“What?”
I had to wait until now, until the sutures were almost complete, before broaching the subject with him. Because his fingers are already twitching at his side, and that usually means bullets, and bloodshed.
“This girl,” I say. “Seraphina. I treated her when she fell from the window ten years ago. You told me she died.”
I’d been back in Chicago with Liam and our sister, Moira, to get the right drugs and equipment to treat such a severe injury. The girl—this girl—couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old at the time. Ignacio had fed me a lie about how she was playing in the window when she fell, that her mother was working out in the fields. But now, seeing the thick boards across the windows, the ones that weren’t there ten years ago; I know. He lied. She lived.
I’ve been torturing myself about the way she died for ten fucking years; the crack in her skull, the pressure on her traumatized brain, but death probably would have been kinder than surviving. There are chains on the walls with black leather wrist straps, the girl is covered in bruises, and the windows are boarded up permanently. The fucking windows.
“Are you calling me a liar, Mr. Bishop?” Ignacio asks slowly.
“She has the fucking scar on her head where I stitched her up,” I snap, my eyes stuck to that spot just below her temple, the spot where she hit the earth below the window I’m working in front of, where her skull cracked and she fell into a coma.
I slide the last suture into place and snip off the excess, making a neat knot. Ignacio doesn’t reply. He knows I know. And that’s basically my death sentence, in his eyes; I can already see the decision made in his cool stare.
Do you want to burn the world down?
No, but I would like to see it.
“I’m a criminal just like you, Ignacio,” I say. “I break the law. I do bad shit, terrible shit. I’ve killed people, same as you. But this is some next-level shit. You kept a girl in a fucking water tower in the dark as your plaything for how long?”
Ignacio blinks, his face like stone. Unreadable. Fucking poker-faced asshole. Me, I’m struggling to tamp down the rage that builds inside me like a funeral pyre set alight. His funeral pyre, if I had it my way. My funeral pyre, if he had his.
“I suggest you pack your supplies up and leave, Mr. Bishop,” Ignacio says. His voice is like a razor blade across coals. They say you never feel more alive than when you’re in danger of dying, and they’d be on the fucking money. I’m going to die here if I don’t do something.
“First I need to tell you about her aftercare,” I say, making a show of placing my scalpel down and taking my gloves off. “See this here?” I point at the sutures holding Seraphina’s wound closed. “This yellow thread?”
He peers closer, looking for a thread that doesn’t exist. Idiot.
I’ve always got a few spare blades somewhere. These little scalpels might be small, but they’re sharp for a fucking reason. To slice a person open like a hot knife in butter. I slide my extra scalpel out of my surgical scrubs and sink it into Ignacio’s neck, up to the hilt, going for the jugular and praying I don’t miss. His eyes bulge as he reaches for his neck with one hand, the other going for his gun. And all this time his neck is spurting streams of dark blood on to Seraphina’s bare torso.
Fuck.
I wrench the scalpel from his neck and strike again, this time getting the meaty bit at the top of his arm. I’m most worried about what happens if he gets his hand on that gun. We’ll all be dead, and I refuse to be killed by a bullet that comes from a fucking gold-plated gun that looks like it belongs in some B-grade Steven Seagal movie.
Ignacio howls in pain when I get his arm. It’s deep, and no doubt it hurt like a motherfucker when I severed the tendon that runs from his shoulder all the way down his arm and into his hand. I hope it’s the hand he uses to jerk off. That’s not going to be pleasant from now on.
I round the table, Seraphina still oblivious to what’s happening, and crash-tackle Ignacio. I can hear footsteps on the stairs, and I’ve got to get to his gun before his guards get to me. I lunge like a fucking panther, flying through the air, knocking Ignacio to the ground where we land in a bloody pile. His head hits the hard ground with a sickening crunch. I hope the blow to his skull fucking kills him. It’d be karma, that’s for sure.
