Chapter 13
Kuroi
I was shaken driving home from dinner with Dante’s family. I couldn’t believe it. How did Dante’s mother make the roast taste that good? I have eaten at the best restaurants around the world. None of them could compare to what his mother made.
I never knew my mother. As far as I could tell, she was dead. Why else would my father take me in?
And I’ve never met Yuki’s mother. I’ve seen her at a distance. But when my father was assigned to New York, I went with him and a chef prepared all of our meals.
Sitting around the Ricci table, I couldn’t help but wonder about what it would have been like to grow up in a family like Dante’s. Having a mother who slaved over the stove cooking for her family and siblings who gathered on Sunday to enjoy it.
The severed head part, I was familiar with. You can only be around my father for so long without seeing a severed head. But the other stuff. Yeah, there was tension between Dante and his brothers but they all clearly loved each other.
In spite of being ordered by his father, Matteo refused to betray Dante. He defied his father for his brother. I couldn’t imagine what that type of love felt like. The closest I’ve experienced was when Dante’s uncle said that thing about Dante and me and Dante’s hot wolf killed him for it.
Besides Yuki, no one has ever cared about me. I grew up desperate for someone to acknowledge me. But my father never even looked at me.
Eventually I figured out how to make him look. I made it so he couldn’t ignore me. I demanded his attention, and he responded by selling me.
If it wasn’t for Yuki, I might have lost my mind growing up like I did. Without her I wouldn’t have known what love was. She was the only one who ever loved me. And I killed anyone else who tried.
“What’s the matter?” Dante asked as we pulled into his parking spot.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re crying.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said offended.
“You are,” he insisted before reaching across the car and wiping his finger against my cheek. Showing it to me, his finger was wet.
Startled, I quickly wiped my face and escaped the car.
“I wasn’t crying.”
Joining me as we walked to the elevator, Dante stared at me concerned.
“Did what happen freak you out?”
“What?”
“The head thing and dinner.”
I looked at him laughed.
“You’re dumb but you’re cute.”
He stopped.
“Look, Kuroi, I love you. I’ve told you that I love you. And I will do anything to protect you. But you gotta meet me half way. You can’t just break out crying and not tell me what’s going on. How do you think that makes me feel?”
I stopped and looked back frustrated.
“I said I wasn’t crying.”
“Then what was it, allergies?” he asked sarcastically. “Was robot fluid leaking from your face? I hate to tell you this but you’re not a robot. You feel things even if you can’t admit that you do.”
“Listen to me, Dante, I wasn’t crying!” I insisted.
“And what about the other night?”
I froze.
“What other night?”
“The night when… we did that thing and you… you know… lost it?”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Well, I sure hope it was you. We just got married. It’s too soon to be inviting another man into our bed,” he joked.
“Dante,” I said overwhelmed.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared down into my eyes.
“You don’t have to do this. I know I’m not that great at communicating. I mean, why the fuck would I be. But I know it’s important so I’m trying here. If I hurt you, you gotta tell me. That’s what the safe word is for, right? So I don’t hurt you. You can’t let me keep doing things that hurt you.”
“You haven’t done anything to hurt me,” I insisted.
“Then why were you crying?”
“Because my life is fucked up, Dante. I don’t know if you know this about me, but everyone calls me the spider demon. And they deserve to.”
“No one deserves to talk to you like that.”
“Yes they do. Because I am the spider demon. I will kill you, Dante. I don’t want to. And I won’t even know I’m doing it. But one day I’m going to wake up and find you lying next to me dead. I can’t take that, Dante. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. I love you.”
“Wait, you love me?”
“Yeah… Or, I don’t know. How the fuck is someone like me supposed to know what love is?”
I fell into Dante’s arms and yes, I cried. It wasn’t Shiro, it was Kuroi. Or, maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know who the fuck I was anymore.
“I don’t want to kill you, Dante.”
“Listen to me. You’re not gonna kill me.”
“I am. I’m going to kill you and then I’m going to kill myself right after. Because I don’t want to live without you.”
