Claimed: The Dark Christmases Trilogy

by Z. L. Arkadie

  Chapter Twelve

  Bronwyn Henrietta Christmas

  The previous day, Bryn had waited on pins and needles for the helicopter. Jasper would be arriving with Holly. The helipad on the west lawn had lit up minutes before, which signaled they would be landing soon. The first two words Bryn planned to say to the only person she considered a friend outside of Dale Rumor were, “I’m sorry.”

  Her father was dead. Jasper had relaxed his control, and finally, she could breathe. Not an ounce of her missed Randolph Christmas. She couldn’t remember a moment when she hadn’t thought he was creepy. For the longest time, he’d just been a man who came and went. One day, one of the house staff said he was her father, and the whole idea of that had confused the hell out of her.

  Up until she became a teenager, Randolph had ignored her, outside of needing her to dress up in uncomfortable buttoned-up clothes to play the part of his rich, cute, and obedient daughter. But when she hit puberty, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He would stare at her body, and Bryn was sure he didn’t even realize he was doing it. It was as though he were trapped in a lustful daze. The memory of how her father watched her during those two or three years turned Bryn’s stomach.

  At thirteen, Bryn had felt a strange energy concentrated on her whenever she showered. She could pinpoint the location from which it came. One morning, through the wet glass, she stared at a white ceramic vase that held fake pink and white roses. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on the back panel of the cabinet, past a pink petal. There was a tiny hole a little larger than pin-sized. Following her instincts, Bryn grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her, and tugged at the white cabinet. She gasped at how easily it opened. Cold, untempered air washed over her, cooling her wet skin as she tiptoed into a dark space with concrete floors. There was a foul smell in the air. Then she saw another door. Without an ounce of fear, she opened it and stepped into a dingy hallway.

  It was then she knew she wasn’t crazy. Someone had been watching her. At first she thought it might have been one of the butlers or another male servant, but the only man who had steadily undressed her with his eyes was her father, Randolph Christmas.

  Later that evening, she arrived at the dinner table early. Randolph was already seated and had seen her before she was able to duck out of the room. She hated being alone with him and tried to avoid it whenever possible.

  “Bronwyn Henrietta,” Randolph called, waving her over.

  She froze then forced a smile as he walked toward her. His thin fingers came down on her shoulders and massaged her tiny bones. Bryn became nauseated. She was positive she’d smelled his scent in the small room behind the cabinet. He seemed pleased to be touching her as beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. Her feet were moving as he guided her farther into the dining room, but she couldn’t feel them.

  “You’ve grown into a striking creature.” He pulled out the chair next to his. “Sit beside your father.” He sounded as if he were setting a trap for her.

  She sat. He was still massaging her, and his clammy hands were on her tiny tits, purposely rubbing her small nipples. Bryn felt paralyzed and even more sick to her stomach. She found herself praying for a way to escape him.

  “Father,” Jasper called as he walked into the dining room.

  Finally, Randolph removed his hands, but he didn’t startle and jump as though he’d just been caught doing something wrong. He was casual about it, as if her body was his to do whatever the hell he wanted with and he only chose to stop because now was an inappropriate time.

  Jasper grabbed the top of a chair on the opposite side of the table, pulled it up and back, and slammed the legs on the floor. The sound made Bryn shudder.

  “Bryn sits here.” Jasper glared at their father, daring Randolph to challenge him. Then he turned his tapered eyes to her. “Get up and come over here now.”

  She hopped up out of her chair swiftly and sat where Jasper had told her to. Her brother had only been seventeen years old, but she still recalled how powerful his presence felt as he stood beside her, glaring at their father as if he wanted to take Randolph’s head off.

  “You’re right, son. Your mother sits in that chair, if she ever chooses to join us.”