My life is measured in milliseconds; my fingers curl around Ignacio’s stupid gun as the door bursts open, hinges groaning as the wood splinters from the sudden force. Two guys, both brandishing AK’s I raise Ignacio’s gun, squeezing the trigger in rapid succession, two bullets for each of them, and they’re dead before they can focus their eyes long enough to pick out who shot them.
SERAPHINA
He’s stolen me. He’s really done it.
A dark nothingness.
A terrifying void.
A soothing calm.
I was born into nothing and nowhere, and that’s where I stayed, for eighteen years. Now I’m out, reborn into the light … and I don’t like it one bit.
The sun is like a burning ball of fire, aimed right at me. Even in the back of the car, with a knitted cap over my head to both conceal my hair and cover my eyes… all I want to do is scream.
The little edges of light below my eyes hurt more than the cattle prod Ignacio used on me once, when I’d broken down and begged him for more food. Water streams from my eyes, sticking the thick wool cap to my eyelashes, sticky salt and blinding pain my first entry into this foreign world.
So, maybe not so different to being born.
All I’ve ever wanted is to see the sun. Now that I’m out, I can’t bear it. It hurts. Is this the world outside? I always imagined it to be… softer. More like the watercolors I paint with while I wait for Ignacio. The ones I used to paint with, I correct myself. I’m not there anymore. I’m…
“Where are we?” I ask blindly, my stomach doing somersaults. I’ve never been in a car before. I’ve never been anywhere before. I don’t like it. My body isn’t used to anticipating the roll of the car around corners, the need to brace when we slow down suddenly. My legs are only just now starting to wake up; for a time, I was convinced they would never work again. My side is still numb. I want so badly to look at the spot where Xavier cut me open and put his fingers inside me. Part of me is terrified. Part of me is fascinated. Only time will tell which feeling is justified.
“We’re on the Interstate, sweetheart,” Xavier says. Sweetheart. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before. I like it. It sounds gentle. It does not sound like a word somebody would use on a person they intended to hurt.
“You okay back there?”
I nod. Then I realize he probably can’t see me. “Yes.”
“Really? You don’t sound okay. You need something?”
I am starving. I haven’t eaten in – hours? Days? I have no reference to time, no way to know how many hours have passed since I fell in the shower, doubled over from the pain in my side, the pain that Xavier Bishop fixed by sawing me open and taking something out.
“Are you going to kill me?” I ask. Point blank. I am not a girl of the world; I do not know such things as subtleties.
Ahead of me, I hear Xavier make a choking sound. “Why would I want to kill you?” he asks.
I wiggle my toes, thankful to be able to feel them a little. “You’d want to kill me because I belong to Ignacio,” I say dully.
“Jesus Christ,” Xavier mutters. “Girl, I just almost got shot getting you out of there. I had to ride in a chopper. I hate those damn things. Believe me when I say if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead in Mexico right now.”
Adrenalin spikes in my belly, and something else, too. I don’t know the word for it. It spreads through my stomach, and lower. He risked death to smuggle me away.
“We’re not in Mexico?”
“No.”
I wait for more information, but he’s silent.
“What happened to Ignacio?” I ask, swallowing down nausea from all the turns he�
��s making. “Is he alright? Is he dead?”
“I don’t know if he’s dead, but he’s definitely not alright,” Xavier answers.
I feel the car come to a stop, and put my hands out to stop from sliding off the seat. The leather under me is warm, contoured to my body after so many hours on the road.
“We’re here.”
* * *
Here is a place Xavier tells me is called a motel. I’ve never heard this word before, but it’s not dissimilar to my circular room in the tower. It has more light though, light that Xavier tries to minimize after he carries me inside. I sit in the center of a soft bed, the sheets smelling of chemical flowers and talc, and follow Xavier’s movements with my ears as he closes every curtain and switches off every light.
“Okay,” he says. “You want to try and take that thing off?”
Gingerly, I reach up and push the scratchy fabric up and away from my eyes. More tears roll down my cheeks, not from sadness but a physical response to the air, the damp outside, the crack of light underneath the door and framing the edges of the windows.
