Chapter One #3
I watched long fingers extend and brush through the leaves. So gentle and methodical. With the precision of a doctor examining a fragile patient. His dark head tipped and bent forward to examine each closer.
And I was made painfully aware of his firm lips, the strong angle of his jaw. So much like his sons’. Nearly identical. Like God created him and made two more exactly like him just to torment me.
“These seem to be fine.”
He turned his head and I wasn’t quick enough to turn mine and our eyes locked. Not gently. They collided with an electric shock that crashed through me down to my toes. It zapped the already thin air from the room. I was captured in a sea of silver and drowning was a welcome relief.
“Ne me regarde pas ainsi, mon p’tit.”
His quiet murmur telling me not to look at him that way stained my cheeks with heat and still he had me enslaved.
Imprisoned. Even when his full height unfurled and he towered over me, I remained frozen before him.
Helpless and painfully willing. Even when he reached for my face, lightly stroked my cheek with the pad of his thumb, I stayed.
His next series of words were muffled by the onslaught of blood rushing to my head with the slight tip of his mouth in the direction of mine.
But it never came.
Mrs. Pym took that moment to rush into the room, face white and frazzled like I had never seen it. And with only a few shaky words, she turned all our worlds upside down.
I curl onto my side and bury my face into clammy fists. I stuff them into my mouth and scream.
I scream until I can’t.
I scream until I swear the sound embeds itself into the walls.
I wail until I can’t breathe and my blood roars between my ears and my vision goes red.
They took them.
They took my boys.
My life.
My sanity.
They stole the life I was supposed to have with them.
I have no memory of scrambling to my feet, but my lamp sails across the room.
The drapes around my bed are torn off their rod.
Pillows, sheets and blankets are sent to the floor.
Mirrors shatter. Tubes, bottles and containers lining my vanity explode against the wall.
The vanity itself is pushed over in an explosion of glass and splintering wood.
Shards cut skin as my hands twist into the gossamer blinds hanging over the French doors overlooking the grounds.
Fabric tears with a single yank. Screws pop from the wall.
It all clatters to the floor with a resounding clang, but I’m reaching for the latch.
The ornate, brass handles keeping the city dusk at bay.
They give with a single twist of my wrist and I’m out beneath the hazy night sky and miles of endless nothing ahead.
Nothing.
No future.
No reason to go on.
Not here. Not in this house full of shadows and ghosts.
They marked every inch of it with memories that I can’t ignore when they are burned into my every breath.
Twenty-five years of heaven of peace and so much love I knew was too perfect to last, yet I foolishly clung to it.
To them. I believed the lies my heart kept telling me.
But the answer is unmistakable as I stand with the cold iron bars of the railing cutting into my palms. I came into this world with them in my life. It’s only right that we leave it together. That I follow them to our final resting place where nothing can tear us apart again.
My feet balance on the lower loops. The wind catches my hair, claws at my face. I can’t tell if it’s trying to pull me over or back.
“Lenora…” I ignore the sandy hiss of that voice scratching at my skull.
Like everyone else, it doesn’t understand. No one will ever understand.
I hook a knee over. The twisted iron scratches skin and I can feel my fingers slipping. My gaze drops to the stone path below, the one I have traveled hundreds of times to reach the gardens. The same one Eliah first kissed me on, right under the shadows of my terrace. The very one I cling to now.
“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I can’t stay here without you.”
My toes skim the stone on the other side. I nearly find purchase.
Strong arms lock around me. The impact knocks the wind from my lungs and tears a scream as I’m hoisted back. My heels smack into rough stone and I’m dragged forcibly into the room I destroyed, legs swinging and kicking as I shriek like a feral creature.
The hold only tightens and a gruff, male voice bellows over my chaos.
“Enough, Lenora.”
I ignore the warning and lash out. I kick and punch. I rain my fury on the man doing nothing to stop the blows I land. His compliance only increases my pain. My misery. It fuels my swirling clamor into madness.
Without a word, Uncle Marcus bends at the knees and tucks a broad shoulder under me. In that same motion, he hoists me off the ground with me still screaming. The world spins as he turns to the door.
I’m hauled from the room. His strides are angry, stomping through the halls. His shoulder digs into my gut, sending punches of pain through me.
“Put me down!” I growl, beating the hard cords of his back with both fists.
“Tais-toi!”
The command to be quiet is followed by the harsh swat of his palm across the curve of my backside. A jolting sting that flares heat across my injured flesh. And my cheeks.
That bloom of mortification intensifies when I catch glimpses of feet and nightgown hems through the heavy curtain of untamed curls swinging over my face.
They blur past before I can decipher the owners — but can only be the Pyms— yet the embarrassment stays even when we reach our destination and he kicks the door shut with the heel of his bare foot.
Like my room, the floors are gleaming layers of glossy mahogany, interrupted by a plush Afghan.
I should have expected the jerk and swing before I hit the mountain of feathers.
My weight sinks amongst the folds of fabric and Uncle Marcus’s soap.
I barely have a chance to gather that I’m in his room.
On his bed. When my hips are grabbed and I’m flipped onto my stomach.
My nightgown is tossed over my back, exposing my simple, white panties and bare bottom.
“Uncle Marcus…?”
The smack steals the air from my lungs.