting thing about her—that and her coveted last name.
Sighing, I set my mug aside. I’ve wasted enough time. Simon needs his answer after all.
I open another drawer and withdraw a blank postcard before grabbing a pen from the neat row beside my keyboard.
I’m fine. To prove it, I inhale deeply and drag the nib of a pen across the page. It only shakes twice. To another year, I write as neatly as I can.
With that, the celebration commences. I swipe my desk clean and tuck the postcard into the pocket of the black coat hanging on a hook behind my office door. Then I sling it over my arm and step out into the hallway that attaches my office to the main suite.
I’m the only one left behind, as per usual. The janitor already switched the lights off, saving me the trouble of having to lock up. So I toss my postcard, addressed only by name, into the outgoing mailbag and then take the elevator to the main lobby. Gus, the security guard, is lounging against his podium, flicking through a skin mag. He looks up at me and winks as I slip past him.
“Happy birthday, girlie,” he says. Then he frowns. “Everything all right, Ms. Thorne?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Good. I hope you aren’t paying attention to the news, either. We all know that beaner got what he deserved. He killed that girl. Your father just had the guts to prosecute. It’s not his fault he offed himself, is it?”
When I don’t reply, he continues. “I mean
, a man like your dad can’t have an evil bone in his body, taking in a traumatized little girl out of the goodness of his heart—”
“Goodnight, Gus!” I force a smile before leaving the building, forsaking the heat for the frigid night air.
Outside, my grin falls flat as that mental tune starts up again, building in time with my surging heartbeat. There isn’t enough room in my skull to care about my father’s legal issues and the narrative being spun around him.
Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday to you.
I grit my teeth to refocus. A town car is already waiting for me out front. The driver appears by my side to usher me inside, and I’m left with only a blurred view of the city to distract me.
That and the chatter of a radio station coincidentally discussing the one topic that seems to be the talk of the town.
“That judge should be stripped of his title,” a presenter says. “They only convicted the kid because he was an immigrant—”
“Not just any immigrant though,” someone interrupts. “That ‘kid’ came from a family that isn’t exactly innocent. Say what you will, but the Villas have their fingers in some shady stuff. Everyone knows it. But hell, if I wind up in a river tomorrow, we know why—”
“Could you turn that down?” I ask the driver, who complies.
But as silence falls, I quickly realize my mistake when my thoughts turn to what I know is waiting for me at the end of this short trip.
Simon always sends two presents. One goes to the office, which I’ll have to open in a public setting. The second comes to my home address—which he manages to find despite how many hotels, motels, or high-rise condos I’ve rented, booked, or hidden in. The past three years, I’ve stopped trying to evade him and maintained the same sublet penthouse of a luxury hotel in the heart of downtown. It boasts the highest standard of security around, with cameras in all the halls and guards on twenty-four-hour patrols. I even paid extra for a private floor.
Regardless, like every year, I find a neatly wrapped box waiting before my door.
I stoop for it and unlock my door, knowing that, just like at my office, the guard down below will deny letting anyone up and a review of the cameras will show nothing. After so many years, the fear gripping my chest has become reflexive at this point.
Morbid tradition.
After stepping inside the suite, I cross the foyer and head straight for my bedroom, switching on every light I pass. The gift under my arm feels more familiar than the modern apartment with its open floorplan and gray color scheme. In a sick way, he became my fixture, Simon. No matter what, I could always count on him.
We will always play our game.
Tonight, I set the gift on the edge of my bed and fish a bottle of wine from under the mattress first. My toes curl shamefully. Coward. This brand is cheaper than the stuff he sent me and burns going down. I chug right from the bottle until my stomach aches and the world spins around me, a merry-go-round of monochrome. Only now do I sink to the floor and wrestle the gift onto my lap.
Happy, happy birthday.
He chose red wrapping paper, like always. Her favorite color. I run my fingers over the surface of it. Malicious intent lingers in the neatly folded corners and carefully applied pieces of tape. He selected the color of the bow, too. It’s a deep, rich shade of purple. My favorite.
Details like that mattered to children the most. A favorite color, betrayed by a shirt or backpack, could spark a friendship over lunch with few words spoken. It was a craft you could hone to a T if you knew what to look for. The loner girl lurking around the edges, shuffling her brand-new shoes in the hopes they’d be noticed by someone. Anyone.
A good monster could prey on that weakness and turn anxiety into trust. I used to excel at it.
Enough reminiscing. A forced exhale can’t ease the tension seizing my lungs as I unwind the ribbon and lift the lid.
Swaths of white tissue paper shield the objects inside. The first is a newspaper clipping. Local Girl Missing proclaims the headline. In the body of the article, the writer went straight to the point. Seven-year-old Leslie Matoda disappeared shortly after four p.m. on October 28th…
I stop reading. The article slips from my fingers and the wine bottle replaces it. Two hard pulls and the resulting dizziness almost erase the guilt searing a hole through my stomach. Almost. Squeezing my eyes shut can’t block out the memories, however.