  That night, she asked her brother if she could shower in his bathroom from that point on. He studied her, frowning as he usually did, but didn’t ask her why she didn’t want to use her own shower. Instead, he gave her permission to take a shower wherever the hell she wanted. Jasper’s bathroom was safer. Jasper was safer. And he would never leave her alone with their father. When he went away to college, Sally Preacher—their mother’s housemaid—or Nigel, the butler, was always present if Randolph, who rarely ventured from his cocoon on the third floor, was in the same room with her. However, the older she became, the less Randolph acknowledged her existence, unless she fucked up at school by brawling with a girl she didn’t like or telling a teacher to eat shit. Then he would punish her by locking her up in a room over the weekend without food or water. The prison had four solid walls with no passage into the secret hallways. His harsh punishment had made her hate him even more.

  Finally, the guide lights of the helipad started flashing. The helicopter carrying Jasper and Holly would be arriving soon. Bryn smiled. She’d been doing that more easily recently—smiling. Randolph was dead, and that made her happy. Of course, he had tried to control her from the grave by making her marry Carter Valentine. She and Carter were friends but nothing more. Their fathers had to have known that Carter wasn’t into pussy. But they didn’t care if the couple ended up spending a passionless and sexless life together. The Christmas and Valentine way was to pay for sexual gratification of the most exotic kind.

  Dale Rumor was the man she loved. After her first and only year of college, they had lost contact with each other. They weren’t in love back then, but they had done a lot of fucking whenever he would come to her dorm room. However, three years ago, she’d gone to Washington, DC, to play the good daughter of the Christmas clan during a fundraiser. Randolph was being recognized as the donor who had given the most money to whatever fake charity was hosting the event. Dale was there. Seeing him again reminded her how much she had loved her freedom. During that trip, her mother, Amelia, whose job it was to keep a close eye on her, purposely kept Bryn on a loose leash while Randolph tended to more of his political meetings. Dale had taken her to his hotel room, and they had fucked all day and all night. Ever since that week in Washington, they’d been a couple.

  Every now and then, Dale would visit the mansion and enter her room through the tunnels. They would spend days making love. She knew to keep him a complete secret she couldn’t even let Nigel, the butler—who had become like a surrogate father to her—know, even though Nigel was carrying on his own affair with Amelia. There was so much secret loving going on around the mansion that no one paid attention to relationships outside their own.

  Bryn and Dale would spend intimate moments talking about what they really wanted to do with their lives. They both relished the idea of writing television and movie scripts, so together they worked to develop their own show. It was about a family a lot like hers. The oldest brother, based on Jasper, was the villain, though Dale could never see Jasper as a bad guy even though the two of them didn’t like each other much. Dale would always say she was blinded by a little girl’s bitterness and anger toward her brother for being a better father than her actual father. Dale also talked her into hiring Holly Henderson, her old roommate, to peel open the layers behind the Christmases’ story. That was why she’d called Holly and invited her up for the holidays. She wanted Holly, the award-winning investigative journalist, to discover the secrets and lies her brother worked to hide. But Bryn knew it was game over once she learned Jasper and Holly had been fucking. Carter had been right. He’d insisted Jasper wasn’t gay.

  “You’d be surprise by the number of guys who just don’t like sex, Bryn,” he used to say.

  Then, on the night of the Christmas party, Jas
per had believed Dale was flirting with Holly and lured him to the cigar room and had him thrown off the property. She wanted to go smash Jasper’s head in for doing that, but instead, when Dale found his way back to her room through the tunnels, they made a plan to get away from everybody. The next night, Randolph died, and she grew wings. On that night, she escaped the mansion and met Dale at the airport.

  It was Dale who had come up with a genius plan to fake foul play. She told him it was stupid, but he insisted it would give them time to get as far away from her insane family as possible. They planted their blood in Dale’s car and left the engine running on the 101 Freeway. Then Dale, a licensed and trained pilot, flew them to Aruba. Two days later, Jasper found them, even though they’d done an expert job of covering their trail. Jasper could think three or four steps ahead of the average person. He was a brilliant fucker. He’d said he knew they would go there because Bryn had once told him it was a great place for a Christmas to melt. She didn’t even remember saying that, but apparently, Jasper did. He’d checked all the airplanes that flew into the island on the day they had gone missing and discovered one owned by Hadley Baines, Dale’s fraternity brother.

