Twisted

by Knight, Natasha

  “He likes how you look.”

  I watch him, but it’s almost like he’s talking to himself and not me.

  “He shouldn’t have seen you. I should have hidden you.”

  He sits down behind me on the edge of the tub, straddling it, and rolls his sleeves up. I see ink on his right arm, just the very edges of a tattoo as muscle flexes.

  “Lean forward a little,” he says, setting the bar of soap down to lift my hair and adjust the clip to keep it off my neck.

  His hands are strong but gentle and his fingers trace the sensitive skin at the back of my neck, and I wish I could see his face, his eyes.

  When he puts a little pressure on my back, I lean farther forward.

  He peels the plastic off the tattoo, and I gasp.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  I turn my head a little, glance up, see just a corner of his face and his eyes are intent on the tattoo and I wonder if he knows what he just said, how he said it. But then his fingers are on me and it’s like every nerve comes alive with just this softest touch from him.

  “That fucker should know I don’t share what’s mine.”

  He’s still talking to himself, not me, and growing angrier as he does.

  He dips his hands into the water, turning the bar of soap between them, building a lather and I think I need to get him out of his head.

  His question from earlier comes back to me, the one about ghosts.

  “I see the little girl,” I say out of the blue.

  He stops. Looks at me.

  “What girl?”

  “The one who lived here before.”

  He doesn’t seem surprised and doesn’t ask questions, just begins to rub soap into my back, my shoulders and it feels so good. Different than when he touches me when we’re fucking and I think it’s distracting him, what I’m saying.

  “I think she died that night too, with her mother. That’s the dream I keep having. When you woke me that night, I was dreaming it. She wanted me to chase her into the library. She always disappears behind the shelves and I get the feeling she wants me to follow her for some reason.”

  That stops him. Makes him look at me oddly for a moment.

  “Keep out of the library.”

  His tone is flat, not warning but something else. We remain still for a moment, the only sound in the room is that of the slow dripping of water into tub.

  “She’s not the only ghost you see,” he says, and even though it’s not a question, I shake my head to confirm.

  “For a long time, I thought everyone saw what I saw. I realized when we were little they don’t.”

  “How did you realize that?”

  I shift my gaze away from him. I’ve never told anyone this.

  “I asked my sisters who the girls in the library were.” I can almost see them now. This image never fades.

  His hands still, but they’re on me and they’re the only thing that’s warm suddenly.

  “Willow Girls,” he says.

  I nod.

  “The shadows in the corners of your sketches,” he pauses, then focuses on the work of his hands again. “Did you see the angel?”

  I shake my head. “No, not like that. When I draw sometimes, it’s like it’s not me. Like it’s not my hand moving the pencil.” I turn, look up at him. “It’s weird, huh? You don’t believe in ghosts.”

  He meets my eyes. “I never said I didn’t believe in ghosts. I just said they don’t scare me. That the living can do more harm than the dead.”

  We both fall silent, listening to that dripping of water.

  “I told you something, now tell me about that man,” I say. “Tell me what he wants and why you’re worried.”

  He grins, pushes a strand of hair off my face, leaves a residue of bubbles on my cheek before sliding his soapy hand down my chest to cup my breast, rub my nipple.

  “Not everything is an exchange, Amelia.”

  He leans down, kisses me. He stretches his arm to unplug the stopper and a moment later, the water is draining from the tub and he stands me up and he’s wrapping a towel around me. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me with a strange look on his face.

  “Ignorance can be a gift,” he says.

  “What?”

  He snakes his hand behind my head, cradles it. He kisses me and there’s an urgency to the kiss but it’s not sexual. There’s more to it. There’s almost a texture to it, to what I taste, the feel of it.

  It’s a sort of need, but more.

  A longing.

  A loneliness that begins at the edges of it, that seeps into its heart, that takes it over and it’s so much. So much that it hurts.

  I open for him because it’s all I can do, and I go back to what he said that time about me giving it to him. Giving him everything because he wants everything. Maybe this, me opening, it’s giving that to him.

  He pulls back and I can’t drag my eyes from his. They’re so intent on mine, like he sees me differently than anyone has seen me before and again I have to think about us, him and me, Scafoni and Willow. In a way, we’re connected. Always will be. Our families have been for generations. But this, what’s happening now, it’s separate of that.

  I’m not the Willow Girl.

  I wasn’t meant to be his.

  I was never meant to be his.

  After drying me, he lets the towel drop to the floor and leans down to kiss me again.

  I’m barefoot, the top of my head barely comes to his chin and I put my hands on him, slide them beneath his shirt, feel the hard muscle of his belly, feel him pressing against his jeans and he’s right. I do want more.

  He draws back, looks at me, and what I want most of all is to know what he’s thinking. Is to be able to read his eyes.

  We walk into the bedroom and he kisses me one more time before pushing me onto the bed.

  “Lie down,” he says, opening a drawer, taking out a bottle of lotion and setting it on the nightstand.

  I lie back.

  “On your belly.”

  I roll onto my stomach and look over my shoulder to watch him strip off his clothes, muscles flexing as he moves.

