Chapter 42
DOVE
Everything stills as I stare at Melinda, pointing a gun at me.
“Melinda!” Dad barks. I see the same swimmy look in his eyes that I feel in mine.
My gaze drops to the coffee cup in front of me.
Oh no.
“Mel!” Dad roars louder. “Stop pointing that fucking gun at my daughter!”
Melinda lets out a cold, barbed laugh. “Oh, suddenly you’re father of the year, Cesare?! Now you care about her?!”
I blink, feeling sluggish and cold; like my reality has just had syrup poured all over it, slowing everything down, making it hard to talk or breathe or even think.
Did she just call him Cesare, not Mr. Marchetti, or sir?
My brows pinch.
And did he just call her Mel?
“Dad…”
“I’m handling it, honey,” my dad growls as he glances at me and the gun aimed at me. His gaze grows darker and more menacing as it switches back to Melinda. “Put it down, Mel! We can talk about this!”
Melinda laughs coldly. “Talk!? Like we talked when I found you tearing apart my room yesterday?”
“You know damn well what I was looking for, you bitch!” Dad roars back at her. “Proof that you tried to blow up my goddamn wife, so that I could fucking hang you with it!”
Fucking WHAT?
“I just want you to talk to me!” Melinda screams at him. “We’ve talked so many times, Cesare! But always in secret! Always whispered in the dark!”
Dad’s face turns red and his bleary eyes slide to me.
“Dad, what is she talking—”
“I’m talking about how he tells me he loves me!” Melinda spits. “How he can’t get me out of his head! How we’re meant to be together!” She turns to Dad, her face falling. “And we are, Cesare! The way you kiss me! The way you touch me…”
What.
The.
Fuck.
Gross.
“Mel,” Dad mumbles. “Let’s talk about this alone, okay?”
She shakes her head decisively.
“It’s always another time, Cesare. Always soon. Never right when I need you.”
“Mel—“
“You told me I was the one!” she screams at him. A tear wells in her eye and rolls down her cheek. “And then two weeks later you met Felicity and I was cast away, back to being your maid!”
My eyes dart to my father. Holy shit.
The guilt is all over his face.
“But you still need me, don’t you, Cesare?” Melinda says coldly. “When that skinny bitch you married says no, that’s when you need me, isn’t it?”
“Dad—”
“I’m handling it, honey,” he growls. He drags his gaze back to Melinda. “Put the gun down, Mel. I’m not having this conversation while you’re—”
“You never want to have this conversation!!!” she bellows.
There’s a wild look in eyes. A feverish darkness.
A madness.
Fear curls and tightens in my chest.
“Well, we’re not fucking having it while you're pointing a gun at—”
“Please!” Melinda screams. “Please tell me how much you care about her!” She laughs coldly. “The backup daughter.”
My eyes dart to my father, the question bubbling on my lips. But the second his eyes meet mine, cold, brutal certainty stabs into me.
“You knew.”
The words fall like a choked prayer from my lips.
Dad doesn’t respond. He doesn’t protest, or deny, or yell, or…anything.
Just looks at me with this frozen deer-in-headlights expression on his face.
“Holy shit…” I breathe, my blood turning to lead in my veins. I stare at him breathlessly, unblinking, my mind churning to a stop.
“Honey—”
“What’s my name.”
My father’s lips press together. He looks at Melinda. “Put the gun—”
“What. Is. My. Name.”
“Yes, tell her, Cesare,” Melinda spits. “Tell her who she is. Tell her how her—”
“Enough!” Dad barks. His gaze is haggard as he looks back to me. “Honey, it’s complicated—”
“It’s really not!!” I roar, shaking even as that sluggish feeling still creeps through my system. My eyes stab into him. “What’s my fucking name.”
It’s the way he stops frowning at me that tells me he knows.
…Knows that I know.
Knows the facade is cracking.
His head slowly shakes. “I…I never meant…” He pauses, and his face pales. “Honey—”
“Use. My. Fucking. NAME!”
“LARK!!!”
I wince, choking as the word slams into me. I already knew but hearing it from my own father’s lips is like being stabbed in the heart.
He knew I was his daughter.
He knew I was Dove's twin.