  However, Jasper liked the idea of the two of them being missing. He said that he was on the tail end of destroying Arthur Valentine and he didn’t want his family accessible for Valentine to strike back.

  Bryn and Dale had been on the beach, lying on lounge chairs and sucking down cocktails, when Jasper had told them that. Jasper had on a spiffy pair of trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves folded to above his elbows, which was how he always wore his shirts. She remembered looking into his mirrored sunglasses, thinking how out of place her brother appeared. He didn’t know how to relax. For him, life was one crisis after another, and there she was, making another fire for him to put out. Regardless, the day was cloudy, the humidity high, and the temperature eighty degrees. The day was made even more perfect when he assured her that she was indeed free from the obligation of marrying Carter.

  “What about Holly?” she asked, wanting so desperately to hear that he no longer thought about Holly.

  “I have eyes on her,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Does she know about Julia?”

  Jasper stood. “Two days, and then you’re going to the north compound. James will be around to make sure you keep a low profile.” He strolled away without answering her question.

  That had been almost three weeks earlier, and Bryn had had a change of heart. She’d gotten word that Jasper would be arriving with Holly. She felt ashamed for never telling the one woman who had truly been her only friend about Julia Valentine. She wanted to confess that she was slightly jealous that Holly would take her brother away from her. It was the fear of a little girl, not of the woman she was becoming. On top of that, she’d wanted to tell Holly the truth about why she’d invited her to the Christmas mansion to investigate her family in the first place.

  Finally, the helicopter appeared and hovered over its landing spot. Bryn ran away from the window and took off down the stairs. She stopped at the front door to put on her coat, hat, scarf, and gloves. It was as cold as hell out there. When she made it to the porch, the helicopter door opened. William, the guest butler, walked out of the house to stand beside her. He assumed the posture he took when he was ready to accept new guests.

  “Who’s that?” she asked, watching the copilot open a blue umbrella and walk a young woman quickly up the cleared cement walkway that led away from the helipad and toward them. She was a few inches too short, and her clothes were too trendy for her to be Holly, who dressed as if she had a business meeting in the next five minutes.

  “It’s Miss Katie,” he said.

  She frowned. “Katie who?”

  William trotted down the steps and took the umbrella, taking over the task of providing her with cover from the snow. The copilot then handed William the woman’s bag, which appeared old and beat-up. Bryn couldn’t take her eyes off the woman’s face as she and William walked up the steps.

  When it became apparent that Bryn was looking at the reflection she saw when she looked in the mirror, she gasped and pressed her fingers against her lips. “Oh my God,” she said, barely audible.

  “You must be Bryn,” her twin said.

  They were standing face to face. They were virtually the same height and weight, and surprisingly enough, they both wore black stretch pants with a silver bomber jacket. How in the hell did that happen?

  “Oh my God,” Bryn said, shaking her head. Something told her there was a long story behind the longer story.

  “Let’s get Miss Katie settled,” William said.

  The twins had a hard time ripping their eyes off each other. Finally, Bryn swallowed a huge lump in her throat. “Thanks, William.” She wanted to put a hand on Katie’s shoulder but resisted the urge to touch her. “Um. Can we talk soon, Katie?”

  Katie nodded with her eyes cast down. Bryn frowned, noticing how afraid and shocked her twin was. If genes could account for something, Bryn knew Katie would respond like a raccoon trapped in a corner and fight her way out of that house if made to feel too uncomfortable. So she had to be careful to not spook her.