  When he’s fully naked, he straddles me, knees on either side of my hips, and I draw my elbows underneath myself and look ahead as he pours lotion onto his hands, warming it before beginning to rub it into the tattoo, into my shoulders and back, lower as he shifts one knee between my legs, then the other, his hands on my ass.

  I look back at him, watch him spread me open, watch the want in his eyes.

  He takes his cock in his gloved hand and sets the fingers of the other on my asshole.

  I make a sound, get up on my elbows, try to pull away.

  “Stay,” he says.

  I shake my head, but he grips my hip with that gloved hand and won’t let me move.

  “Look at me.”

  He still has his finger there and I feel mortified. Again, I shake my head.

  He digs his fingernails into my flesh. “I said look at me.”

  I crane my neck to meet his gaze and he holds mine as he pushes a finger into me and all I can do is grip the blankets as every muscle tenses.

  “You need to relax,” he says, moving his finger inside me, sliding his other hand around to my belly as he stretches his body alongside mine, his breath at my neck, cock hard at my back. “Do you remember what I told you?”

  He’s rubbing my clit and his finger inside me, it feels different than when he’s touching me anywhere else.

  “Amelia.” He pinches my clit.

  I stiffen again.

  “I want everything. Do you remember that?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Are you going to give it or am I going to have to take it?”

  He’s gentle again, rubbing my clit, moving his finger in and out of my ass and it feels good.

  “Good girl,” he says, feeling me relax, kissing my shoulder before pulling his finger out, rising up on his knees and lifting my hips so I’m on my elbows and k
nees.

  His eyes meet mine as he drips more lotion onto my lower back, and he holds my gaze as he smears it inside me and when he slides his cock into my pussy, it’s like I can’t breathe. Like he’s filled me up and all I can do is feel.

  I look back at him because his face like this, he’s so fucking beautiful. He looks down at me, watches his cock disappear into my pussy. He lets spit fall from his mouth down onto my ass. It’s so dirty and so wrong and he’s smearing spit into my ass and the thought of it, it makes me want more, more of him, all of him, but then he pulls out and I feel empty and cold, just for a single moment until he brings the head of his cock to my ass and a new panic sets in.

  “Give it,” he says, holding me in place. “Give it to me. Don’t make me take it.”

  He begins to pump in slowly, stretching me, and it hurts, but he’s taking care and he’s tender, in his own way, and I let myself feel his hands on me. Feel him push into me. Move inside me. Slow at first, stretching me, hurting me a little, but making it feel good, the sensations mixed up, and when he rubs my clit again, it’s not long before I’m coming, before somehow, through the cloud of pain and pleasure and his fingers on me, and his cock inside me and him holding me, I’m coming and he’s moving deeper and faster and it hurts again when he fucks me, really fucks me but I want it. I want to give it and I want him to take it all at once.

  I tumble from orgasm to orgasm, this sensation so different than anything else, like my whole body has come alive and when I feel him swell inside me, I look back at him and I watch him, watch his beautiful face, and when he thrusts one final time, he meets my eyes and I watch him as he fills me up and all I can think is I’m his. I’m his and it’s where I want to be and what I want to be, and I know it’s fucked up but this is it, the truth.

  He’s what I want. Like this. Exactly like this.

  17

  Gregory

  She’s tucked into the crook of my arm. I watch her as she struggles against sleep, her lashes fluttering as she opens her eyes only to have them close again. I listen to her quiet, steady breath and think how beautiful she is and how I fucked up. I should never have let Sabbioni see her. Never have let him see that she matters. Because she does.

  She mumbles something, turns on her side so her back is to me. The blankets have slipped down to her waist and I can study the tattoo, the blue striking against her pale skin, the angel with her half-skull face still beautiful. The bird as if peering out from beneath the wings of the watcher, innocent. Like her.

  “I could hold on to her for you. Just until you mend bridges with your mother. While she’s in town and all.”

  I draw my arm slowly out from underneath her and slip out of the bed, pulling on my clothes and closing the bedroom door behind me.

  I go downstairs to my study, sit behind my desk and pick up the phone to dial a number I never thought I’d call again.

  My brother answers on the second ring.

  I’m not sure what I expect to feel at the sound of his voice but as I sit here and he repeats his hello, I think I miss him. I miss my brother.

  How can things get so fucked up so fast?

  “Sebastian,” my voice comes out more strained than I expect.

  Now the pause is on his side. I hear him walking, hear a door open and close. He’s probably locking himself in his study too.

  “Gregory,” he says after an eternity. “You’re in Italy.”

  He can tell from my phone number. “Nowhere near the island. Don’t worry.”

  “I wasn’t worried. I heard about the house,” he pauses. “You never mentioned a word about it.”

  He can fuck himself if he thinks I’m explaining myself.

  “Stefan Sabbioni paid me a visit today.”

  “Sabbioni?” he sounds surprised. I guess he’s not expecting this shift in conversation. What did he think? I was calling to shoot the shit? “I thought he wasn’t able to leave Sicily.”

