The Castle

by Skye Warren

  My hands grip the iron bar tighter, palms slick with sweat. “I really can’t decide whether I want to aim for your head or your heart. I mean, you deserve whatever will be most painful. Head, I think. But I should get satisfaction, too.”

  “Satisfaction?” His gaze sharpens, looking so much like Damon Scott that chills run down my spine. “Satisfaction for hurting the one man who cared about you most?”

  “How dare you.”

  “How dare I? It’s the truth. Stab my eye out if you want it to hurt the most. Jab the pointy end in my ass. There are countless ways to hurt me without killing me. I’ll walk you through them as long as I can talk. I’m excited for it, actually. It’s the first time we’ll be together like this.”

  I’m horrified to realize that he is excited. His dress slacks bulge at the front with an erection. Pain makes him hard. The threat of it turns him on. And it would be sexual, with all that history behind us. Now that I’ve remembered all of it, I can’t stop thinking about it.

  Are they getting bigger, little girl? One day they’ll fill up your hands. Like your mother’s. She’s very lovely. All the men look at her, don’t they? One day they’ll look at you like that.

  One day they’ll fight for you the way they do for her.

  I understand how Pandora felt, bearing the burden of knowledge that she didn’t ask for, pained with the vengeance of gods who created her, her very existence a punishment.

  A footstep echoes from behind me.

  Without turning I know who it is. “You never left?”

  His voice is gentle as he takes the iron poker from my hand. “Never.”

  Gabriel pulls me into his arms as I begin to weep. He heard everything, so he knows what happened to me as a child. That the only person I learned to trust was the one who betrayed me, that the only man who cared enough to try was a dangerous predator. That hurts the most. Not that he loved me, in his dangerous and obsessive way. That he was the only one.

  I sob against Gabriel’s shirt, dampening the fabric beneath my cheeks. “Please.”

  “No, Avery.”

  “He deserves it.”

  “Yes, but I heard you before. That it would destroy me to torture him. To kill him. And I have more experience in the language of violence. What would it do to you?”

  “I need to be destroyed,” I beg. “Like the marble. Broken apart.”

  He pulls me in closer, cradling me in his strong arms. “I’m not going to let that happen. Understand? You’re mine to protect. Whole. Strong. Beautiful, inside and out.”

  “I’m not whole,” I say, breath shuddering. “You know what he did.”

  “He toyed with a child. He played with your mind. He fucked with you the way he fucks with everyone, because he’s sick. It doesn’t taint you, Avery. Not even the auction can do that.” He pulls back, pressing the back of his hand between my breasts. “None of it touches you here.”

  “I blocked it out,” I whisper. “All of it.”

  “I know.”

  “How long?”

  “I knew you were hiding something. From me. And from yourself. I didn’t know what.”

  “Go away, Miller.” Jonathan Scott rattles the chains, making a creaking sound. “She and I aren’t finished here. You can have her when I’m done with her.”

  Gabriel’s eyes are bronze and dispassionate as they gaze at Scott. “Your hold on her was over the moment she left that house. You’re done with her.”

  “Oh, and you have a hold on her? I can make her do anything I want. You think I talked to her for years and never figured out how her mind works. Never planted any little trap doors.”

  I stiffen. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why do you think you went to my son for help? Of all the gin joints in all the world? You went to Damon Scott, a man who isn’t exactly known for being charitable.”

  “That was a coincidence.”

  “Or your obsession with Greek mythology.”

  “No,” I whisper, but I remember now. The stories he would tell me.

  “Oh yes. How the titan god Cronus was so paranoid and so jealous that he feared every child would take his throne. So every time his wife gave birth, he swallowed the child.”

  The words spill from me, more wound than salve. “When she gave birth to her last child, she gave Cronus a rock swaddled in cloth instead. And she sent the child away.”

