"Tell me why my wife was only fed once today." I turn back to her slowly, watching Antonia dab her eyes with the sheet.
She takes a shuddering breath and collects herself with a nod. "Mercedes came to me with the instructions this morning," she says softly. "She told me they were your orders. I was only doing as I was told, sir."
Mercedes.
Darkness creeps into the edges of my vision as I give her a stiff nod. "Let me be clear, Antonia. My wife's health is a priority until I say otherwise. That means any orders pertaining to her will only come directly from me. She will eat when she is hungry, and should she have any other needs, I trust you will meet them accordingly."
Relief makes her shoulders sag. "Yes, master."
I grimace at her and shake my head. "And from now on, call me Santiago, for God's sakes. You have known me since I was in diapers."
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "But, sir, what if the other staff hears me address you as such? It would not be proper."
"To hell with that custom." I wave my hand flippantly. "I am not my father, and you can inform them you have my permission if you must. I don't want to hear another word on the subject."
"Yes, sir." A small, kind smile crosses her lips. "If I may?"
I tilt my head to examine her. "Yes?"
"Mrs. De La Rosa is very beautiful. You have done well for yourself."
I feel my lips tilting at the corners before I dip my head curtly. "Thank you, Antonia. Now, please, attend to her."
* * *
Despite Mercedes’s assurance of finding useful employment for her mind this evening, I find her on the computer in the library, stretching the limits of her credit card with luxury clothing.
When she hears me approaching, she nearly knocks the chair back in her haste to get up and greet me. She can tell by the look in my eye that I am not pleased.
"Santiago." She pleads with me as I stalk toward her.
I wrap my fingers around her neck, applying enough pressure to make her sputter. "What the fuck do you think you’re doing?"
"I'm looking after our best interests," she chokes out. "You are letting her get to you already. Giving her that suite. The dress. The ring. This manor. She should be locked in a basement with nothing more than the shame of her family name to keep her warm."
I shove her away with a snarl. "How easily you forget your place."
"My place is beside you, as your equal." She rubs at her throat. "We are De La Rosas. Our blood is stronger than any other. That is why you survived, Santi. So you could lead. And I am here to help you."
"You are here to get in my way."
I pace the length of the floor, conflicted.
Perhaps Mercedes is right. I am letting Ivy get to me. I can see how she might draw such a conclusion, given the luxuries bestowed upon my wife already. But I have a plan, and I trust that will not alter. It is not for my sister to question me, and I must make that clear to her now.
"Betray me again, and you will not like the consequences," I say. "For now, you can accept your punishment graciously."
"Punishment?" She stares at me incredulously.
I seize her Gucci wallet and cell phone from the computer desk and pocket them.
She lunges for me, an expression of horror on her face. "No! You can't do this to me."
"You can have them back when you've shown some contrition for a change. Perhaps it will do you good."
Her jaw sets, and already I can see her plotting her revenge.
"Don't do anything stupid, Mercedes," I warn her menacingly. "You won't like the results if you test my patience further."
19
Santiago
Ivy is finishing up the light meal Antonia provided her when I return to her room. A fresh set of candles burns at her bedside, and it's brighter than the last time I saw her.
The gash on her head looks worse than before, and it bothers me more than I’d like.
"Tell me about the cut." I glance down at her. “How did it happen?”
She wipes her hands with a napkin and then folds it over the tray. Her eyes are cast down, and I can tell she's still trying to keep her secrets. But I will not allow it, and she should already be aware of this.
"Ivy." My voice is a warning, but my fingers are soft as they graze the back of her neck.
"I stumbled and fell."
Almost immediately, I contribute this to the faintness Antonia mentioned earlier. But then I remember the bruises on her body. And her reluctance to answer for them as well. She blamed them on the doctor, another matter I have yet to contend with. Though I suspect there is more to it than that.
"Why did you stumble and fall?"
She toys with the hem of the black silk nightgown I purchased for her. "Because I do that sometimes."
In the soft light, she looks more vulnerable than I've ever seen her. Perhaps this is the reason I find myself tilting her face up, so I can study that emotion and try to understand it.
"You can have no secrets from me." I pet her face beneath my palm, and she closes her eyes with a soft shudder. "We can do this the hard way or the easy way. The choice is yours."
"I have vestibular dysfunction," she admits reluctantly. "Sometimes, I get dizzy. Blurry vision. It can affect my balance. It’s a defect I can’t control."
I consider her words carefully, focusing on the term defect she chose with obvious disdain. She believes she is defective. Her eye, and now this. It brings me a strange sense of satisfaction to know this about her. The intimacy of her secret and the realization she is ashamed of it are both a balm to my own scars. But they shouldn't be.
My fingers fall away, and she peeks up at me.
"We'll have to be more careful with you then," I answer ominously. "I didn't realize you were quite so... breakable."
