Nineteen
NINETEEN
VANESSA
“I’ve told Doug he can’t come home for a few hours.” Marianna clears a stack of property pamphlets off the sofa, shifting them to a side table.
My aunt glances up at my friend as she lowers herself to perch on an armchair. “I don’t want to put your husband out. We can go elsewhere if it’s easier.”
Marianna waves her off. “He’s fine. He’ll probably head to the club and forget he has a wife until they shut the bar.” She frowns at me. “Take a seat, babe. I’ll get us a drink. What would you like, Evelyn?”
“Water is fine, thanks.” She smiles, peering at me. “I need to let everything settle if you know what I mean.”
I glance down at my shaking hands. Yeah, I know. All my carefully planned questions flew out the window the moment she crumpled on the ground. I’ve been stunned silent since, unsure where to start.
Most awkward car ride ever.
“I’ll be back in a moment.” Marianna sweeps out of the room, leaving me stranded with the first and only family member I’ve seen in nearly two decades.
I should feel more excited about this. Relieved.
All I feel is my fucking pulse point in my neck and the heavy dread begging me to bolt from the situation.
“I’m sorry.” Evelyn’s head hangs, dark-painted lips rolling before she continues. “I didn’t mean to make things more awkward than they already are.” Her words thicken, and I study her hands again, realizing they shake, too. “Rather embarrassing, isn’t it?”
“I think it would be nearly impossible to make things more awkward given the circumstances, don’t you?” I choke out a stunted laugh and move toward the sofa.
Marianna’s house is what you’d expect of the area’s top realtor: enormous rooms with fuck all in them, as though she’s forever stuck in a staged mindset, ready to show buyers through any minute. The plush sofa and two armchairs sit opposite one another, a coffee table that’s more art piece than functional between, and bookshelves on the far wall that house sparsely-placed knick-knacks over actual things to read.
There’s no TV. That has a whole fucking room of its own.
“How are you?”
I lift my head at Evelyn’s question and settle on the sofa, diagonally opposite her. “I can’t really answer that in a few words or less, so I’ll just say okay.”
She nods, hands wrapped around her shoulder bag.
“Would you like me to hang that up for you?” I nod toward the burgundy leather tote.
Evelyn shakes her head. “Gives me something to fidget with.”
I slide my boot across the rug beneath the table, messing up the fibers with the sole. “I get that.”
“He never let me come back,” Evelyn says softly. “After I last saw you. Did you know?”
I lift my chin to search her gaze. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
“I thought…” She sighs, shifting to the forefront of the seat cushion. “When I couldn’t find any trace of you on social media. I just… I didn’t want to think it, but I…”
She fights to say the words. “You thought he might have killed me.” So I do it for her.
“I prayed for less.” Her gaze searches the room, moisture thick on the rim of her lashes. “I thought perhaps he’d trapped you there again. But I didn’t rule out the worst. No.”
“Is that why you, you know…” I wind my hand between us, unable to come up with a word for what she did. Fold? Collapse?
Give in to her emotions?
Evelyn nods. “From relief. Yeah.” Her face crumples. “Why didn’t you ever call me, Vanessa?”
“Same reason.” I itch to pull her dark hair from behind her ear so that it disguises her likeness to him. “Thought there may have been a chance that he’d converted you to his way of thinking.”
“Never.” She chokes out the word as though it leaves a sour taste in her mouth. “He’d have to drag my dead body in there to get me to cross the boundary line.”
“Speaking of dead things…” I reach into the pouch pocket on the front of my hoodie and tug out the letter, reaching across the table to hand it to her.
She frowns at the folded paper, glancing at me, before smoothing it out to read the message inside. Her whole face softens, eyebrows shooting upward. “Oh.” Evelyn flicks to the second page. “Wow. I mean… The audacity of that man.”
“Is it true?”
Marianna re-enters the room, a stone tray between her hands with three tall glasses atop. Water, wine for her, and juice for me. “Here you go, ladies.” She sets the tray on the table and then studies each of us in turn. “I interrupted the crucial stuff, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay.” I take the juice and wet my mouth with a sip. The apple sours on my tongue.
Evelyn sets the letter beside the tray and accepts the water Marianna passes over. “Thank you.”
The room falls silent while Marianna drags an ottoman over and settles to the side between us. Her shoulders sag. “You probably don’t want me here. I should leave. I’m sorry.”
“No. Stay.” I need the moral support.
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Evelyn offers. “I wouldn’t have come when you messaged me if I didn’t want to discuss him publicly.” Her brow dives. “That story about being his mistress wasn’t true, right?”
Marianna smiles apologetically. “No. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She glances my way. “You had every right to be cautious.” Her throat bobs, and she turns the glassware in her hands. “To answer your question, Vanessa, yes. It’s true.” Her voice drops to barely above a whisper. “Your mother passed away.”
