by Noelle Marie
Equal parts irritation and confusion warred inside me. “What?” I demanded incredulously. “No. What the hell’s going on in that head of yours, old man?”
But instead of answering, Abram stood. “You need to go,” he repeated, walking towards the door and clearly expecting me to follow.
I narrowed my eyes at him, not budging from my spot on the couch.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on. You recognized that name,” I accused. “Vanderbilt.”
Abram shook his head in denial, not looking at me as he jerked open the door. “Go.”
For a second, I debated my options. I could stay – fight him – but what good would beating his face to a pulp do me if he wouldn’t help me at the end of it?
Not knowing what else to do, I forced myself to stand, stiffly walking to where Abram stood at the door. We stood chest to chest. “I’m going to find a way to get her back whether you help me or not,” I said, the words half-threat, half-plea.
We stared each other down.
I wasn’t prepared for the shove – the firm press of his hand on my chest until I was standing on the other side of the door, outside on the rotting porch. “Please, Abram,” I begged quietly, the words barely audible, a last-ditch effort to make him change his mind.
Abram stiffened, and he opened his mouth like he wanted to say something… but a moment later, he snapped it shut. Then he slammed the door in my face.
I heard him walk away, the shuffling sound his boots made against the hardwood floor ringing in my ears. But I didn’t move. I stared at the complicated pattern of the woodgrain on the door, desperation-laced anger swirling inside me.
Abram was in for a rude awakening if he thought he could get rid of me that easily.
I slammed my fist against the door once, twice. “Hey!” I called, ignoring Thane, who began yipping excitedly beside me at the sudden noise. “Hey, asshole! I wasn’t done talking to you!”
There was no response to my bellowing. No answering shout. No approaching footsteps. Not even an uptick in Abram’s soft, barely present heartbeat – a sick metaphor of his entire existence, really.
Frustration welling inside me, I drew back my foot before kicking the door. Not hard enough to splinter the wood, but forceful enough to make the door reverberate in response. I could easily have kicked it in if I wanted to, but what was the point?
Breaking down Abram’s door wasn’t going to get the man to help me.
“Aarghgawrrr!” A half-scream, half-growl escaped me against my will, and I pounded against the door again. “Abram, you bastard, what the hell do you want from me?”
But somewhere deep down, I already knew the answer. And if it was for anything – anyone – other than Wisp, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. But it was for Wisp, so I took what was meant to be a calming breath before trying again.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I hollered at the man hiding somewhere behind the door. “I’m sor-ry!” I repeated, choking on the word.
Silence was the only response to my apology. I swallowed hard. “For causing the fire,” I clarified quietly, like an explanation was actually needed. Then, louder, “I’m sorry! Is that what you want?”
Still nothing.
My chest felt tight, like my lungs were being suffocated by a fucking cobra, slowly constricting around them, and I sunk to my knees, allowing my forehead to rest against the door. “I didn’t mean to kill them,” I muttered softly, still ignoring Thane, who bumped his nose questioningly against my shoulder at my sudden change in demeanor. “I didn’t mean to.”
So lost in my own misery, I didn’t even hear Abram’s approaching footsteps until the door was jerked open. I nearly toppled forward, managing to shoot my hands out in front of myself in time to stop myself from faceplanting.
I stared up at the man standing before me, not sure what I had expected to see, but Abram looked wrecked. And strangely… confused.
I scrambled to my feet.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded gruffly when I’d regained my footing.
Disbelief had me freezing at the question. It was followed swiftly by anger that he would knowingly attempt to make me relive the moments that had haunted me the past seventeen years. “You know,” I managed to bite out between clenched teeth.
Abram narrowed his eyes at me. “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask,” he argued.
He said it so plainly that my certainty faltered. How did he manage to sound so sincere? Did he somehow not realize that me revealing myself to Alice and Jackson and his little gang had brought the wrath of the hunters down upon us?
I swallowed. “The fire…” I shook my head. That wasn’t right. “The hunters,” I corrected myself. “I… I led them right to us.”
For a moment, silence reigned. And then… “Is that what you think?” Abram asked quietly.
My eyes darted to his. In a matter of seconds, he looked as if he had aged ten years. I processed his almost… pitying tone.
It made no sense, and my bewilderment only stoked the flames of my anger. “I showed a bunch of teenagers my shifter form. I put all of us in danger because I didn’t have enough control of my temper to withstand a little bullying.” I swallowed. “My parents, Fiona and your baby… they were dead a week later. What else would I think?”
Abram had known about the incident.
He’d been the one who tried to convince my father he was being too hard on me for grounding me for an entire month afterwards. How could he have not made the connection? And if he really hadn’t realized my actions had caused the deaths of everyone we loved… if he really didn’t blame me like I fucking blamed myself – like I deserved to be blamed – then that begged the question: Why had he been avoiding me for seventeen long years?
“You didn’t kill them, Derek,” the man argued. He sounded endlessly tired. “What happened with those teenagers was… unfortunate,” he decided on finally. “But do you really think any of them had the sort of connections needed to take down an entire group of bear shifters?”