Her eyes harden, and I leave her to stew in her anger as I retreat to her bathroom, gathering the supplies I need. When I return, she is still sitting at the small table, staring down at the hands tangled together in her lap.
"It's time to clean your tattoo," I inform her.
She straightens her spine and tries to glance back at me as I step beside her and drape her hair over one shoulder. She shivers, and I turn her chin away from me, forcing her gaze forward.
Slowly, I peel off the sanitary wrap. I use a wet, soapy cloth to wash over the ink, and fight the strange desire to trace over the symbol of my ownership with my fingers. It’s my family crest. A crowned skull and crossbones flanked by roses and dueling revolvers. This image leaves no question who she belongs to. And to witness my mark upon her skin is more powerful than I expected.
Ivy sucks in a breath as I wash her with a gentleness I'm certain she doesn't expect. I want to inform her it isn't for her benefit, but only so I know the wound will heal properly.
When I have finished cleaning her, I apply more salve, rubbing it into her skin until she bows her head, as if to say it feels good to have a monster's hands upon her. I rub her longer than necessary and then wipe my hands.
There is still work to be done this evening, and I feel as if I am behind already. But it is no longer at the forefront of my mind when my palm skates down over her shoulder and dips into the silk nightgown, skimming over her breast.
Ivy closes her eyes and leans back into me, unaware of how much it affects me when she melts into me. I close my eyes too, hating her for tempting me this way. Hating her for her name. Her blood. Her sweetness that I want to imbibe, even as she poisons me.
My free hand grazes over her neck, reaching for the rosary, only to come up empty. Her shoulders stiffen, and our eyes collide at the same time. Mine dark and hungry, and hers, terrified.
"Santiago," she whimpers.
I grasp her jaw and squeeze it shut. She swallows audibly, and I lean down to her face, my lips a breath from hers.
"I'm beginning to think you actually like my punishments, dear wife."
20
Ivy
He has me on my feet in an insta
nt. All the tenderness of a moment ago has vanished almost like it hadn’t happened. Like I imagined it.
“Santiago.” Holding my arm at an awkward angle, he picks up the rosary from the nightstand and marches me out of my room, his footfalls sure while mine are silent. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’m being more than patient with you when you seem incapable of following one simple instruction.”
We hurry through the house, and I try to keep up while taking it all in, all the shadowy corridors, the dimly lit spaces, richly textured carpets and curtains, intricately carved wood. It’s out of an old vampire movie, this place.
“Slow down,” I ask when I slip on the stairs he hurries us down.
“Keep up,” he retorts, righting me before I fall.
There’s no one around, and I wonder what time it is. All I can see is that it’s nearly a black night apart for a sliver of moonlight.
“Where are we going?” I ask when we walk through the large kitchen, also dark and ancient looking with only the appliances seeming to be from this century.
He pulls open the door and is about to take a step but pauses and looks at my bare feet.
“Do you ever wear shoes?” he asks, but he’s not waiting for my reply. I don’t even think it’s a real question. But in the next instant, he has me hauled over his shoulder, the flimsy nightgown riding to the tops of my thighs, the wind cool against the backs of my bare legs.
I bounce on his shoulder and look back at the house. It’s even bigger than I’d realized. Four floors with spires disappearing into the low-hanging clouds and thick ivy crawling along the walls. At the center is a large arched window, the glass stained, at the head the window segments creating an ornate circle.
No. Not a circle.
A rose. The segments make up the petals.
De La Rosa. Of the rose.
A light goes on in one of the upstairs windows in a separate part of the house. Through the cast iron I see movement. A woman’s figure. When she sees us, she draws the curtain wider and openly watches.
But in the next instant, I hear a heavy door creak on its hinges as its opened, the smell of church enveloping me again. I crane my neck to look around the small chapel as Santiago closes the door and sets me on my feet.
I take in the pews, six on each side. The wood simple. Kneelers in each without cushions and worn Bibles in two of the pews.
At the back left corner is the baptismal font. It’s large and ornate, made of the same material as the altar. In the opposite corner is a simple confessional. In the place of doors is a deep red velvet curtain to give the penitent the impression of privacy.
Santiago walks to the altar. He doesn’t stop to make the sign of the cross. Doesn’t bow like the nuns taught us to. I wonder about that. About his devotion. His belief. He has a fascination for religion, I think. I don’t know. But after what he did yesterday, how he did it bending me over the altar in the chapel, a sacred place, pouring wax from the altar candles onto my hips. A devout man would not do that, certainly. And then there’s the rosary. Why give me a rosary on our wedding night? Why become so angry when you find I’m not wearing it?
At the altar, he doesn’t raise his head to acknowledge the crucified Christ. Instead, he picks up a box of matches and lights several candles. I notice, though, that the red of the tabernacle lamp glows, and I wonder who maintains it. If there’s a priest or if it’s him.
I think about the woman at the window. “Does your sister live here? At the house I mean?”
He finishes lighting the candles and blows the match out.
