30. Theo
Chapter thirty
Theo
Ivy sucks in a deep breath, going rigid for a moment. I think she is going to pretend she didn't hear me, staring up at the ceiling, but she turns around to face me. "I didn't hear you open the door."
Monty is at my side, the two of us effectively blocking out most of the light trying to flood into the basement, but it's enough to see her sitting on the stairs above her husband's dead body. She doesn't make a move to rush at us, to try to escape, and I wonder for a minute why. But then I see the wine bottle in her hand. I want to laugh, but I'm too bothered by what she said about her husband's father giving her orgasms whether she wanted them or not.
"Don't avoid the question, Poison." Monty says, taking a step down toward her.
Even in her wine haze, she must realize it's stupid to be vulnerable around us, because she sits up, an arm pressed against her stomach like that will help her keep herself together.
"What?" She laughs, shrugging. The strap of her dress slips off her shoulder, and I have to laugh at how ridiculous she looks. Like a child playing in their mother's closet, except there's nothing childlike about her apart from her innocence. Even now, I can see how innocent she still is, how uncorrupted despite all that's happened. And apparently, a lot has happened. "You guys can do it, but no one else can?" She sneers, shaking her head. "Fuck off, both of you."
Monty bristles like she's slapped him, but her words don't deter me. I brush past him on the steps to get to her, where she's blinking up at me with those big green eyes so full of accusation. Jesus, she smells like a whole damn winery, fruity and bright and so fucking tempting. She's a drug. When I'm inside her, she's in my veins, but the effect fades too fast, and I find myself needing another hit.
"You gonna walk your tight little ass up the steps, or do you need me to carry you?"
She clenches her jaw and crosses her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them up to nearly slip out of the silky fabric draped over them. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean, but I'm done waiting. I snatch her around the waist and throw her over my shoulder. I'm not delicate, pinning one of her tits awkwardly between my shoulder and her body and pulling a little moan out of her that I'm pretty sure she didn't mean to sound so excited. Her breath hits the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine, but I don't stay to contemplate it, moving up the steps with her slumped over my shoulder and Monty behind us.
As we approach the top of the stairs, the silky fabric of her dress rides up beneath my palm, and I help myself to a handful of her ass, enjoying the way she huffs at me but is helpless to fight it off.
"No panties in the basement, huh, Tiger Lily?" I tease, letting a finger slip between her cheeks just enough to make her yelp. I set her down on the grand piano, her ass perched on the edge so that I can stay between her legs for a moment longer.
Killian chuckles, drawing our attention to find him eyeing her. "You look like a proper high society lady, Miss D’Aquino. Not the sort of girl who associates with men like us."
"You're not men." She snaps, but I don't miss the way her throat works hard to swallow the lie before she says, "You're monsters."
"Tell Killian what you told us in the basement." I tell her, tipping my head toward our brother.
"I told you to fuck off." She crosses her arms again, like that will prevent us from seeing how hard her nipples are under that thin fabric.
"Not that part." I swipe a stray lock of hair out of her face. "What you were saying to your husband."
Ivy clamps her mouth shut, and Killian raises a dark eyebrow in search of answers. "You speaking to the dead, Bambi?"
"He was my only audience." She shrugs, but makes no attempt to tell the rest of the story that we're still waiting for.
"Ivy..." Monty says her name softly. It's so soft, in fact, that she looks up at him with wide eyes, startled by hearing her real name come off of his tongue. "Who are you?"
"You know who I am." She rolls her eyes. "You've known me almost my whole life."
I suspect we know her better than anyone. Our sweet, gentle doe, our delicate flower. She's always let us push her around because she likes it. She lets people think she's too meek to fight back, but the truth is she's been trained not to fight back with every one else. Her mother, father, husband... none of them were winning awards for their people skills, and she knew standing up to them was useless. But with us, she takes what we give her because it feeds a part of her soul that's locked away deep inside, a part of her soul that isn't our sweet doe or a delicate flower. It feeds the part of her that is raw and wicked, that craves our pain and pleasure, the part of her that corrupted each one of us long, long ago.
"We know you come to stay on the mountain every summer." Monty says, glancing pointedly at me.
"And we know that you came back for the first time in five years after radio silence," I add.
"And we know that you crave our attention." Killian smirks, running his gaze up and down her body. "We know that you love the way we make you feel."
She doesn't deny any of those things, waiting for more, just like me. I'm not sure where Monty was headed with this. "When your husband said that your father paid him to marry you, what did he mean?"
"You think I ever saw our finances?" She laughs. "I don't know, Monty. A dowry, probably."
"A dowry?" Killian snorts. "Did you forget what year it is, Bambi? People don't do that."
"Corey said it's normal in families like theirs." Monty argues.
