Cardinal House (The Blackwell Brothers Book 4)

8. Luna

No one’s ever asked me to dinner before, and Wolf’s asked me on two occasions now, it’s all I can think about on my walk home.

It feels odd that someone would want to take me anywhere.

Especially someone like him, when I’m someone like me.

It’s too confusing. The feeling that swelled inside me was new, and it felt… good, that makes it dangerous, and I can’t afford to get myself into any more trouble. It doesn’t matter that no one can see me when I’m at the hospital. My uncle’s guards do not follow me there, it’s my only moments of freedom, of being unwatched, but I refuse to let myself latch onto the feeling Wolf Blackwell invokes in me. It won’t do me any good to be thinking about him.

The sun’s coming up earlier and earlier now, what with summer well and truly here. It”s nice, for me, because it’s the only time of the year I get to see the sun and not be scolded for it.

Still, I don’t dawdle, because despite the pain etched into my bones, I won’t get given any grace when it comes to the amount of time it takes me to get home. If I’m too slow I’ll lose my walking privileges.

The early morning sun is hot against my black hair, warming me all the way down to my toes where it burns into the top of my head. I breathe in deep, even though there’s not many pleasant scents to smell, but it’s just nice to breathe air that’s not contaminated with cigars.

I’ve never dreaded going home before. Not really. But this week, I find myself more and more reluctant to make it there. I wonder if death has been shadowing me for so long because it’s been waiting for it to be my turn. Perhaps, by Wolf Blackwell surviving, because I left the room, I owe the grim reaper someone else in return.

Me.

He asked me to dinner.

My heart thumps, I think of his eyes again, and I can see them perfectly inside my mind, it’s as though they’re seared into the inside of my skull and I haven’t even had that long to study them. I guess because of their unusual colour, they’re just easy to remember.

Maybe I just really like them, so it’s easy to be consumed, even if it is only inside my head.

I often imagine another pair of eyes, nothing else of a face, just the eyes. These ones are blue though, exactly like mine, and they’re always warm, creased around the outer corners, like they’re happy when they see me. I wonder sometimes if they’re my own, and I’m just wishing mine were that joyful.

The big house comes into view and dread burrows its way back inside my marrow like an infection I catch whenever I step within the property boundary.

It’s not until later that afternoon, when I finally start feeling myself relax, that I realise I shouldn’t. I’m just nodding off in the chair in front of the fireplace, unlit and full of ash, my legs pulled up in a curl beneath me, that the door opens.

I sit up with a start, eyes wide, heart pounding, a tightness in my throat that feels like a boa constrictor is coiled around my neck.

“You were late home,” Uncle Nolan says.

He’s standing a few feet from me, the open door at his back, two guards stepping through to join the two that were already stationed in here when I made it home. I can feel the look on my face, more than my usual careful, blank mask, confusion twisting my features. I want to argue, for the first time in my life, I want to disagree, stand my ground, I definitely wasn’t late home. I know I wasn’t.

“I was informed you arrived home this morning at precisely five-thirty-three.”

Three minutes.

Uncle Nolan’s entire body trembles with his rage, but his voice betrays nothing, he doesn’t shout, or raise his voice, or scream. He never does, never has, I wonder if I”d prefer it if he did.

“Well?” He taps his foot against the wooden floor, his arms by his sides, hands in fists. “Where were you?”

My mouth works, but no sound comes out. The book in my lap feels heavy, my feet feeling numb beneath me, and tears fill my eyes. I know my uncle loves me, that’s why he gets so upset. He’s protective of me, but I don’t feel safe with him. And for the first time in my life, after the other night, I feel real, unbidden fear.

“I wasn’t late home, sir,” I whisper, staring up at him, my heart in my throat, because I never talk back.

“Excuse me?” His voice gets deep, slow, rough, it feels like a rumble, and my skin goes ice cold. “What did you just say?” he whispers, and it’s a poisonous hiss.

Air shudders into my lungs, and I swallow hard, wetting my lips, “I wasn’t late home, sir,” I repeat, even quieter than before.

“Is that so?” he lifts a dark brow, and I hate it, the look he gives, cold anger, but I suddenly won’t back down.

“Yes, sir,” I hold his eye, until his gaze rakes down my body, the tension dropping out of his shoulders, his fists unfurling, before his eyes come back to mine.

Sickness washes around inside my belly, but I hold my stare, I don’t let the wetness gathering along my lower lash line fall. I hold myself together, waiting. And, honestly, I don’t know what’s going to happen here. I have never talked back before. Ever.

“Paul!” Uncle Nolan suddenly yells, making me flinch.

He doesn’t take his eyes from mine as the man comes into the room, and I don’t dare look either.

Uncle Nolan licks his lips, still looking at me when he speaks, “What time did Luna get home today?”

“Five-thirty, sir,” Paul says automatically, and I feel my shoulders hitch up around my ears.

“Precisely?” Uncle Nolan clarifies, still staring at me.

“On the dot, sir.”

My uncle stares at me for long silent moments. The tension in my spine makes the skin pull tight around the small burns down my shoulder blade, they’re in a sort of cross-hatch pattern from where I fell against the fire grate, they sting, but they don’t look too bad.

There’s relief now, somewhat, like a warmth heating the iciness in my veins, that I was right, about the time I arrived home.

Somebody lied to him, to get me in trouble?

“Are you lying to me, Paul?”

My head snaps up at that, and my eyes dart to the man at my uncle’s back.