  “That god grew up to be Zeus.” Jonathan Scott laughs, his eyes crinkling in a way that reminds me of Damon. “I was never humble enough to be anyone else.”

  “You’re not a god at all.”

  “Of course, he was raised by nymphs, fed honey and milk on the island of Crete. A much better childhood than a ward of the state in an experimental mental institution.”

  I swallow hard. “You grew up here?”

  “Home sweet home.”

  “That’s sick,” I whisper.

  “How many children do you suppose Zeus had?” he says, studying me. “They would be demigods. Half human. Half gods.”

  I take a step back. “You’re lying.”

  “Perhaps,” he says vaguely, but I know the truth.

  I was never my father’s daughter.

  And maybe he always knew that. Some part of me always knew we were different, always knew that I had to work to ingratiate myself with him, learning chess and hosting his parties like the perfect daughter. It doesn’t even matter now.

  Because the man who is my biological father? He’s the one who whispered to me about women’s bodies. He’s the one who taught me how to make myself wet.

  Taste it, he said from the darkness of night. I’m sure you’re sweet.

  I answered back: Not sweet. Salty.

  A laugh filled the room. That means you’re all grown up.

  My stomach churns, and I’m afraid I’m going to throw up. There’s nothing in there. I haven’t eaten in hours, but then my diaphragm spasms and I bend over, gagging.

  “Go outside,” Gabriel says in a low voice. “I’ll take care of him.”

  I manage to straighten, still breathing hard. “By killing him?”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “I am thinking about it. You can’t. I mean you can but—don’t. For me.”

  His eyebrows lower. “You’re asking for his life?”

  “Please.”

  I don’t know whether I want Jonathan Scott to live because he’s my biological parent or because killing him would irreparably harm Gabriel Miller. All I know is that if this night ends in death, my soul will be imprinted with this night.

  “It will break me,” I whisper.

  Gabriel is silent a moment. “Go outside. I promise not to kill him.”

  I eye the torture implements strewn over the broken tiles. “What will you do?”

  “I’ll make him go away. If that’s what you want.”

  “But how? You said the prisons couldn’t hold him.”

  “He already told us the answer. We put him in a mental institution. That’s where he belongs.”

  “Won’t the people who helped him out of jail help him out of that?”

  “Only if they know where to find him. He isn’t the only one with influence. If you want him to stay alive, then he can spend his days in a Russian psych ward, his name changed, where most of the nurses don’t even speak English. He’ll be drugged. Restrained. God knows he’ll fail any test they put in front of him.”

  I glance at Jonathan Scott, at the endless network of scars on his body. “I know he’s evil. What he did to my mother, what he did to me. Even Penny. For that he deserves anything that happens to him, but…”

  “They won’t torture him,” Gabriel says gently. “He’s been through enough of that.”

  “What about the price on my head?”

  “I’ll call it off,” Jonathan Scott says, his voice rough. “There’s a number. A code word.”

  “Why?” I ask softly.

  “It was never about killing you. My own flesh and bloo
d? It was closing off the exits.”

  Like the hedge maze on Gabriel’s estate, this one built around me, with guns instead of branches.

  “How do I know it’s real?” Gabriel asks, expression hard. “The code word.”

  “You don’t. I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

  I put my hand on Gabriel’s arm. “It’s okay, Gabriel. I’m not afraid.”

  And for once that’s not a lie. I’m not afraid of dying, because I’m more afraid of living. It isn’t Gabriel who’s going to survive. It’s me. Gabriel murmurs something about handling the logistics of moving Jonathan Scott. I think I manage to respond back coherently.

  Then I walk out the front door and cross the cracked lawn with its thick-stemmed weeds. My knees hit the earth a second before vomit presses into my throat. I throw up everything and nothing beside a sign with faded lettering that reads Midtown Asylum.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Time passes in a blur of black boots and hushed words. Apparently Blue Security is full service, because the boss himself arrives to transport Jonathan Scott to a secret holding facility and clean up evidence that we were ever there.