"Cody," Ivy corrects him, and then she shrugs. "Yeah, wealthy families. Families who have to make mergers and business deals, who have enough money to know that true power doesn't come from an arbitrary number on a banking account screen."
I stare at her, awareness starting to take the shape of understanding in the back of my head. "You talking about the mob?" Killian laughs.
Ivy shrugs again, her little pink tongue darting out to wet her lips. "I don't know what my dad actually did for a living. He always told me he was in acquisitions, and honestly, I didn't care. But I did know that he didn't marry my mother because he loved her. I always knew it, the way he hit her, the way she slept with other men. They didn't marry for love, and I always knew I wouldn't either."
"So why did you marry?" Monty asks, needing more.
"Because I was told to. Because I had no other choice." She raises her hands. "Because the first time I tried to run away from home, my mother told me there was no escaping this life. The second time I tried, I got bit by a snake and met Killian, and..." She swallows down the rest of her words, deciding against them.
"And what?" Killian prompts, his eyes narrowed on her.
I watch her bite down on her bottom lip hard enough that blood blooms on her pale lips. She looks down at her toes, peeking out from the bottom of the long dress, as she swipes her tongue over the blood she just brought to the surface, brushing it away only for it to bloom anew.
"And then I didn't want to run. I wanted to stay here, to stay with you guys." She shrugs like that's a stupid idea, as if we haven't tried everything to make her ours.
"Then why didn't you?" Monty growls, surprising me with the ferocity of his tone. "Why did you leave us, Poison?"
" You left me !" She snaps, looking up at him with anger in her eyes. "All of you. You abandoned me! I knew I was just a plaything for you, your little toy. I knew it was wrong, everything we did, but I liked it. I liked how you made me feel alive when everyone else made me feel like I was suffocating, drowning. I liked the way you looked at me when everybody else looked through me. Your hate felt so fucking good compared to everything else being so goddamn numb all the time!"
She slides off the piano, standing right in front of me so that I have to tilt my head down to appreciate the view. "The train tracks? When you carved your name into my flesh? Fucking Tilly together in front of me and then fucking me with the barrel of a gun and pulling the trigge r?" She laughs, a beautiful, maniacal sound. "I fucking loved it all, even when I knew it was wrong. Every one of those things just tied my soul to yours, made me yours. I knew my parents would never allow me to stay with you, that I'd never get to keep you guys, but what does it matter who has my body if you have my soul?"
I narrow my eyes on her just a little, trying to see what she isn't saying. But I don't have to try too hard, because she tells us in the next instant. "But you took my body, too. I fucking fell for it like a stupid little girl, believed that what we did that night actually meant something to you guys... anything. I slept between Monty and Theo, and I had the best sleep of my life. I felt so safe, cared for. But you came home, Killian, and after years of dancing around it, you all fucked me. The virginity my parents were auctioning off was being taken by you all as they were signing the papers. The ink wasn't even dry before you left me. That's when Uncle Vitoli came to find me."
Uncle Vitoli?
I'd never realized she had an uncle. Truth be told, we always saw plenty of cars in the drive, but we rarely saw anyone go into that house. We saw even less people come out of it.
"He came to collect me for my father-in-law. I guess he put it together that I'd been sneaking out to see you guys all those years. He walked right in through your front door and found me in your bed. I guess he knew he was going to be in trouble for letting me sneak out from under his nose time and again, and he snapped. So, I killed him."
I blink, confused by the sudden end of her tirade, the way she just closed down out of nowhere after the emotionally driven monologue that led up to it. "What do you mean, he snapped ?"
Ivy presses her lips together like she regrets saying so much, but she doesn't double down. "I mean that I'm pretty sure the only thing that kept him from fucking me all those years was the fact that I had worth as a virgin. My sick parents and their sadistic friends all had so much emphasis on that shit. You know, the night you guys killed Tilly? I'd spent the past week locked in the cellar because my mother found a vibrator a friend had given me as a joke. She was pissed, called me a whore. I thought it was weird at the time, but in hindsight, I bet she was scared I was going to ruin myself before they could get top dollar for me. The next summer, you fucked me with your gun. And you wanna know something sick?"
None of us answer her, but the question must have been rhetorical, cause she goes on anyway. "I wished you had a real bullet in that gun. I've spent the last five years wishing you did, that when you pulled that trigger, I would have died right then. If I had, I would have died wrapped up in your pleasure, your hate. It would have been so much easier."
"Ivy." Monty chokes on her name, shaking his head. "Don't say that."
"Oh, come on, Monty," she laughs. "Does the truth hurt? Knowing that I fucking loved every one of you even though you only gave me hate? Even though you let this all happen and now you're punishing me for it?"
"I think someone drank a little too much," Killian says, his voice stony. "Because you're straight up delusional right now, Bambi."
"Am I?" She challenges, spinning to step toward him. She's so small against his large form that it makes my dick stir, watching her square up against him. "You left me in your bed alone."