It hurts. A sob lodges in my throat, and I fold the material back over my face again. I’ve felt plenty helpless before, hungry and alone in my tower, but I’ve never felt like this. Despondent. Lost. I don’t know who I am, what I look like, or how to open my eyes in this cruel, radioactive-bright world.
“It’s still too much, huh?” His voice is kind. My body instinctively wants to lean into whichever direction he’s speaking from. He stole me, it’s true, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I nod. It’s still too bright.
“I have an idea,” he says. I feel him next to me, and then he’s looping an arm under my arms, another arm behind my knees, and I’m being lifted.
“Don’t be scared,” he says quietly.
I curl into his warm body. I am terrified.
XAVIER
She started screaming in the back of the car when the sun rose. I’m such an idiot, I hadn’t even thought about how bright it would be for her, a girl who’d spent her life feeling around in the dark.
I had to pull over on the edge of the Interstate, praying a cop wouldn’t fucking stop and check on us, and find the girl I’d just kidnapped after giving her a spinal block and cutting her abdomen open. I’d be in cuffs before they even read me my Miranda rights.
At least she didn’t flip out in the helicopter; there’s not enough room to freak out in one of those tiny chopper cabins without kicking the equipment and sending everyone to a fiery death down below. Small mercies and all that.
“What is this place?” She had said with wonder, when I carried her into the motel and deposited her onto the bed. I took her hand; she was trembling violently. What an assault on her senses, for a girl who’s spent her entire life locked in a tower.
Now, she’s calm, but her heart is going so fast it’s about to beat out of her fucking ribcage and land on the floor. I hope not, because this isn’t exactly the Bellagio, and I don’t think the floors have been cleaned recently.
I’ve chosen a nondescript, boring-looking Motel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Ground floor, all one level, and we’re on the end of a row of rooms, with a parking spot out front and a clear view of any approaching traffic from the front and the back. I’m fairly certain nobody followed our flight path for now, but it’s only a matter of time. Assuming Ignacio survived the scalpel attack, he’ll be looking for me. And the first place he’ll go is Chicago, my stomping grounds. I know he’s going to try to fuck with my family, and I just have to hope that they’re smart enough to heed my warnings and take cover until I can figure this shit out. I’ve just spent the chopper ride into Mexico City, a private jet flight over to Los Angeles and a couple hours in a rental car trying to think of a solution to the dilemma I’ve just taken upon myself to fix: the real-life Rapunzel in my back seat, a girl whose value is seemingly immeasurable to Ignacio.
I mean, apart from blowing Ignacio’s brains out. I’m really regretting not doing that the first time around.
And this brings us to my bright idea at the motel. More than anything, I want to give this girl a full medical checkup, apart from the basic history I got from the ever-helpful Ignacio in Mexico, I’ve got no idea how old she is, where she came from, if her parents are still looking for her.
The sun shimmers across the mountains in the distance, the heat making everything look washed-out, dream-like. I’ve been travelling and performing surgery and stabbing and shooting for like, thirty hours without a break; I haven’t let myself close my eyes for more than a moment since I arrived in New York. I don’t even remember what day that was. All I know is that I need to get this girl somewhere away from prying eyes, my sole mission. Get her somewhere safe.
Nowhere will be safe for very long. This is the reality of our cruel world. Everybody will sell you out for the right price. Every code of loyalty is only as strong as the will of the people who enforce it. Every lock can be broken, every door can be rammed down, every traffic and security camera can be hacked.
Nowhere is safe in this world for more than a day or two.
I try to make the Spartan-style Motel room as comfortable as possible for her, but it’s obvious Seraphina isn’t used to light of any kind. Underneath the knitted ski cap I found at a Gas Station for her to cover her eyes with, tears are streaming down her cheeks like twin tributaries, carving rivers of sorrow along her pale cheeks. I remember when my sister used to get migraines when we were younger, how even the smallest crack of light under her door was unbearable to her. I gather Seraphina up in my arms and use my boot to kick open the closet door.
