by Moore, E. M.
Chapter Eight
Delilah
My heart split down the center after Simon walked away. No, it wasn’t because he threw me away like I was last week’s trash. It was something much deeper than that.
I’d always looked up to my grandfather. Of course, I only saw the positive side of things. I saw the nice house and the cars. I saw how he was able to manipulate my life from being a broken girl with no parents to having everything I needed and more. Much, much more.
But it was all a lie. I was living high off other people’s broken dreams.
I knew what my grandfather did. I would never pretend I didn’t, but in the same token, I never much cared. I never saw the other side of it like Simon tried to show me. I never saw a family’s despair. Before, if someone was stupid enough to get hooked on drugs, I would’ve said it was their fault. But, that wasn’t everything, was it? What about the people that introduced the drugs to them? What about the people who were forced to take drugs? What about what my grandfather did to people like Simon’s mom? And here Simon was, living with that. He took that hatred and internalized it, making him barely human.
He wasn’t human.
He was a predator through and through. Broken, directionless, living from day-to-day off his pitiful fancies because of what was taken from him by my grandfather.
The pain festering in my heart was far worse than any pain Simon inflicted on me. I liked to think I was genuinely a nice person, but after today, after everything was so blatantly slapped in front of me, I couldn’t deny it. I’d been a selfish bitch, and I’d been wrong.
My grandfather’s stain was on me now.
My stomach lurched. Quickly, I crept toward the side of the couch. I gagged as my stomach unleashed what little contents it had in it, then I just dry heaved over the side until my eyes stung and my insides could only cramp.
Slowly, I pulled myself up and walked around the room. I caught myself in the mirror. Instead of crying at what I’d become, I just stared. All Simon had done was make my outside match my inside. I was an ugly person. I looked to my left, finding the hallway. I’d seen Simon move that way before. Careful not to touch the walls, I walked down it until I found a door that led to the bathroom.
I flicked on the light. It was harsh, stinging my irises. I blinked until I could finally stand to have my eyes open. Everything in here was pristine, top-of-the-line, just like my bathroom at home. I walked forward, my footprints making small bloody marks on the floor. I grasped hold of the shower curtain and pushed it aside before stepping onto the bright white porcelain. I fiddled with the faucet until hot spray came from the showerhead. It hit me in the face, making me gasp for air. Then, the water doused me, cleaning away the remnants of tonight. Hopefully it washed everything down the drain, never to return. Except the knowledge I now held. That was one thing I didn’t want to get rid of. In that moment, I swore I’d be a better person. Someone who cared about what happened to others.
My skin stung like tiny little needles had been stuck in one-by-one. I waited under the showerhead until the water ran clear, no more pink staining the tub. Then, I took the hotel offered shampoo and conditioner and began to clean myself up. I didn’t know why washing had suddenly seemed so important to me, but I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin was pink and raw. In the places where Simon had cut me, I’d opened the wounds again. My skin was still somewhat numb from whatever his claws did to me, but eventually, they healed, leaving tiny little slices everywhere. Eventually, they would probably turn into puckered scars, white instead of the red of right now. I hope they stayed there forever, reminding me of the realization I just had.
When I was done cleaning myself, I stood under the shower and waited until I didn’t feel dirty anymore, until the shame of what I realized today wore off.
It didn’t work.
Eventually, the shower door opened. A hand moved the curtain away, and there was Simon. He was perfectly put together again. Jeans on low with a white shirt over his torso. He must’ve owned a hundred of those shirts for the way each one of them looked perfectly brand new, almost tailored specifically for him.
He reached in and shut the shower off. I just stood there dripping wet, staring at him. I started to shiver. The moment the air from outside the shower hit me, I realized how cold the water had become as I just stood there, waiting for it to do its job.
He offered me a towel, and I plucked it from his hands, immediately pulling it around myself for its warmth.
He didn’t move from the bathroom as I stepped out, so I went through my usual routine as if he wasn’t there. I dried my hair with the towel, running my hands through it since I didn’t have a hairbrush. Then, I looked around for something to put on. Simon grabbed the white bathrobe off the back of the door and handed it to me. “Thank you,” I told him. Even to my own ears my voice was thick and raw.
“I ordered room service,” he said.
My eyebrows raised at his words. Finding his gaze in the bathroom mirror, I searched them. I couldn’t help but be surprised. He was always either torturing me or fucking me. I didn’t even know if his kind ate real food. He’d drank from me. For all I knew, that was enough to sustain him, as well as living off my despair.
Maybe he wasn’t like that though. Maybe all he’d ever wanted me to understand was the type of person I’d become. Maybe he even had hope for me. Did I have hope for him?
“O-okay,” I said.
He stared at me a little while longer before he turned on his heel and left the room. I followed him, almost chasing after him as if he was a beacon in the dark. After all, he’d been the one to enlighten me. An apology was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it back. An apology was probably the last thing he ever wanted to hear, but besides that, he probably didn’t really give a fuck. An ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t bring his mom back. It didn’t turn his childhood into something every child deserved to have. No. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life just as I would have to live with what I’d turned a blind eye to. I may have been brought into my grandfather’s world when I was young, but I sure as fuck wasn’t young now. I was old enough to know better and did know better—I just didn’t care. And not caring was my worst trait yet.