  In twenty minutes a limo glides to a stop in front of the asylum.

  Gabriel’s dress shoes appear in front of me, still shiny despite the events of the evening, my sunshine-yellow ballet flats blackened and torn in contrast. “Let’s go,” he says, his voice low.

  Where are we going? I think the words, but sometime while watching Jonathan Scott, still bleeding and feral, wrapped in chains and transported in an unmarked van, I seem to have lost the ability to speak. How long did he exist in my mind, whispering suggestions?

  How long did I obey my father, even without knowing him?

  “Home,” he says, hearing me anyway.

  It’s his house, though. His estate. His million dollars sitting in my bank account.

  I don’t have anything left, not even myself.

  He bends, scooping one arm beneath my knees, the other supporting my back. Then I’m in his arms, being carried down the lawn toward the waiting limo. It might have been romantic if I didn’t know the brown stains on his shirt were blood. My father’s blood.

  Without speaking he settles me onto the plush seats. They feel almost shockingly warm, burning, as if the leather will melt my skin. And then the blessed numbness surrounds me, cotton and cool breeze, where nothing can touch me.

  Not even Gabriel, when he climbs in beside me and pulls me onto his lap.

  His mouth presses against my hair, not quite a kiss.

  “Don’t let him win,” he whispers, fierce, almost desperate.

  It isn’t about letting Jonathan Scott win. That contest ended when I was five years old, the first time I heard a voice speak to me—and opened my mouth to speak back. My lips are too starched to explain, though. My eyelids too heavy to open.

  His hands run over me, more like they’re checking for wounds.

  Pain blooms in parts of my body that shouldn’t hurt. My hands. My heart. Even between my legs, the first place I touched that made me a woman. Gabriel may have taken my virginity, but my innocence was stolen long before that. Instead of curious exploration, instead of the patient guidance of a mother, I had a voice in my wall. And I feel the weight of those words on my sex, sharp and hot.

  No, fight it.

  Sometimes the only thing you can do is survive, so I push down the feelings, the horror. I imagine I’m some other girl, who never knew how little I was loved. I let myself be a doll in Gabriel’s arms, unthinking, without protest. It turns out that’s all I can be.

  Without interest I listen to Gabriel speak to Damon on the phone. “It’s done?”

  “Yes,” comes a voice that’s painfully familiar. “We sent the code word and got confirmation. Only time will tell if the information was valid.”

  “What’s your read?”

  “I think he didn’t really want her dead, like he said. But with my father, that means you’re half-buried already.”

  Gabriel’s hands tighten around me. “No one’s getting near her.”

  “Even me?” Damon asks, his voice wry. “As it turns out, we’re related. Which makes the whole virginity-auction thing a little taboo.”

  “It wasn’t taboo already?”

  “More than that.” A pause. “Has she said anything? About me?”

  “She hasn’t said anything. As in, she’s not talking.”

  “Shock?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  A grim silence. “That’s what you said Penny did, and she recovered.”

  “Is she at the Den?”

  “No, I sent her home.”

  Gabriel straightens. “Home?”

  “Her shitty father almost pissed himself when he saw her. Probably figured she was at the bottom of the lake by now. Forgave the debt and everything.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t keep her.”

  “For what? Fucking a scared little virgin isn’t really my kink. More like yours.”

  A low laugh. “Fine.”

  “Besides, I’m thinking of going underground for a little while. Which means no keeping girls, however pretty and wide-eyed they might be.”

  “Pulling a disappearing act? Like your father?”

  “Something like that. Take care of her, will you?”

  “I will.” Gabriel whispers in my ear, “What do you need, little virgin?”

  Of course I don’t answer him. From his sigh I know he doesn’t expect me to. It’s impossible to explain what I need when my heart is locked up tight, impossible to form the words with my body coated in black tar.