  As William escorted Katie to the second floor, Bryn stood at the base of the stairs. She was at a fork in the road. One branch led upstairs with Katie. The other led to her hightailing it down to the indoor pool, where Dale, her brother Asher, and his paid-for girlfriend, Gina, were swimming.

  Katie turned to look at her as William led her up the stairs to get her settled into a room. There was no doubt they were sisters. But how did we get separated? Bryn needed to make a snap decision. Telling Asher and Spencer, who had brought the prostitute they shared to the estate, would be akin to helping a sandstorm kick up dust. They would be no comfort to her and offer no assistance, and in fact, they would make the situation worse.

  “Nope,” she muttered and ran up the stairs. She would have her time with Katie first.

  The conversation had started with a simple question. Bryn ran up to Katie just before she entered the room that was prepared for her, on the opposite side of the hallway from where Bryn slept. “Can we talk now?”

  This time, Katie nodded energetically. Bryn took the bag from William and told him that they would handle it from there. He bowed graciously and said he’d have lunch brought up for them shortly.

  “Add a premium bottle of red wine—make that two of them—and lots and lots of desserts,” Bryn said.

  Katie smiled mildly. Bryn was glad that made her new sister happy.

  “I’m only skinny because I have a fast metabolism. One day, my eating is going to catch up to me, and I don’t give a fuck.” Bryn set Katie’s bag on top of the dresser, sat on one of the blue-velvet wing chairs, and pointed to the one across from her. “Would you join me?”

  Katie took the seat, and they began their no-holds-barred conversation.

  Bryn learned that Katie had grown up in a house with other girls in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Katie had never attended school and couldn’t read hardly at all until she escaped to New York City. Once she got a taste of learning, she never stopped.

  The twins took a pause while lunch, desserts, and wine with glasses were set up around them. Beef Wellington with a Cobb salad and fresh vegetable soup were served.

  When they were alone again, Bryn asked the question that had been burning in her brain. “How did you get out of that house for good?”

  As they ate, Katie told the story of how the girl across the street, Alexia, had become her only friend and the only person who knew she would sneak out into the woods. The girl would bring her cigarettes and food. However, Alexia would do all sorts of drugs. Katie never touched drugs because if she went back into the house high, they would have known she had been sneaking out.

  One day, Katie went to the woods and found Alexia gagging, eyes rolling back in her head, and frothing at the mouth. Katie knew to call 911 because she had heard Bam tell Sissy—the woman
he relied on to run all his errands and talk to the others when problems arose—to drop a girl off at the bus stop and dial that number if something happened and the girl was either close to death or dead.

  “Shit,” Bryn said. “That’s awful.”

  “It’s all awful,” her twin said.

  Katie went on to explain how she had found all of this extra strength and picked Alexia up and practically dragged her to that bus stop Bam had referred to. Katie then found Alexia’s cell phone on her and called 911. The ambulance came. She knew it was best to just go home, but one of the EMTs, a young guy, invited her to ride along. Something about his eyes and her friend’s condition made her go with them.

  When they arrived at the hospital, she sat in the waiting room, afraid that Bam would show up. He used to punish them by whipping them with a rod then starving them for a week. She’d endured the punishment once before. Although she could tolerate it, she hated suffering through it. The first person who showed up to talk to her was the EMT. She was intimidated and scared of his maleness, but he kept asking her questions about what had happened. It got to the point where he had to ask her to please look him in the eyes. She hadn’t noticed she wasn’t doing that. When their gazes met, she saw something different about him. He wasn’t the sort of pig who would come to the house and study the women as if he were shopping for pussy. He urged her to tell him the truth about who she was and why she’d been in those woods.

  She told the EMT that she couldn’t tell him, or she’d get in trouble. He took her to a private space in the hospital and convinced her that there was no one there but the two of them. This was the time to confess. All she could say was that she lived in a house with very bad people, and they didn’t know she was missing. Then the EMT got a call on his radio, telling him that the police and the girl’s father were ready to speak to Katie.