I shook my head. “Then how do you explain-?” I began to demand.
“It was me,” Abram interrupted, voice harsh, before I could get another word out. He swallowed, then added, voice indefinitely softer. “Your father and I. We got too close.”
Shock hung over me, but I refused to loosen my grip on my denial, fear that Abram was somehow mistaken making me cling impossibly harder to what I’d assumed for years: that I had been the cause of my family’s demise. “Too close?” I repeated numbly. What the hell did that mean? “Too close to what?”
Abram’s gaze drifted out to the woods, his eyes regaining that glassy, faraway appearance they’d been sporting earlier. “To answers,” he mumbled. “To them… the Vanderbilts. They’re why my wife – why your parents – are dead.”
CHAPTER NINE
No one wanted me. No one, apparently, but the ever-mysterious Graham Vanderbilt.
* * *
I allowed myself to mourn the loss of Derek’s shirt for all of an hour before pulling myself up by my bootstraps – or well, my socks, anyway – and reluctantly getting ready for bed. It would be my first night without the plaid fabric pressed up under my cheek to comfort me, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Regardless, I threw on a pair of navy pajama bottoms and a white camisole before dragging myself across the hall to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth, then I turned on the sink, cupping my hands under the running water as I prepared to wash my face.
Only, before I could even splash the cold water onto my cheeks, something about my reflection caught my eye. The skin on either side of my mouth. It was discolored where Felix had ruthlessly dug his fingers into me.
I carefully examined the faint purple marks under the apples of my cheeks, my fury igniting all over again at the sight of them.
The man got off on lording his power over other people, hurting them. Hurting me.
I ought to… to…
You ought to what? A nasty
voice mocked. Sock him? You could bundle up your little fist, smash it right into his nose, and it probably wouldn’t even leave a mark. Face it, you’re out of your league.
The voice was right. I was out of my league, and unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about Felix’s behavior.
But there was someone who could do something.
My father.
He was Felix’s employer, after all, and although he had sided with Felix during our spat during supper last week, there was no way he could turn a blind eye to this abuse. Not when the marks were still fresh on my face.
With that thought firmly in mind, I shut off the water and dried my hands before hurriedly exiting the bathroom.
It was late, but not so late that my father probably still wasn’t up taking phone calls in his office.
Smoothing down my camisole and feeling akin to a child sneaking out of bed, I tip-toed by Felix’s bedroom door. I only allowed myself to relax when I’d shuffled past the second level sitting room and reached the door to my father’s study located down the upstairs’ other hallway.
I raised my hand and was posed to knock on the sturdy slab of wood when I heard it.
“That girl is out of control, Cornelius. I’m telling you, something needs to be done.”
Felix.
The man was in my father’s study, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was talking about… me.
I froze, my hand, still wrapped in a fist, immobile near my head. After the initial surprise had faded, I managed to uncurl my fingers and slowly allowed the hand to drop back down to my side.
“Now, now, Felix,” I heard my father chide in response. “Surely she’s not all that bad.”
In that moment, I had two choices. I could quietly slink back to my room, and pray to Jesus they never realized I had been there… or I could stay right where I was, listen in on their conversation, and pray to every single deity I could think of that I wasn’t caught.
After only a moment’s hesitation, I pressed my ear carefully to the door and chose option number two.
“Not that bad?” Felix scoffed. “She’s worse than before. The girl at least had the sense to pretend to be respectful a month ago. Now Sloane runs her mouth like she hasn’t a fear in the world of the consequences, and we both know that wouldn’t be true if she knew what lie in store for her.”
What “lie in store” for me? What did that mean?
“Worse than before?” Cornelius laughed. “How could that even be possible? Or do I need to remind you that she ran away last time? On your watch, no less.”
There was an extended pause in conversation, and even through the door I could sense the danger that lurked in the silence.
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” Felix responded at last, voice soft – menacing. “Or do I need to remind you what you owe to the Vanderbilt family – to me?”
I frowned at the suggestion that my father was indebted to the Vanderbilts – to Felix – and wondered what he could possibly owe them. Money? Political Favors? Regardless, there was no way he would compromise the well-being of his only daughter to please a sociopath like Felix… right?
I found I wasn’t so sure, and after a long silence, I was proven right when Cornelius sighed. “What do you propose I do?” he asked.
My stomach flipped.
Why was the man who was supposed to be my father – my caregiver, my protector – willing to leave my physical and mental health up to someone who clearly didn’t care for me?
“I don’t propose you do anything,” Felix said. “Just consider this your warning that from now on, I will be showing Sloane exactly how she will be disciplined if she misbehaves like this for the Vanderbilts. I don’t want you to be thrown by any… unsightly marks.”
Almost involuntarily, my hands tightened into fists at my sides. Felix was essentially asking for permission to abuse me, and the worst part was, my father wasn’t saying “no”.
“I don’t know, Felix…”
“Do you know what I found in her room today?” Felix cut off my father’s floundering with a pointed question.
I tensed at the reminder of Derek’s shirt.
