Chapter 37 Bianca
BIANCA
My eyebrow keeps twitching.
Mommy says I’m not old enough to drink coffee.
She says that’s the reason her eyebrow twitches sometimes.
So why is mine twitching?
Rougey is leading me down to the basement, her hand gripping mine like her life depends on it.
She’s going to show me a new game. One that grown-ups play, I guess.
I don’t know much about grown-up games. Mommy and Daddy sometimes play a game called Taboo when they have friends over.
Maybe that’s what Rougey is going to show me. Taboo.
Rougey closes the basement door and drags me down the staircase.
Our basement is unfinished. That’s what Daddy says.
We live in a big house, so we don’t need the basement for anything besides storage.
The walls are made of the same material as sidewalks, and the floors are wood.
Daddy says he’s going to pay a man to make it look like the rest of our house eventually, but that he’s too focused right now on his clubs downtown to get that done.
Mommy could supervise, but he told me in secret he doesn’t trust her to get it done without him helping her make decisions.
So we rarely go down here. Daddy has a set of weights and a treadmill in the corner, and there’s an old set of couches that used to be in our fancy living room upstairs before we upgraded, but it’s mostly empty space with a few spiderwebs in the corners.
I don’t like going down here. I like it even less right now.
“Rougey? Why do we have to play this game in the basement? It’s all dark and spooky down here.”
Rougey smirks. “Because the kind of game we’re going to play is a secret one. It’s so much fun that we don’t want to have to share it with anyone else.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What’s the name of the game?” I look around. “I don’t see any board game boxes down here. Mommy and Daddy keep them upstairs in the playroom.”
“Silly Bianca,” Rougey replies. “It’s not that kind of game. It’s a game like tag, one that doesn’t need a board.”
“Are we going to play tag?”
“I said it’s like tag, not that it is tag, dumb-dumb.” Rouge walks around to the other side of Daddy’s treadmill. “It’s called Doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes. We’re going to pretend that I’m the doctor, and I’m giving you a checkup.”
My eyebrow twitches again, this time twice as hard as before. What the heck is going on with it?
“What do you mean you’re going to give me a checkup?”
“Like, I’ll pretend to be the doctor, and you’ll pretend to be the patient. We’ll do the thing where I bonk your knee with a mallet, I’ll check your eyes. And, you know, other doctor stuff.”
I cross my arms. “That doesn’t sound very fun to me. I don’t like going to the doctor very much.”
“Well, this version is a little more fun,” Rougey says. “Why don’t you lie down on the treadmill?”
My eyebrow is going crazy now, but I ignore it. I sit down on the treadmill, let my little legs dangle off the end.
“Good. First we can test your reflexes.” Rouge takes a small hammer out. She must have gotten it out of Daddy’s toolbox in the garage. She taps it against my knee.
Nothing happens.
She taps it again. Again, nothing.
She then smashes the hammer against my knee, much harder. It hurts like heck and I cry out in pain.
Rougey immediately covers my mouth with her hand. “Don’t cry, Bianca. You can’t cry at the doctor’s office.”
I don’t like this game anymore. I try to stand up to leave the basement, but Rougey’s grip on me is too strong for me to get up.
“Sit, Bianca. The checkup isn’t done.”
Fighting back tears, I sit back down on the treadmill. There’s a big bump forming on my knee where Rouge hit it with the hammer, but maybe if I play along she won’t hit me again.
“Next, stick out your tongue and say ‘ahh,’” Rougey commands.
I do so, and Rouge pulls out an old popsicle stick and sticks it down my throat. I gag on it, almost throw up, but I don’t want her to hit me again, so I keep my tongue stuck out as long as I can.
Finally, Rougey removes the popsicle stick. “Your adenoids don’t look too great. We might have to remove them.”
I don’t know what she means by that, but I just nod slowly.
“Next, you’ll have to take your clothes off.”
Warmth rushes to my cheeks. “What?”
“You’ve been to the doctor, Bianca. You have to take your clothes off so the doctor can make sure all your parts are working correctly.”
“But… But…”
Rougey grabs the hammer, stares at me. “Would you rather we test your reflexes again?”
My lip trembles, but I do my best to steady it. “No.”
“Then take your fucking clothes off, Bianca.”
She swore.
Mommy doesn’t like to swear. Daddy does it all the time. But Rougey is too young. If Mommy caught her saying the F word—that’s the worst one—she’d wash her mouth out with soap.