And yet he still let me live as “the housekeeper’s granddaughter”, as if I was a guest in his house.
“It’s LARK!” he roars at me. “There! That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?! You seem to know anyway!” He whirls on Melinda. “There! Are you happy now?!”
“Not yet,” she chokes. “Tell her the rest.”
“Fuck you, you fucking bitch—!”
I scream when the shot explodes into the ceiling, bringing down plaster dust.
“Tell her the rest!!”
“Okay!!” my dad bellows. He turns to look at me, swallowing heavily. “I…” His eyes dart to Melinda. “This is difficult. If you could please give us some privacy—”
“Is privacy going to make it less difficult to tell her how you and that quack doctor have been keeping her medicated to within an inch of her life!? To keep her half-fucking-crazy?!”
It’s like ice over a lake cracking, splintering, spiderwebbing, and then shattering like glass, plunging you into the frozen darkness.
I’m going to be honest with you, I’m a little shocked by what you’re on, and especially the dosages.
The blood drains from my face, and my body goes numb.
I’m amazed you can even carry on a conversation, being on that much lithium.
My father’s face is white as I turn to him.
“What did she just say?”
“Don’t listen to her,” he says. “You’re sick, honey. You've got…stuff wrong in your head, and Dr. Caruso—”
“Stop talking.”
“Lark—”
“STOP. FUCKING. TALKING.”
The room goes pin-drop silent as a bitter, poisonous taste fills my mouth and trickles down into my very soul.
Like I’ve been hollowed out. Like everything good inside me has been removed, leaving me empty and dead.
I know what betrayal feels like. I know—from this fucking man—what it feels like to be forced into marriage as part of a business arrangement…and apparently, what it feels like to be lied to about who you are, and to have your very fucking identity hidden.
But this…
Holy shit.
Hearing that you’ve been kept in a prison of your own mind, held hostage by overmedication and the demons inside you that those very meds feed, is horrifying.
Of all the betrayals…this one cuts the deepest.
“Lark.”
I don’t even look at him when my father croaks my name.
“Lark, I’m so sorry.”
“That’s good, Cesare.”
I blink, my body feeling slower, number.
Colder.
My gaze drifts sluggishly back to my coffee.
Whatever Melinda put in it, it’s really starting to kick in.
“Say your apologies, Cesare,” Melinda says quietly. “I have a way forward for us, my love.”
Slowly, like my head weighs a thousand pounds, I twist to look at her. She’s still got the gun trained on me as she looks right at my dad.
“I know why you could never be with me,” she chokes, smiling at him as tears fill her eyes. “And I know how to fix it.”
Her hand holding the gun trembles.
“You could never be with me because there were too many other distractions. Too many other women. Too many commitments to those other women.”
She turns back to me.
“Commitments like her.”
Oh my God.
She wraps her other hand around the grip of the pistol to steady it, a manic glint in her eyes as she looks right down the barrel of the gun at me.
“I can fix things for us, Cesare.”
“Melinda, stop pointing that fucking gun at her!!”
“I’m doing this for us—”
“Point it at me!” My dad staggers to his feet. His eyes shift to me, full of remorse. “Lark, honey, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I was a shit father! I was a monster! I am so—”
“I can fix this, baby.”
“Point it at me, Mel!!” he screams. “Point it at me!!”
Melinda isn’t even hearing him.
Not seeing him.
Just looking at me down the barrel of her loaded gun.
She smiles. “This is for us, Cesare,” she says quietly. “I’m doing this for—”
I scream as the gun erupts in her hands. Just as she pulls the trigger, a shape lunges in front of me.
A shape that knocks me over across the couch and then groans, bleeding.
“Please forgive me, Lark.”
I watch the light flicker out in my father’s eyes.
Melinda drops the gun with a heavy thud.
“NO!!!”
She screams and falls to her knees, her face in her hands.
And I see my chance.
I lurch from under my dad’s body and stagger to the door. But when thunder roars out, and the wooden doorframe splinters right next to my head, I drop to my knees, raising my hands.
“Please!” I scream. “Please, Melinda! Melinda, I—”
I flinch when the warm metal of the gun presses between my shoulder blades.
“Get up, Lark,” Melinda whispers. “I’m not done with you yet.”