Cornelius sighed. “No, but I presume you’re going to tell me.”
“Do you recall that shirt she was wearing when you picked her up last week? That ugly rag that hung down past her knees?”
I frowned in offense.
“Why, yes. As a matter of fact, I-”
“I discovered her squirreling it away in her bed sheets,” Felix interrupted briskly, “like it was some precious treasure.”
There was a pause. “Well, I admit I find that a bit odd, but I hardly see why it would warrant your concern-”
“The shirt reeked,” Felix revealed, voice flat.
“Well, it’s been a week-”
“Not of dirt or grime,” Felix interrupted, his sharp tone giving away what he thought of Cornelius’s deduction abilities. “Of shifter.”
I froze, a sense of shock befalling me when the word “shifter” escaped Felix’s mouth. A strange kind of buzzing noise blanketed my thoughts as my mind tried to comprehend what my ears had just heard. But how…?
“But that… I m-mean-” My father stumbled over his response, the sputtered words mirroring my own internal upset.
Felix knew about shifters? Cornelius knew about shifters?
“Yes, it’s strange, don’t you think?” Felix pressed. “Where exactly did you find her, again?” It was a demand disguised as a question. “Come to think of it, I don’t recall you saying.”
“Well, I hardly saw the need to-”
Wham!
I started, my heart jumping into my throat as the sound of something hard slamming against Cornelius’s desk – Felix’s fist, I assumed – resonated through the door.
“Where. did. you. find. her?” Felix repeated slowly, each word accompanied by another wham.
Instead of sticking around to hear my father’s answer, I took the opportunity to slowly back away from the door, hoping the commotion would disguise the sound of my footfalls. After all, I already knew where my father had found me: Pine Ridge. My brain was brimming with way too much information to possibly process what that could mean to Felix.
I still couldn’t get over the fact that they knew about shifters. I mean… how? I had only found out about them because Derek had literally turned into a bear in front of my eyes.
I was in a daze, my feet leading me one step after another down the hallway. To my surprise, however, they didn’t take me back to my bedroom. Instead, they brought me a mere two doors down… to my mother’s old room.
I eyed the door’s shiny knob. I didn’t know what it was about the room that called out to me, but just like when Marianne had stopped in front of it during our tour last week, I felt the almost irresistible urge to push the door open and go inside.
And why shouldn’t you? It’s not like your father’s going to help you with any of this, whatever “this” is. He’s conspiring with Felix to…
To what, exactly? Pay off the Vanderbilts? Felix had made it clear Cornelius owed them something. But why was I the payment? I mean, surely women were lining up to be Graham Vanderbilt’s wife if half of what Derek had told me about him was true.
Unless… well, unless the man was a shifter. I supposed that would explain how Felix and my father knew about them, at any rate.
But even if Graham Vanderbilt was a shifter, that still didn’t explain what he could possibly want with me – why Felix and my father were so intent on giving me away to him. It wasn’t like I was a bearer or anything like that. My father was a sixty-year-old senator, not some powerful shifter.
And my mother…
My attention drifted back to the door. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about her.
Cornelius never talked about her, and Marianne rarely did. (Neither of whom had given me very substantial answers to any of my questions since I’d arrived here.) Maybe, beyond the grave, Vanessa somehow could.
&
nbsp; With that thought in mind, I boldly reached forward and twisted the knob. I had half-expected the door to be locked and stood stock-still in the open doorway for a moment when it opened easily for me.
Then, shaking off my surprise, I took a deep breath before stepping inside.
The air inside the room was stale – proof that no one had been in it for a while.
The layout of the bedroom was very similar to my own, with a canopy bed pushed up against the back wall. Instead of pink sheets, however, the mattress was covered in a royal purple quilt. Also like my room, there was a vanity and dresser. When I peeked inside one of the dresser’s drawers, my stomach clenched uncomfortably to find it full of perfectly folded blouses. I was sure they were hers – Vanessa’s. (Your mother’s, a voice reminded me primly.)
Feeling guilty for snooping, I hurriedly shut the drawer before approaching the bed. There was a Bible sitting idly on the nightstand as well as… a picture frame.
It showcased the exact same photo as the one in my room. I paused at the sight of it before picking it up with cautious fingers, wiping away the thin layer of dust that had formed on the glass with my thumb.
With the picture frame clutched carefully in my hands, I took a seat on the edge of the bed.
And just like that, as unexpectedly as possible, it barreled into me. A memory.
It slammed against me like a physical force, and I nearly dropped the frame at the strength of it as I was made to relive the last time I had sat on the bed like this, perched on the edge of the mattress.
My chest ached as I took in the sight of the frail woman lying on the bed. “Mom, can you hear me?” I asked gently.
She didn’t respond.
Instead, my mother’s eyes remained focused where she stared unseeingly at the ceiling. Her hands were in constant motion as she worried her fingers, lips moving a mile a minute as she mumbled words under her breath. They were unintelligible for the most part, but I managed to catch a few here and there, strange ones like “nursery” and “baby”.