  “Yeah well, he did.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “Seems he has some business with Lucinda.”

  Sebastian snorts. “Lucinda. For fuck’s sake she’s not that stupid, is she?”

  “She’s still my mother, Sebastian.”

  “And you feel what exactly for her?”

  “He’s looking for her. If he finds her, things are going to get ugly.”

  “Fuck.”

  “He suggested she stole something from him.”

  It’s silent. Sebastian knows how a thief is punished in that world.

  “Do you know where she is?” I ask.

  “You can’t get involved, Greg.”

  Greg. He called me that sometimes. We used to be close. Although, I guess not that close since I didn’t even tell him about the house back when I bought it, before everything happened.

  “Yeah, well, I’m already involved.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he made the trip from Sicily to see me because he expects I’ll deliver her to him.”

  “I wonder if that means his brother is no longer a threat.”

  Because the brother may have evidence to force the Italian authorities to extradite him. As far as I know, if Stefan Sabbioni sets foot on American soil, he’ll be taken into custody and the threat is real enough that he doesn’t try.

  “I don’t know anything about the brother. Did you know Lucinda had gone to him? After you shut her out.”

  “Heard something about it. Stefan wanted to be sure I knew what he did for me. I guess he thought I’d feel indebted to him.”

  “I want to know where she is. I need to talk to her.”

  “Don’t get involved. It’s a bad idea.”

  “Like I said, I’m already involved.”

  “How?”

  I pause. “I just am. I know you’re tracking her through her expenses. Are you going tell me where she is or not?”

  “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighs. “I’ll send you an address.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you need my help, you’ll call—”

  “I won’t need your help.”

  There’s an awkward silence. “Gregory…” he starts, but I think he changes his mind. “How are you?”

  His question pisses me off more than it should. “Like you care.”

  I disconnect the call, put my elbows on the table, lean my head in my hands and rub my eyes.

  I want it clear that I’m not asking for his friendship or approval or forgiveness or whatever the fuck he thinks he’s owed. I just need to know where the fuck Lucinda is.

  Within a few minutes, my phone dings with a text. An address.

  In Rome.

  I get up, go to the safe, open it, and take a thick stack of bills. I shove them into an envelope, get my jacket, listen at the stairs, but hear nothing. I wish Matteo were here. I don’t want to leave her alone in case Stefan were to make good on his threat. But after Stefan’s surprise visit, Irina was shaken and he took her to her sister’s house and won’t be back tonight. Everyone knows the Sabbioni family. Everyone knows to stay far, far away.

  Everyone but me.

  * * *

  I park a few blocks from the hotel where Lucinda is staying and walk to the small, and very exclusive boutique hotel. I’m not sure how much of an allowance Sebastian is giving her, but this place has to be consuming most of it.

  My brother’s been keeping close tabs on her. Logging all of her comings and goings. Which is the only way he has this information.

  But if I have it, means Stefan can get it too.

  Without stopping at the front desk, I head to the elevator, giving a cursory glance around the expensively furnished lobby. As I wait for the elevator, I read the inscription on a portrait of Napoleon who apparently spent some time here.

  The elevator arrives and an attendant in formal uniform steps aside for me to enter.

  “Five,” I say, unbutto
ning my coat.

  He nods, and the elevator doors close. I look straight ahead, not feeling the need to fill the silence. The elevator is old and a little rickety and I’m sure Lucinda’s complained about it already.

  Once on the fifth floor, I scan the hallway and turn in the direction of Lucinda’s suite. At the door, I stop to listen, hearing the faint sound of the television. But when I knock, it stops.

  I knock again.

  “Mother,” I say.

  The lock turns a moment later and Lucinda stands before me. She’s wearing black from head to toe and her hair is pulled back into a tight bun. Although the roots betray her age. And her state of mind.

  That and the fact that she’s not wearing any makeup and the buttons of her blouse are done up wrong.

  I hold her gaze, although I’m curious to look down. To see if Stefan was bluffing.

  “How did you find me?” she asks.

  “Sebastian.”

  She looks at me funny. “Didn’t realize you two were talking again.”

  “We’re not.”

  I invite myself in and she closes the door, locks all the locks.

  The room smells stale with cigarette smoke and old coffee. A room service tray from breakfast is sitting on the table by the window but the curtains are closed, and the bed is unmade.

  “How long have you been in town?” I ask.

  “A week.”

  I finally look down at the bandage on her right hand. It’s a stump, only thumb and forefinger sticking out. Did he really take the others?

  “Get your fill?” she asks, tucking her arm behind her back. “I can undo the bandage if you’re that curious.”

  I don’t reply but remove the shirt that’s thrown over the arm of one of the two chairs at the table and sit down. I don’t bother taking my coat off. I won’t be staying long.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  “Nothing. That boy…I knew him when he was in diapers. He’s a monster, like his father.”

  “So, there’s no reason he cut off your fingers?”

  She lifts her chin, ever stubborn.

  “No reason he’s coming back for the rest?”

  She reaches for her cup with the damaged hand, stops, uses the other one.