14 #2
Right now, I should be clambering out of the car, grabbing Sal, and speeding out of town.
But I listen as my father speaks, and my insides flip—
“As the letter details,” he starts, disinterested, “you are officially disinherited and disowned by the Vasiles. Your father does not wish to see you, or speak to you again. Any attempts to contact the Vasiles, or anyone in the Videralli, will be considered the actions of a rogue.”
My insides run cold.
Serena pauses reading.
Her lashes flutter—wet, glistening—then she lifts her numb, disbelieving stare to my father.
This time, I swear he does incline his head.
He nods a slight gesture down in the lane, like someone is there, and he’s giving them a signal.
Then he tears his gaze away from the window, and finally, he looks at Serena.
He looks at her as though he hasn’t known her since she was a baby, like he isn’t friends with her father, all the way back to his academy days.
He just looks at her like she is a total stranger.
“Your father is generous,” he says. “He offers you liberation from the Videralli. But how will you sustain this freedom of yours? Whatever money you had from pooling your earrings and necklaces together,” he says it with such disdain, “has been lost. I am certain you have little left, because, as you have learned by now, life is expensive.”
Oliver peels away from the kitchen. But he doesn’t move towards Serena.
Instead, he goes back to the partition, just at the edge of the camera scope, and he reclines against it, folding his arms across his chest.
Serena trembles, and the letter quakes in her hands.
My father continues. “We are not leaving here without Olivia. But if you are cooperative, you will be compensated for your assistance.”
Oliver lifts his moody gaze to Serena. “I hear it is awfully expensive to raise a child these days.”
Father nods his head in Mr Younge’s direction. “That brings us to the other matter.”
Mr Younge reaches for the doorframe, and he knocks the wood just once.
Serena’s silence is tense. Her hands tremble.
The letter shivers in her tense grip.
She turns her wide, watery eyes on the doorway—just as he steps inside.
A guttural sound is tugged out of me, like a serrated ribbon that comes all the way from my gut.
Polished Oxford shoes step over the threshold.
The thuds are gentle and soft, but his presence is wholly commanding.
He swallows up the room, the apartment, the camera.
He’s all I can look at.
Dray Sinclair wanders into the room.
Dressed in all black, from trousers and shoes to his sweater, he slips his hands into his pockets, and glances around the deterioration of the old loft.
I sink deeper into the seat.
And my tears fall freely.
“Now,” my father slides down the window to sit on the ledge, and he folds his hands on his lap, “tell us about that boy.”
That boy…
My heart is hammering now.
A sweaty gleam mists my forehead. I swat at it, wipe at my face with too much pressure, but I can’t tear my wide gaze away from the phone screen.
Dray’s pace into the loft is wandering. Casual. But there’s an inherit intensity in him, like there always has been, that of a predator—a tiger prowling, sleeping, relaxing. It’s still a tiger.
Then, behind him…
My eyes almost bulge out of my head.
James, as meek as a mouse, side-steps along the open door. His gaze is downcast as he backs up to the stand at the wall.
Serena’s shoulders sag and she backsteps until her spine slumps against the window.
She stares at James, and she understands.
His power.
His print.
Iitrin.
Serena’s hollow laugh is cracked glass.
Her head drops, inky hair falling over her cheeks.
I can only make out slivers of her profile as she sets the letter and envelope on the window ledge.
Dray stops at the edge of the bench and considers the kitchen.
His mask is impassive, unaffected, but there’s no doubt in me that he is flooded with disgust and judgement—that we live like this, with cabinet doors leaning off old hinges, stains on the splashback that never wash off, and a faint smell of stale cigarette smoke that we’ve never managed to get rid of.
He stands close to the camera, so close that all he needs to do is look down, and he’ll see the screen.
Not me.
But maybe evidence of the call.
There should be little buttons on the screen—unless Serena threw a quick illusion on it.
That makes sense.
Now that I’ve thought it, I’m almost certain she has done just that.
Maybe illusioned the phone away entirely.
Dray’s tone is cold, “Who does the child belong to, Serena?”
And the sound of it, his voice, steals me out of the car and hurls me back in time.
I blink, and I feel like I’m at Bluestone, at his mercy all over again, pushed up against a table, his hand running up my thigh, his mouth hot on my skin.
Serena’s whisper crackles through the speaker, “Mine.”
A tension loosens in my chest.
Her father gave her an out with that letter.
My father is giving her another out. Doors to walk through—and maybe finally be free.
Dray looks over his shoulder at James.
And for a beat, their gazes are locked.
Neither speaks. Just stares.
And I wonder…
It’s been three years.
How much has James’ power grown in that time? Can he just… speak into Dray’s mind? Tell him telepathically if Serena is lying or not?
Apparently something like that.
Because, satisfied, Dray returns his stare to Serena. “Who is the father?”
Her cheeks glisten. “Avi Kohen.”
Dray doesn’t react.
No change to his unreadable face.
He just looks at James again.
A moment passes, then Dray nods once, as if to confirm to my father, to Oliver, that it’s the truth.
Oliver’s voice comes from the edge of the camera, “Is the boy the reason you fled?”
Serena nods, and I hear the swallow of her tears.
Oliver presses, “Is that why Olivia fled?”
Her face twists.
She runs her hands down her cheeks, then loosens a harsh defeated breath.
She answers, “I knew what would happen if I stayed. But I didn’t tell Olivia about the baby. I convinced her to come with me another way. I told her it was her only escape from all of you.”
More truths.
And still, Dray just looks at her, listens to her, but says not a word.
This time, he doesn’t look at James.
Oliver says, “The Home for the Misplaced will take good care of the boy.”
Serena whips around to face him. But she says nothing. It’s just a silent, wild stare that could turn violent any second.
Then Dray offers, in that cold, distant tone, “You have been granted a krum life. Your father has decided that you are too great of a shame to bring home. However, this freedom was not offered to the boy—as your father did not know about the boy when he wrote that letter.”
A breath is pushed out of Serena.
Father, still perched on the windowsill, looks as stiff as a statue, brimmed with tension.
And I realise what’s happening.
They will keep Sal a secret from Mr Vasile, they will leave Sal with Serena…
If they get me.
“Now.” My father’s question is direct, “where is my daughter?”
Serena doesn’t hesitate.
Doesn’t struggle with the decision.
She just turns—and looks right at me.
At the phone.
But I turned the camera off on my end.
The screen will be blank to them.
So they can’t see that my mouth twists, that my cheeks are slick with tears, or that I wipe away snot with my sleeve.
Every gaze in the loft latches onto the phone, and I suspect that whatever illusion Serena put on it is fading away now to reveal the call.
But not my face.
Not until I reach out for the screen, my finger trembling—and I tap the button.
I reveal myself to all those stares on the screen.
Dray’s face shutters.
Father pushes off the windowsill.
Oliver softens.
Only Mr Younge and James are unchanging. The latter doesn’t even look up from the floor.
I slide my trembling finger to the unmute button. And I press it.
Serena looks right at me, and I see the plea in her eyes, in the way she holds her hands in prayer to her twisted mouth.
“I’ll do it.” The sound of my own voice is an echo, and it’s quick to be overwhelmed by the choked cry that rips out of Serena, pure raw relief. “I’ll come home—if you leave them alone.”
Serena’s face twists with a fresh surge of tears. But she hides that crushing relief—buries her face in her hands and slumps against the window.
My voice is weak, strained with tears I swallow back, “I’ll be there in two minutes.”
That sob finally breaks free from Serena.
She drops to the floor, crouched, and a horrible wailing sound rips out of her.