“Here,” I say, sitting her against the wall in this tiny square space, no bigger than my refrigerator. I’ve already arranged pillows and towels on the floor to make her comfortable; soon, the wound from her surgery is going to start hurting like a motherfucker. I set her down and stand, our connection broken.
She starts to panic, her chest rising and falling with small sobs as she hyperventilates.
“Are you leaving me here?” she whispers in the dark, searching the air with her hands. “Are you going to kill me?”
She looks pitifully small, her hands coming to rest on top of her knees. She’s wearing a spare pair of my green surgical scrubs that swim on her slight frame. I couldn’t find anything to dress her in in that fucking tower Ignacio kept her locked in that was more substantial than a tiny nightgown made for a twelve-year-old. I push the thought of that away for now, knowing that I can’t get angry and flip the fuck out until Seraphina is okay.
I mean, I’m not sure she’ll ever be okay.
“Hey, Seraphina,” I say softly, kneeling in front of her, taking both of her hands in mine. She’s shaking violently. The spinal block wearing off makes you shake sometimes, and layered on top of her terror it’s like she’s caught in the middle of an invisible storm only she can see. “Seraphina. I’m not doing either of those things. This is a closet. You know what that is?”
She nods.
“This is the darkest place I can find in here, sweetheart. I know the light hurts your eyes. I promise I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”
She nods again, her breath hitching in her throat as she starts to calm down.
I might not be a legitimate doctor in a hospital, but my motherfucking bedside manner is one of my best attributes. I can talk anyone into believing they’re going to be okay, whether they’ve just been peppered with bullets, or stabbed, or tortured, or had all their teeth removed with a pair of pliers by a crazy fucking Russian. Yes, that really happened once.
“Please don’t go,” she begs. My heart fucking shatters. I nod, even though she can’t see me, as I squeeze her hands. “I’m right here. I’m right here with you.”
On instinct, I wipe the tears from her cheeks, her skin warm and wet beneath the spot where the ski cap rests under her eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“It’s okay, Seraphina.”
“You can call m
e Phina,” she whispers.
“It’s okay, Phina. Everything is going to be okay.”
It’s a lie, but I hope she believes me. I wedge myself in the spot on the opposite wall of the small built-in closet and pull the door shut with my finger, our legs pressed together in the tiny space. When I arrange a towel under the bottom of the door, the world is plunged into pitch black, and I heave a sigh of relief. It’s like trying to keep a vampire from burning to ash in the sun. If vampires were real. I need some fucking sleep.
“There you go,” I murmur, pulling one hand away from her death-grip and taking the ski cap between my thumb and forefinger.
“You ready to try taking this off?”
She nods.
I pull the whole thing from her head in one movement. I almost forgot about her hair, the way she had it tucked up in the cap, but now it unfurls from the loose knot that had been coiled out of sight. I can’t see it—I can’t see a damn thing—but I feel it. Ignacio must’ve supplied some good goddamn hair product, because there’s silken strands running over my knees, across my hands as they hold hers, even in my lap, where I’ve dropped the ski cap for now. It’s like satin, and it’s literally everywhere.
I’d say it was suffocating to have so much of her hair in here, but it feels so soft, so lustrous, a faint tickle on my skin wherever it brushes against me, that it’s anything but suffocating. It’s… fucking mesmerizing. I haven’t focused on anything except her survival (and mine) until this point. Haven’t had a second to think. So now, in this moment, shame rises along my skin as I welcome her touch. Disgust rises in my throat as I savor the caress of her flaxen hair on my skin. Rage pulses in my temples as I try not to fall under the spell of being in the dark with a girl who needs anything except the things I want to give her right now. I think about cold showers, about that time I got shot in the shoulder and the pain that came from that. I think about treating that FBI agent in San Francisco after some Russian bastard had pulled every one of her adult teeth out trying to get information out of her. In the end, it’s only that image that voids whatever terrible things I was picturing about Seraphina….
Glamour Page 47