“Kuroi, you’re not gonna kill me. I know you. You hear me. I know who you are and you would never hurt me.”
“I’m sorry, Dante,” I said through my tears.
“You have nothing to be sorry about. You can never hurt me.”
“You mean, again?”
Dante laughed.
“That’s right. You could never hurt me, again. You got me pretty good when you stabbed me. And it took a couple of shifts to heal what you did to my skull. But we know each other now. And the man I know as Kuroi, will never hurt me… again.”
I laughed and sniffed. Pulling away from him, I wiped the tears from my eyes. Looking down at Dante’s shirt, it was covered in makeup.
“If I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to have to invest in waterproof makeup.”
Dante looked down at his foundation smeared white shirt.
“How the fuck were you wearing makeup? I swear to god that you weren’t wearing any when we left this morning.”
I looked up at Dante and shook my head.
“It’s a good thing you’re cute.”
Collecting myself, we continued to the elevator and headed up to our apartment. When the elevator doors to our place opened, my body reacted. Placing my hand on him, I stopped Dante.
“What?” he whispered seeing me readying for a fight.
I gestured for him to stay where he was. Replying with a look that said that there was no way he was just going to stand there, I gestured emphatically, and he obeyed.
Leaning out of the elevator and finding no one behind the door, I got low and eased out. I knew that scent. It was faint and I wasn’t sure who it was. But I was sure that it shouldn’t have been here.
Scanning the open space I found no one. That didn’t tell me anything. There were at least three rooms I couldn’t see into and…
“Yuki,” I said suddenly realizing who it was.
Moments after saying it, my sister walked out of Dante’s bedroom. She wasn’t dressed as she usually was in her stylish Japanese inspired garb. She was in all black as if trying to blend into the night.
“Yuki?” Dante asked leaving the elevator and seeing her. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting my brother,” she said as calmly as ever.
Dante looked at my sister and then at me. He wasn’t buying it. Neither was I.
“Can you lock the door?” I asked Dante.
I didn’t actually know if he could. I knew it required a key to get to our floor. But that didn’t mean he could stop someone from getting out.
“I can lock it,” he said sticking a key into the elevator panel.
“That’s not necessary,” Yuki said casually.
“Neither is coming here when I’m not,” I pointed out.
Yuki relaxed and headed to the couch.
“Are you not going to offer your sister something to drink?”
I didn’t know what she was doing but I decided to play along.
“Of course. Where are my manors?”
“They are deplorable,” Yuki proclaimed.
I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Knowing her, she wasn’t.
“Tea?” I asked her.
“If it’s what you have,” she said disapprovingly.
“It is,” I confirmed before heading to the kitchen to prepare it.
“Wait, are we just going to pretend that it isn’t as weird as fuck that she was in our place when we got here?”
Yuki responded before I could.
“Considering the facetime I received from Shiro, I thought we had progressed past weird.”
That shut Dante up for a second.
“Listen, having him call you was a mistake.”
“Perhaps this is my mistake. How many are each of us allowed?”
Again, Dante was quiet. Having no response, he clenched his jaw and headed to his room leaving my sister and me alone.
“We only have tea bags,” I informed Yuki.
I didn’t have to see her to know that she was displeased. Selecting the only one from Dante’s stock that was worth drinking, I added water to the coffee pot and brought it to a boil. Not saying a word the entire time, I collected a mug from the cupboard and poured us cups.
Yuki didn’t wait to make her feelings clear. Putting it down as soon as she received it, she stared daring me to defy my upbringing by drinking tea from a mug. I got it all the way to my lips before putting it down. I could try to fight it but like my father, Yuki’s cold stare had a power over me. As little as I could defy my father’s wishes, I could defy Yuki even less.
“So, why are you here?” I asked having waited long enough.
Straightening her back, she said, “To bring you home.”
“I am home,” I told her confused.
“No. You are where father put you.”
I couldn’t deny that. Father declared I would marry Dante and that was why I was here.