I blink at the memory pulling at me of Monty telling Killian to let her sleep while we ran out for breakfast.
I should have stayed with her, let the two of them go without me. I wanted to make sure they got her iced coffee just right, the way I suspected she would like it, so I'd gone with them. I'll never forget walking back into Killian's room, the man on the ground with the hole in his neck, the blood everywhere that mixed with the iced coffee when I spilled it. It slipped through my fingers when I realized she wasn't where we left her.
"We went to get breakfast," Killian argues. "Not to broadcast to the whole town that you were in our bed naked."
"You didn't have to broadcast it." She laughs. "He found me, and it was either me or him, so I killed him with your knife and ran home to my mother. I don't know what I expected her to do, but it wasn't to toss me in the cellar so she could renegotiate the contract they'd just signed. I knew she was mad at me, but I didn't think she was going to let a stranger take me. I didn't believe it until I was being stuffed in the backseat next to him... my father-in-law."
My throat is thick with the need to scream, the rage building at the memory of what we hadn't understood back then.
"You had a gun, Killian. You could have shot him. You could have stopped him from taking me, if you wanted to."
"We thought..." I shake my head when she turns to me, awaiting my pathetic attempt for an excuse. "We thought you were with your parents."
"I screamed for you." She says, clearly not buying our flimsy excuse. "I cried for you. I had my head out the window trying to get you to save me because I knew that if he took me, it would be over for us. But you just let me go... you let me be sold to him. He drugged me, and by the time I woke up, I knew what he did to me. He didn't try to hide it, left his cum all over me. The fifth man in two days to do that."
My hand twitches with the need to wrap it around something, so I curl my fingers into a fist instead and chance a glance at Monty just as he falls to his knees.
"Poison..." The word is strangled, and when she turns back to him, the ferocity in her gaze has him break into tears. "I had no idea..."
He's telling the truth, of course. We didn't know any better, but we should have. We should have stepped in a lot sooner. And I would have, if I'd known how bad it was. I never would have let her go with a stranger. I'd have fought anyone I thought wanted to hurt her. But all the time we knew her growing up, we never intervened because she begged us not to. She begged us to pretend we weren't friends and to stay away from the house. It had been something we did by her request as children and by the warnings of our own parents to stay away from that family, that place, those people.
And then as we got older and it felt like she was ashamed of us, afraid to let her parents know she associated with the local boys, the tentative friendship we'd always had turned volatile. It certainly wasn't helped along by the hormones, the sudden realization that she made us all lose control of ourselves. That combined with the fact that we never bothered to control ourselves in each other's presence, was a toxic combination. I know the things we did to her were wrong, that they could be used to lock us up for years behind bars, to take away our freedom. But I also knew that she provoked the beast within us, and she was the only thing that could tame it.
"I'm so sorry," I tell her honestly, feeling myself choke on the words just like Monty. They don't seem adequate. "We didn't know. I wouldn't have... we never would have let you go if we knew."
"Stop crying." She rolls her eyes, kicking out in Monty's direction so that he knows her wrath is for him before turning back to Killian. "And stop pretending you didn't know. I told you everything in my letters."
"Letters?" Killian shakes his head. "What letters?"
"The ones you never returned." She snaps. "The ones where I told you everything... about how I could never say to your face the things I could gather the courage to write you about in the winter. The ones where I told you how much my parents hated me, told you how Uncle Vitoli's lingering gazes made me uncomfortable, how I didn't understand why he still followed me around when I was legally an adult."
"You wrote to us?" I ask, looking to Killian for confirmation.
He wouldn't keep something like that from us, would he?
"Yes," she answers for him, turning to me. "I wrote to all three of you, together and separately. I sent them all to Killian, because I remembered his address. I thought you'd pass them along. But now I know you don't do anything that doesn't benefit you."
Killian laughs, unbothered by the accusation in her voice. "Why would I hide letters from you if I'd gotten them, Bambi?"
Ivy doesn't hesitate. "Because you like me in pain. It's why you let them take me, why you never looked for me, why you're drawing this out when you could have shot me right next to Cody. You know his father will come look for us, that he'll punish me if I'm alive and his son isn't. Is that why you haven't killed me, Killian? You want to let someone else do the dirty work?"
Killian moves fast, his fingers wrapping around her neck as the last word leaves her throat. "You really have me pegged, don't you?" He laughs coldly. "But there's one thing you haven't thought of."
Her eyes ask the question her body can't, because she's too busy fighting for air as Killian presses his thumb against her carotid artery, her eyes fluttering as she tries to resist the siren call of unconsciousness. But her time runs out fast, Killian accepting her body as she begins to go limp against him. Before she fades away completely, he gives her the answer she was looking for.
"I only like to see you in pain when we're the ones causing it."