That’s my mistake.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t look long enough to catch a glimpse of him to even be able to tell you his hair colour, just that tiny flicker of my eyes sends my uncle into a fit of rage.

With a speed almost inhuman, he turns sharply, grabbing the man and throwing him to the floor. The guard smacks his face into the hardwood, and blood blooms on his lip. My uncle turns the man over, and hits him in the face. His hands curled into fists, knuckles blanching, he punches the guard, the big gold ring he wears splitting the skin on the man’s cheek.

There is so much blood, it’s hard to see his face, the sound of flesh smacking flesh, bone and cartilage crunching, as Uncle Nolan beats the man’s face, rolling around inside of my head like a violent echo.

Ice rushes through my veins, my heart beating so hard it threatens to crack through my chest cavity, but I don’t move. I do nothing as my uncle kills a man with his bare hands. He’s straddling the unconscious man now, the rest of the security team sentry around the room, and I don’t dare look at them, but nobody seems to have any sort of reaction to the violence taking place.

The murder.

I don’t realise tears are falling until my uncle crouches down before me in the same position I was in when he first came home. Frozen in the leather. Uncle Nolan reaches up, cupping my cheek with a hot, slick palm, smearing my skin with blood. I’m not sure I can tear my eyes away from the body on the floor. The man’s head, Paul’s head, nothing more than a concave, bloody mess.

I’m trembling when my uncle directs my chin with the firmness of his thumb, dragging my attention onto him from the corpse on our bedroom floor. His face is flecked with blood, splatters across his forehead, his cheek, chin, little droplets of it dripping off of his jaw.

The whimper that escapes me can’t be stopped, I can’t choke the sound down, as I heave in a sob. My uncle just keeps holding my face in his big hand, crouched before me, his green eyes soft considering what’s just happened. It’s as though he isn’t affected by it at all.

“Do you see what happens, sweet girl,” he says quietly, his cigar-tinged breath blowing over my mouth, “when you disobey me?”

Tears run down my cheeks, my eyes are burning, eyelids hot enough to burn, I feel my heart cramping, and I don’t know what to think. I’m not sure I even have the ability to. My eyes roll back to the body, and a sob chokes me, seeing this man lying dead where I lay only a few nights ago bleeding in a different way.

Will this be me one day?

Slowly, I drag my gaze back to Uncle Nolan’s green eyes, “I’m sorry, sir,” I whisper.

“Mm, yes, I should think you are.”

He releases my face, pushing to stand, drowning me in his shadow. The way he peers down at me, towering above me, is terrifying. Reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt beneath his waistcoat, he flourishes a white handkerchief before cleaning his face off with it. Meticulously wiping off his fingers one by one, he finishes cleaning his hands and then re-pockets the blood-stained square of fabric out of view.

“Get up, Luna,” he orders, taking a single step back, and with jerky movements, I do. “Turn around.”

Something inside of me shatters and crashes and I don’t try to stop the feeling of hopelessness as it overwhelms me. The cries ring hard and loud, like a wailing that only seems to appear inside my head. Outwardly, despite my body trembling, I don’t make a sound.

His fingers move to his fly, the zipper loud as he pulls it down.

Silent tears slip down my cheeks, running along my jaw, as I turn around. My hands trembling, he grips my arms from behind, just tight enough to hurt, but loose enough to ensure he doesn’t leave a mark, he moves me around to the back of the chair. Sliding his palms down my arms, stopping when he reaches my hands, he moves them to curl over the back of the leather chair.

Back pressed to my front, he flips the skirt of my silk nightgown up, bunching the delicate fabric in his fist, he holds it up around my waist. His breath sluices down my neck, but all I can do is tremble, staring down with tear drenched eyes at the smashed skull, the oozing blood and pulp like substance seeping from it.

I hardly feel it as he forces himself into me, the tight ring of muscle in my backside clenching tight as he shoves himself deep. Grunting into my flesh, his breath hot and quick against the side of my neck, he bottoms out.

Tears drip from my face, nails clawing into the leather under my hands, I hold on tight and try to relax. To let this happen without a struggle, without being held down. I try to drift off somewhere else when the pain ricochets up my spine, settling in the base of my skull, my hips colliding brutally with the armchair.

I close my eyes, thinking about what it would have been like if I had said yes, if I were to attend dinner with Wolf. What would he wear, where would he take me, would he cook? I have never been anywhere, but I think I would like to go everywhere if he were the one to hold my hand and lead me.

Wolf makes me feel safe when I’m with him, even though he’s sometimes grumpy. He’s handsome with that thick black hair pulled back from his face, those honey coloured eyes dressed in heavy fans of lashes. He has a squared chin, a wide set jaw, the back corners angular curves covered in a thick black stubble. There are piercings in his upper ears, black hoops in both shells of cartilage, multiple and unsymmetrical on each side.

His body is clearly treated like a temple. Ridges of muscles wrapped up in tanned, olive skin. He has large thighs and dark hair along his legs, but it’s not thick, and I bet it feels soft to the touch like the very sparse hairs dotted across his chest.

I picture his mouth, pout plump, his lips the same thickness both top and bottom. The slight upturned tip of his nose that makes the feature almost soft on his masculine face. And the way his brows are so thick they should probably look comical, but they’re gently sloping arches over his eyes that tie everything in together instead.

I think of his lips brushing mine, his breath on my skin and I can almost imagine more.

With him.

So as my uncle exhales hard against my neck, his face nuzzling into the side of my throat, I picture Wolf instead, but like a slap to the face, the image inside my head doesn’t stick.

Because Wolf, Wolf would never hurt me.