My head swims. I stare at the table’s edge and focus on the simple fucking task of not falling over. She’s gone. All the hope I’d had that one day she’d leave him and we could talk it all out—vanished. The fucking book closed without me reading the final chapter, and now he wants to throw it in the goddamn fire.
“When?” I set the juice down on the table.
“Six months ago.” Evelyn swallows. “He sent someone to my house. They waited for me to open the door, and then they told me she’d died and turned heel. I didn’t know how until I read that letter.” She gestures to the infernal pages.
“Was there a funeral?” Please, let the asshole at least have given her that.
“I don’t know.” Evelyn sips the water. “I would think so. It would suit his agenda.”
“I searched online,” Marianna explains. “I couldn’t find any mention of her.”
“There wouldn’t be.” My aunt leans forward to set her drink down. “He doesn’t believe in the free press. If there were news, it’d be curated on his website.”
“Oh.” Marianna’s hands tighten in her lap, legs tucked to one side.
I look away from the reminder of that life—of how we were trained to sit as ‘real ladies’. The reminder of how my legs would ache when forced to hold the position for hours while he held an audience of his peers.
My mother is gone. And I don’t honestly know how I feel about that. There’s an absence of something, but it’s not love.
It’s just… possibility. The dream of what she could have been. The hope she one day would be.
“You okay, babe?” Marianna ducks her head, concern evident in the peak of her brow.
I snap my eyes into focus and nod. “I think so.” Probably meltdown good and proper later when there’s nobody else around, but what’s new? “Why do you think he’d send me that?” I nod toward the discarded letter. “And why now? After so long?”
Evelyn draws a deep breath, her gaze on it also. “I’m not sure, but it could have something to do with your brother.”
Marianna’s eyebrows shoot skyward. “You have a brother?”
I stare at the floor. “Yeah.” And he’s just like him .
“What do you mean?” Marianna asks, shifting her attention to Evelyn. “What’s happened?”
I feel my aunt’s gaze on me and lock on to the vision of my boots before me, unable to stomach her pity.
“Gage went missing two months ago.”
My head jerks up. “What?”
Evelyn stares back at me impassively. “You don’t keep up with anything about them, do you?”
“I only just bought myself a smartphone.” I utter a nervous laugh. “He can’t touch me if I can’t see him, right?”
She tilts her head a fraction, gaze softening. It’s all there in the lazy hood of her eyes. That’s not true, though, is it?
It’s not. I haven’t seen his face or heard his name in over a decade, yet there he is, every week in my nightmares without fail. The devil couldn’t reach me, so he made my stepfather instead.
“Here.” Evelyn reaches into her bag and tugs out her phone, swiping with her thumb and tapping a few words before passing it over. “This is the most concise summary of what happened.”
Marianna moves from the ottoman, settling beside me, hip touching mine, to read with me.
Heir to Faith kingdom disappears in dubious circumstances.
I scroll through the article, skim-reading the important facts.
He left work early at his request and never reached his destination. Security cameras recorded my brother at a convenience store later that night, but the vision of his car leaving the parking lot was his last known whereabouts. His phone lost tracking shortly after.
Nobody has seen or heard from him in months—just like she said.
“You think he’s behind this?”
“Undoubtedly.” Evelyn accepts her phone back. “Even if indirectly.”
The room seems to shrink, the walls choking me of air. I tug my hands into the sleeves of my hoodie, fisting them in the fluffy lining. Why is my mouth so dry? And why the fuck does my back hurt so bad between my shoulder blades?
“Ness?” Marianna loops her arm through mine.
I lean left, resting my head on her arm as I focus on controlling my breathing. Everything is him. He’s behind every fucking bad thing in my life, and it just. Doesn’t. Stop. Sure, my baby brother was his protege in every goddamn way, but he was still more mine than his .
Neither of us shares blood with the tyrant. Neither of us was his to manipulate before my mother fell in love with the heathen.
“It’s okay.” Marianna slides her hands beneath mine, interlocking our fingers. “In and out. You’re safe, babe.” She reaches behind me and gently tugs the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. Fuck, I love her.
She’s only seen me get this bad once before, but she remembers. She understands what I need to regulate.
I slip my eyes closed and focus on my breaths. On the rise and fall of my chest as I slowly meditate myself back to sanity.
“If he ever showed his face in my life again,” Evelyn mutters. “I’d kill him.”
I believe she would. She’s a nurse, after all. She’d know better than anyone how to do it and get away with it.
“I think you’d have to get in line behind this one,” Marianna teases, squeezing my hand. She pauses, drawing a deep breath. “I’ve heard Ness talk about this guy often, but she never uses his name. Could you show me who he is—using your phone—so she doesn’t have to hear?”
“Of course.”
I blink my bleary eyes clear. “Abraham Faith.” The demons smirk as they slide their inky fingers down my throat. “His name is Abraham Faith.”
The man who ruled my world.