I slowly wiggle out of the T-shirt and shorts I’m wearing.
“Underwear, too.”
“Rougey…”
“Did I stutter, Bianca? The doctor needs to check out your whole body.”
A single tear slips out of my left eye as I slip the undies off.
“Good. Now lie back on the examination table…”
* * *
I don’t ever let myself think about it.
I can’t.
We were young. Kids have a natural curiosity about sexuality.
But it’s one thing for two kids around the same age to play a game of “show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
Rouge was thirteen. I was seven.
She knew what she was doing. She poked and prodded my naked body that day, even explored inside me briefly. And it wasn’t the last time it happened. Every so often she’d drag me down under duress for a game of Doctor.
Eventually she started putting items inside me. Medicine bottles, a roll of quarters, anything that would fit. I learned to bite my tongue to keep from crying out. I knew if we were caught that the games would get even worse.
It did eventually come to an end, around the time I got my period. After that, Rouge seemed to have lost interest in me.
But it was a rough couple of years.
I never told my parents. Rouge would have had my head.
And now I know she would have had it literally.
I know now that my sister is capable of the most depraved, evil acts imaginable. The stuff she did to me as a kid was awful—truly, it was sexual abuse—but it pales in comparison to the destruction she’s left in her wake since she grew up.
And now she’s abducted two elderly folks—a man and a woman—whom I don’t recognize.
But it’s clear from Harrison’s wide eyes that he does.
“You heinous bitch!” he spits out.
Rouge smirks. “Language, Doctor. You really ought to be acting more professional around two of your patients.”
I gasp. These are two of Harrison’s patients?
“They’ve done nothing wrong!” Harrison replies.
“Have they not, Doctor?” Rouge pulls out a diamond-studded knife, slides it over the old man’s throat. “Within the breast of Lou Chambers beats the heart of the Seven of Spades.” She flicks her gaze toward the woman. “And Carol Lutwidge breathes solely thanks to her lungs.”
It hits me. Carol and Lou. The elderly couple Alissa and Harrison were talking about back at the hospital. Rouge has now confirmed their worst fears—that they live today because of the death of an innocent young woman.
“They didn’t know that!” Harrison’s jaw trembles, but he steadies it. “It’s not their fault. It’s you who are guilty, Rouge. You’ve killed countless innocents, all in the name of profit.”
Rouge narrows her eyes. “In the name of keeping people on the brink of death with us. People you love, Doctor. People that Ms. Maravilla, your beloved nurse, loves.”
“But Alissa also cared about May!” I cry out. “She didn’t want her to die, either!”
Rouge shoots me a glare. “Stay out of this, Bianca. You’re in way over your head.”
“No!” I stamp my foot against the ground, making the lighting fixture about Rouge’s bed shake.
“I’m sick of being treated like the little sister, Rouge.
I’m a fully grown woman with plenty of life experience.
” I take a step forward. “Maybe you were Dad’s favorite, maybe you were the one he saw controlling the clubs, but he never envisioned you doing this.
Hurting people! People with nothing to lose, who put their trust in you. ”
A smarmy grin crawls across Rouge’s face. “Oh, Bianca. Sweet little na?ve Bianca. I’ve only been the official head of Aces for five years now. Sure, I was basically in charge for a decade before that, but do you think all of this”—she brandishes her knife over Lou’s heart—“was my idea?”
I drop my jaw. “Dad was doing this too?”
“Dad, and our grandfather as well.” She chuckles. “Aces has been the front for our black-market dealings ever since Prohibition.” She shrugs. “I just added a new coat of paint and brought in a higher-end clientele. Increased our business dealings exponentially.”
It can’t be. My father, the sweet man who bounced me on his knee, whose shoulder I would cry into when life got too hard.
He always preferred Rouge, but he still gave me lots of affection when I was really young, before Rouge started playing Doctor with me.
He was doing the same thing my sister was doing, my whole life?
All the nice dresses I wore, all the fancy dinners I attended, all the privileges I had due to the Montroses’ wealth and status…
The very job I have now that pays for my lavish apartment in the Loop…
My entire life…
It was built on the deaths of innocent people. Innocent people dragged from the most poverty-stricken corners of the globe with the promise of a better life, all to be mercilessly slaughtered like livestock and dismembered like an old car being stripped for parts.
I think I’m going to be sick.