Naked trees formed a silent audience as he placed the knife to her throat.
“Now remember,” he warned. “Simon says play…”
I gulp down more red liquid. Less clarity. Dizzy. Dizzier. It’s no use. Terror crawls up my throat like bile until my mouth opens and only noise comes out. High-pitched and broken.
Damn it.
I’m not breaking. I’m practicing. My therapist is a fan of therapeutic screaming. “Try it into your pillow,” she likes to suggest every other session. “I think you’ll benefit from a cathartic release, Juliana.”
Bullshit. Screaming couldn’t help me then and it doesn’t help me now. Not when smothered into my white duvet or muffled behind my hands. Crying doesn’t, either. Or shouting.
It’s only when I stumble into the bathroom and plow my fist into the mirror—sending glass shattering over the sink—that I finally feel something. Icy numbness followed by burning, stinging pain as drops of ruby-red moisture splatter my white color scheme.
But it’s not punishment enough.
I slam my bleeding, aching hands onto the counters so hard they throb. Bruise. I kick dents into the cabinet doors and rip the gray shower curtain from the rail. It’s still not enough.
It never is.
Neither is reentering my bedroom, yanking all the beautiful, expensive clothing from my closet, and tossing the pieces onto the floor. Or shoving my mattress from the frame. Breaking glass. Throwing objects. Smashing. Destroying. Obliterating.
I run out of steam near the foyer and only have enough energy left to topple the glass grandfather clock that guards the entrance to my suite. With a monstrous roar, it smashes to pieces, much like everything else in my life at the moment.
Happy birthday to me…
And many more.
I never get drunk. What in college was a fun quirk now feels like a curse. Or perhaps a biological defect inherited from my birth father. The man couldn’t bother to remember my birthday, but he gave me a gift that keeps on giving: I can drink to my heart’s content without ever blacking out. It helps that my stash of wine makes for a delicious diversion while providing no reprieve from the horrors I desperately seek escape from.
As Daddy would call it, quite the conundrum.
If only I weren’t too much of a coward to move on to another vice. I’d give anything to finally utilize the prescription the new therapist wrote weeks ago, shoved inside my nightstand drawer. Maybe peace lurks within a different bottle? Bite-sized calm at a grand a pop?
As it stands now, I have nothing but five lamps in this room alone, turned to their highest settings, to combat the dark.
Thunderstorms worsen the onslaught of flashbacks. Like the storm I sense now, rumbling in the distance. The air is too still. Ebony clouds swirl along the horizon before the stillness breaks with a monstrous roar of thunder.
The taste of copper burned my tongue. I couldn’t spit it out. He was behind me, prowling over the underbrush like a living shadow, impossible to outrun.
Guttural and low, his voice chased me. “Come out, come out, Juliana...”
Wait. A girlish bit of laughter doesn’t belong in this memory. The images of the forest fade and I’m in my apartment again, gasping for air.
Despite this being a private, residential floor, the odd intruder isn’t too uncommon. Most people wonder what it’s like to live here in the Lariat Hotel, in the proverbial lap of luxury.
All they have to do is ask me and I’d tell them.
It’s a charming, gilded prison.
The voices, one male and the other a giggling woman,
draw me from my fetal position. I leave bloody streaks as I cling to the wall for balance and look out through the peephole. Two intruders wander the hall, both wearing cheaply made party clothes. I have toilet paper worth more than this girl’s dress. Soft, bright pink, no expert tailoring in sight.
Her voice, breathy and high-pitched, sounds distorted through the door—but it’s not Simon’s, so I strain my ears to pick up every nuance. “I think we’re lost.” She giggles while leading her male friend by the hand. He keeps pulling on the sleeves of his oversized suit jacket but copies her manic, pixie grin.
“You just want to get back to that freak, don’t you?” he teases. “Maybe we can get him to paint you like that. Naked and shit—”
“Knock it off!” She strikes him playfully on the shoulder, and they disappear down the corner, leaving laughter behind like breadcrumbs.
Freak? Painting? Naked?
The thread of a mystery entices me more than continuing my birthday celebrations. For now. Some Band-Aids and a pair of gloves disguise my bleeding cuts. For added armor, I slip my winter coat on and I’ve almost reassembled my façade.
Almost.
A glance in the mirror hanging near the door reveals the dreadful state of my makeup. God, I look awful, my eyeliner smeared and my lipstick faded. Sighing, I swipe it off and salvage what I can beneath a stern expression.
I never cry. I’m the woman who conquers the world with a frown and a mild shade of red lipstick. But bloodshot eyes give me away now. I see myself for what I really am: a fraud. A pretender. A goddamn murderer.
Stop it. I catch my bottom lip between my teeth and bite down hard enough to chase the thought away. Then I scramble for the door and enter the hall as thunder snarls. There’s no sign of the couple, their trail of laughter now cold. I’m forced to chase their scent. Cheap perfume. Cloying cologne. I follow the smells to the set of elevators on the other end of the hall and take one down to the lobby.