  Pandora opened her mythological box, releasing the evils of humanity—diseases and plagues. Death. What most people leave out of the story is that there was only one thing left when she closed it again. Hope, trapped inside.

  The question has never been how to close the box.

  It’s how to open it again.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I spend the next week in bed. At least I think it’s a week. I’m asleep most of the time, so the mornings blend into night. Only the meals change, as any kind of marker.

  A thin oatmeal mixture, more milk than grain.

  A fragrant broth that has vitamin powder poured in as liberally as the spices.

  And finally some kind of caramel pudding, both salt and sweet.

  Every day Gabriel struggles to feed me, to force me, but he could sooner have sex with me than he could make me eat. There’s always a hint of regret when he gives up, the briefest sorrow that I can’t be the woman he wants.

  Then the door closes behind him, and numbness drifts over me again.

  A tray of food appears on the side table, a bowl of steaming broth. The smell assaults me with bittersweet flavor, the memory of caring for Penny when she had lain in bed, broken, bruised. Now it’s me trapped beneath the sheets, trapped by the very evil I unleashed.

  Being a little girl didn’t excuse me. Being afraid. Being in love. All of them explain what I’ve done in my life, a dark symphony always underscored by the heavy beat of womanhood. A burden I never asked for, one I wouldn’t trade even if I could.

  It’s not Gabriel this time.

  The mattress dips as Mrs. B sits on the edge of the bed. Her hand reaches for me, hovers a moment before pulling back. From the corner of my eye, her expression looks repentant.

  Maybe he’s finally given up on me.

  “Richard told me that you might have heard what I said before.”

  For half a second I wonder if I might be curious about this. Did Mrs. B betray Gabriel? Does she feel bad about it? And then I remember that I don’t care, not about any of it.

  “It wasn’t that I hated you. I’m sorry I said that. And I’m very sorry that you heard me in that moment of weakness. Lord knows you’ve been through enough already.”

  The doubt must show on my face.

  “What your father did. Even Gabriel. As much as I owe him, I have no illusions
about the kind of man he is.” Her round cheeks turn pink. “I also threw away the sheets after your first stay.”

  The ones with my blood on them.

  “Yes, well.” She busies herself straightening a corner on the white sheet. “You know. I have some experience with that, myself. With being used. Being sold.”

  My heart wrenches, a faint beat of pain beneath the cloud of disassociation. I’m starting to think every woman has been used that way, every woman has been sold. Which ones of us have escaped that fate? Was my dream of a gentle husband just a shared fever dream? Is a white picket fence just another form of turrets on smaller castles?

  “It’s not an interesting story,” Mrs. B says. “I wasn’t pretty enough to earn money for Gabriel’s father. He would give me to the roughest customers, the ones who couldn’t be choosy. Or the ones who wanted to mess me up.”

  I’m sorry. The words echo around inside me, in the silence of the room.

  “It was Gabriel who convinced his father to let me clean the house, to work in the kitchen. I only found out later that he had done it, after one night when he’d had to pick me up from the floor.”

  How many girls does Gabriel need to save until he’s whole again?

  “When he killed his father—”

  The jolt that runs through me is completely involuntary. He killed his father. I knew that he despised his father, with his whorehouse and his brutality. And I knew that he failed to save the little girl who had grown up.

  Mrs. B looks stricken, having seen my surprise. “He didn’t tell you?”

  Even if I could speak now, I wouldn’t. I’m too busy working through what it means that Gabriel killed someone—killed anyone. And to kill your father.

  A sigh. “Gabriel isn’t a perfect man. He isn’t a kind man. Some of the things he’s done, they might shock you. They might shock me. He’s always been private.”

  No, he didn’t answer to anyone.

  “I can’t say I was comfortable hearing he had purchased you, with being a part of that. And it made me uncomfortable to be near you, and Penny, knowing what had happened to you. Seeing the looks on your faces, as if I were back in that place, surrounded by trapped women.”