We were both silent as we waited for the kitchen staff to bring up the food. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the bathroom, but there was a completely different couch than the one I’d picked myself up from. No blood. No holes where I’d dug my nails in when he’d taken me from behind. In fact, the room looked even lighter. The sun shone through slits in the curtains, and if I strained my ears, I could hear the beeping noises from cars down on the busy streets below.
After taking that in, my gaze moved to Simon. I stared at him so long while he pretended not to notice, but eventually, I got up the courage to ask him the one thing that was on my mind. “He never cared for me, did he?”
Simon’s shoulders stiffened. He turned toward me, his gaze finally latching onto mine. “It doesn’t appear that way, does it?”
I ground my teeth together and stared straight ahead. “I hate him.”
His gaze narrowed as if he didn’t believe me, but I felt the truth of it down to my very marrow. He’d turned me into this uncaring monster. What family didn’t do everything they could to protect one another? How wrong was I to think that he would’ve come right after me once he noticed I was gone and that Ronnie was dead? Surely, the dead body was a giveaway as to what Simon was capable of. Instead, my grandfather had done nothing. For all the connections he was always boasting of, did he not even try?
It was as if Simon answered my unspoken question. “He’s made no attempt to barter, to plead, or even a rescue. I didn’t think he’d fork himself over to me easily, but I thought at least that he could be persuaded.”
I nodded, my stomach turning. I really needed to get some food in me because as of right now, it was feeling emptier than ever.
“While you were in the shower, I ran there.”
&n
bsp; I looked up at him slowly. “—You ran there? It’s at least four miles away.”
He lifted his legs off the carpet lazily, showing me the bottom of his sneakers. “I’m fast. Anyway, it’s business as usual at the home front. No extra security. No buzz of electricity or personnel gathered for meetings or anything I would’ve expected if someone I cared for had been taken. Fuck, if Galen was in trouble, I’d be burning the whole fucking city down. Your grandfather is truly more of a worthless piece of shit than I’d even imagined. You are his family, Delilah,” he said, his voice hard.
I tried not to grind my teeth as I thought about what I was to my grandfather. Sure, he’d given me everything I always wanted, but he was barely ever there. Even when I was still in mourning over my parents, he’d hired a nanny to take care of me, someone who I could cry to. When I turned eighteen, he fired her. I was old enough to be on my own, he told me. I didn’t realize until just this very moment that she was the last personal connection I had in that house. Maybe that was why I liked to flirt with the security team there. Maybe that was why I seduced Ronnie. A plea for help? For someone to just notice me? Or was it something more? A deep-seated urge for something more that I just wasn’t getting.
“He was never really around, you know?” I said, not even talking to Simon. I just wanted to hear myself talk about it out loud as if hearing myself say it would make it true. “He never played with me as a child and we never did anything together when I grew up. His help cared for me. The chef cooked my meals, the tutor educated me, the nanny was my friend and disciplinarian. He made the rules of the house without even knowing me, and I blindly followed them because he’s the only family I have—had,” I said, correcting myself at the last second. “I know when people look at me they see just the exterior things. They see the girl who has all the right clothes and the nice house and the posh car, but no one’s ever seen the real me. Not even me. I thought I was happy, but I was so wrong. I’ve just been going through the motions in a life that wasn’t even mine. How sad is that?”
Simon’s jaw ticked, and I looked away, wondering when he was going to tell me to quit complaining, and that I was just a spoiled brat.
A knock sounded on the door, shaking me out of staring at him. He gave me a hard look before getting to his feet. “Wait here. And don’t even think about calling for help.”
I gave him a look. Help? Where was I going to go? Back to a grandfather who didn’t even care if I got raped and tortured? Who was too busy worrying about his damn self instead of saving his own family? No, that wasn’t happening. I’d stay just where I was because even though Simon was broken, he was beautifully broken. Something my grandfather would know nothing about.
Chapter Nine
Simon
My phone rang as Delilah ate the seafood I had delivered. Both of us stopped at once, eyeing the contraption for far longer than necessary like it was a trap. A part of me almost hated to see who it was. What if it was Greenie? What if he was giving in? That would mean I’d have to give her up, and I didn’t know if I was ready to do that. I’d helped her see things in a different way. What I’d said to her mattered, and for all the darkness inside me, there was now a halo of light.
It didn’t fucking matter. I was who I was, and she was who she was. Then again, as soon as the thought entered my mind, I knew there was more to it than that. She was as fucked up as I was, and maybe I wasn’t even that terrible of a person.
Taking a deep breath, I turned the cell over and stared down at the screen. Galen.
I picked it up. “Hey.”
I hadn’t spoken to him since I ransomed Delilah. At the thought of her name, I looked up. She stared at me intently, no doubt wondering if it was her grandfather on the line. I just shook my head.