I take in the two framed photographs on the altar. It’s a strange place to keep photos, but I wonder if it isn’t his father and brother. I step closer and think yes. I remember seeing them just a few times, and there is a resemblance. They died in that explosion that scarred him.
When I look at Santiago again, I find him watching me, and I take him in. His scars. The tattoo on his face. I glance at those photos again.
He walked away scarred but alive.
They died.
Something inside me feels a tenderness I can’t describe in that instant. I don’t know what it is. Why this matters. I don’t know if it’s the look in his eyes. The loneliness he wears like a coat. No, a second skin. Not something one can remove.
Is that why all this hardness?
But then he slips the rosary out of his pocket and sets it on the altar and bends to open a chest set beneath the altar.
“Strip, Ivy,” he says without bothering to look at me.
My heart does a double beat. “What?”
He glances behind him as he rummages through the chest. “Strip and kneel.”
“We’re in church.”
He pauses, turns to look at me and half-laughs then shakes his head and resumes his work.
“Strip and kneel. I won’t ask you again.”
I glance back at the door, but no one will come in. I turn to look up at the altar. At Christ. Apart from the wedding, I haven’t been to church since I left home. I told my father I went weekly but I never did. I haven’t been to confession since then, either. Do I even believe anymore? I don’t know.
“Ivy.”
I blink to look at Santiago’s back as he sets things on the altar. He’s not looking at me, but he’s warning me all the same.
I pull the nightie off, shudder at my nakedness as I lay it over the back of the nearest pew. He’s just turning to me when I slip off my panties and set them on top of the nightgown, and I watch his eyes as he takes me in. They’ve darkened. And when he meets mine, I see the hunger inside them. Something insatiable.
And it’s like my body feels it. Or maybe it’s that it remembers his touch. Remembers the orgasm because my nipples tighten, and there’s a dampness between my thighs.
I lower myself to my knees and look beyond him to the altar. To what he placed on it. And my stomach falls away. I know the long, innocuous-looking cane from my years at the nun’s school. And the wooden paddle, although thankfully I’ve never felt that. The cane, though. That was Sister Mary Anthony’s favorite.
There are other things too. A short leather strap. Another heavier cane. More paddles. They don’t look new. In fact, they look well-worn.
I swallow, turn my gaze up to his.
He studies me for a long minute, the silence heavy around us. The air in this place weighted.
As if reading my mind, he turns back to his collection, chooses the long, wispy cane and picks up the rosary, then walks toward me. He cocks his head to the side and taps my clasped hands with the end of the cane. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding them in prayer.
“Habit,” he says.
I nod, but it’s not so much a question.
He drops the rosary around my neck. The beads feel cold and heavy like each one is a weight.
“You don’t go to church. You haven’t been to a mass in the past half year.”
“How do you know?”
“You think I didn’t have someone watching you?” He walks a circle around me, and I turn my head to the right, then to the left to follow him.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I knew in time, you’d be mine.” He’s still circling.
“Why?”
“That’s for another time.” He stands before me again. “Does it hurt? Kneeling there?”
I nod.
“Do you like it?”
I shake my head.
“Are you wet?”
I don’t answer that one.
He grins, then begins his circling again.
“If you’re going to punish me with that thing, just do it and get it over with.”
I hear the swish then, and an instant later, I fall onto my hands as a strip of pure agony blazes across the bottoms of my feet. Before I can process, there’s a second strike. Tears spring from my eyes, and for a moment, I can’t breathe.
He crouches behind me. I’m still gasping for breath when he wraps the l
ength of the rosary around his fist and tugs my head backward into his chest.
“You do not give the orders.”
I clutch his forearm, my breathing gasps, chest heaving.
There had been a moment earlier that I’d found him tender, kind even. Almost. When he’d learned I hadn’t eaten, he’d been upset. When he’d cleaned the tattoo, he’d been gentle. When he’d slipped his hand into my nightdress and grazed my breast, I’d leaned into his touch.
“Did you like that?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No!”
He brings the hand holding the cane between my legs and rudely cups me, and I think what I must look like on my knees before the altar, my body jerked backward, knees spread, on display.
“You’re wet through.”
I don’t know if it’s on purpose that he lets the cane rest against my sex.
“But this isn’t about your pleasure, Ivy,” he says, smearing his wet hand over my stomach as he rises.
“Please don’t,” I can’t help but say as I reach back to cover my feet, feel the rising crisscrossed welts there. I was only caned once at school, and it wasn’t anything like this.
“That’s better. I like the please. But put your hands back in prayer and kneel up.”
“Please.” I crane my neck to look back at him.
He raises his eyebrows as if waiting for me to follow his direction.
I do, but I brace myself.
“You’ll feel that with every step tomorrow.”
I keep my gaze forward on the altar, tears blurring it.
“Do you know what my father expected of me?” he starts, circling again.
Requiem of the Soul: A Sovereign Sons Novel Page 13