Her eyes were dead. She looked away, continuing to eat slowly as if nothing mattered anymore. She probably worried about her future. If Greenie never gave himself up, what was going to happen to her?
Hell if I knew. I never thought about what I would do if he didn’t do anything. I assumed he would make some sort of move, and I would react from there. I never expected a non-reaction.
“What’s up with you?” Galen asked.
“Same old shit,” I answered, realizing how true that was. Kidnapping girls, torturing them, fucking them, drinking from them… But this one, this one was different. I didn’t even want to admit that to myself, but I was in over my fucking head. My very being balked at the idea of getting rid of Delilah. Hadn’t she been through enough?
“You sound weird,” Galen said.
I shrugged, knowing full well he couldn’t see me through the phone, but I had no intention of responding to his comment either. “How are things? Bored yet?”
“Never.”
I peeked up at Delilah as she took slow, deliberate bites. I’d done a number on her skin, thinking it would somehow make me feel better. Maybe even unintentionally I’d wanted to do that, so I wouldn’t be attracted to her. It didn’t work. She was still beautiful. “So you keep saying.”
“Coming home yet?”
“No. I’m in the middle of something here.”
“In Philly?” His voice immediately changed. Panic rising in his words. “What are you doing there?”
I cringed. Fucking Delilah distracted me. I hadn’t thought about the words that were coming out of my mouth. “Nothing big,” I said nonchalantly.
“Don’t lie to me, Simon. Do you need something?”
“No, I’m good.”
Delilah looked up, searching my face. She saw far more than I ever meant for her to see, and I didn’t even have to say anything out loud.
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Because you know all you have to do is call and I’m right there.”
“I know, Galen.” My throat closed as I said the words. My heart flooded with something like compassion. Galen had always been there for me. Even now that he had Kayleigh he was concerned about me, and I’d been nothing but a dick to the both of them since he brought her into our lives for good. “I have to go,” I said quickly. Before he could say another word, I hung up the phone.
Delilah pushed the rolling tray away from her. “Who’s Galen? You said the name before, but you didn’t say who it was.”
“A friend,” I said, my voice coming out harsher than I wanted it to.
“Vampire?”
I nodded. Wasn’t that obvious? “I only hang out with vampires. It’s easier that way.”
“Do you want to kill all humans or just the ones that piss you off?”
I snickered at that. I couldn’t help myself. “All of them. I’ve never met a human who didn’t piss me off in some way or another.”
“We are a rare breed, aren’t we?”
I watched as she tried to smile. The look behind her eyes was still dead, detached with no feeling behind it. Galen had saved me from what she was going through now. He took me from my mother, gave her a proper burial, and then showed me what life with a family could be like. We may not have been the traditional family, but we were one. What Delilah had couldn’t even be considered that. It was all a fucking lie.
If mine and Delilah’s situations were reversed, Galen would’ve torn the city apart trying to get to me, yet there was no one in Delilah’s life who would do that for her. It was sick, and sad. Maybe everything I thought I knew about our kind was a lie too. Those were just basic instincts I thought came natural to everyone, but that wasn’t true. What if we did have the capacity to love differently like Galen was telling me?
I couldn’t believe the words that were about to come out of my mouth, but they came out anyway and I couldn’t snatch it back even if I tried. I felt compelled to say them. “I’m sorry.”
She glowered at me initially, but then her face changed.
“Not about taking you,” I said immediately. I would never apologize for that. I meant every fucking part of that because I still wanted revenge on her worthless grandfather. Maybe
even more so now.
“I knew you weren’t talking about that,” she said softly. “But about what?”
My jaw tensed as I thought about how to word it. “I guess I’m sorry your grandfather’s a fucking dick. He’s something worse than that, but I don’t even think there’s a word in the English language that describes the type of foul being he is.”
She sat back on the couch and wrapped her thin arms around herself. “I don’t think he’s going to come for me, Simon,” she said matter-of-factly like we were running a business transaction. She looked up after I didn’t say anything, her gaze catching on mine. “What are you going to do about that?”
The answer was easy. I was going to fucking kill him. What to do with her though? Now that wasn’t going to be an easy answer. The thought of her petrified me, but it was because of what I saw when I looked at her.
Fuck this. It was a good thing I hadn’t replaced this chair yet because my claws ripped new gouges into the fabric of the arms.
I wanted to scream my frustration into the night. I had half a mind just to jump up from the chair and slit her throat and be done with it. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about what the fuck I would do with her. I could just carry on with what I’d been doing, leaving my emotions out of everything. Everything would be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have to look at her or think about her.
My fingers tensed as I thought about it. It would be so easy to move across the room to do it. She wouldn’t even have time to react. I wouldn’t even have time to react. All I had to do was tell myself it was okay. Then, as soon as Delilah was out of the picture, I could return to Greenie’s and do what I’d set out to do—kill the fucker. He deserved it now more than ever.
My claws descended, and the familiar rage swept through my body. I told myself it would be okay. Three seconds tops and then it would be over with. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore.