“That might have been how it started, but Dante is my husband now. I am where I am supposed to be.”
“Where you are supposed to be is home.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Yuki. I am home.”
“Were you home when Father gave you away the first time?”
“No,” I said repulsed by the thought.
“But, at the time you thought you were home.”
I opened my mouth to deny it and then stopped remembering what had happened. It wasn’t the first year with my father’s business partner that Yuki was referring to. It was during the second. Or, perhaps it was the third. But, after a while, I had stopped fighting my circumstances and had given in to them.
Past what went on at night, I had had freedom. I couldn’t go anywhere without his permission or have friends. But as long as I was accompanied by one of his men, I could do whatever I wanted. I could drink. I could blow off my tutor. Hell, I could blow my tutor if I wanted.
In that hazy delusion, I began to see myself as royalty. Think about it. I was caged, my body wasn’t my own, but I could buy anything I wanted, and treat people however I pleased. I was a Disney princess.
“I was young and stupid back then. Now I am not.”
“But again, you think you are home. The new cage father has put you in is again your home. Would you have left your first home if someone hadn’t freed you?”
“Freed me? I freed myself,” I said knowing my master had been the spider demon’s first victim.
“And the second man father gave you to?”
“Then too,” I said less confidently.
“And the third?”
“Yes,” I said rattled by Yuki’s questions.
“Hm,” she chirped before grabbing the mug and taking a sip.
Chills crawled up my arms. My heart raced as I fought to look calm. She knew something and she wanted me to know that she did. But what? Did she know how I had killed them? How could she know that?
“I’m not leaving here,” I told her.
“You will,” she said confidently.
“I’m not going to do what I did before?”
“What did you do? Tell me, how did you free yourself?”
“I… killed them,” I admitted as a feeble attempt at a threat.
“Who have you killed? Tell me. Who do you have the strength to kill?”
I didn’t need to tell her. Everyone knew what they called me. I killed my lovers. Even the ones I liked. She knew this. Why was she making me say it?
And then it hit me. She was making me say it because… I hadn’t. What hadn’t I done? I had killed them. But they were all dead. I woke up next to all of them. Each was dead.
I got up overwhelmed by the memory. Why was she making me relive this? Each time I fell asleep next to them and woke to a cold corpse and the smell of shit or piss where their bowels had relaxed and relieved itself.
I paced the room remembering the stench and horror of it all. I remembered my tears and the way I screamed when I realized that I had done it again. I remembered the call to my father, sobbing uncontrollably. I remembered the shame as my father’s men carried the bodies away.
I was the spider demon. I killed everyone who dared love me. And I remembered one other thing. Maybe not the first time it happened or even the second, but the other times I remembered there being a scent in the room the night before they died.
It was faint. It was always faint. It was more of an instinct than anything else. A registration that lingered just below my consciousness. It was the same scent I smelled… tonight.
“You!” I said, it hitting me like a sledgehammer. “It was never me. It was you!”
She stared at me unfazed, unyielding.
“But, how? Why?”
“You are mine,” Yuki said casually. “Father gave you to me.”
“I… What?”
“You will come home because father gave you to me and you belong home.”
“Like… your doll?”
My mind spiraled trying to understand everything she was saying. Had she killed all of my lovers out of jealously? Or, was it possession? Did she believed that she owned me? That no one else was allowed to have me?
I stared at Yuki, who stared back unflinching and calm. She believed this. She thought that I belonged to her. And when father gave me away…
“You aren’t possessed by a house spirit. You are Yuki-Anno, the Snow Woman cursed to wonder the cold alone. You kill out of vengeance.”
She stared at me coldly as a chill surrounded us. And then it hit me.
“It was you who whispered in his ear,” I said remembering what the customs officer said about her brother.
She had said that there was someone who put the idea into his head that the Italian girl was into that stuff. It would have had to have been someone who had access to him and who he would trust.
The brother had worked directly with my father. That meant that he was frequently at the compound. And if Yuki told him something, he would at least consider it.
“Why would you tell that man something like that? Couldn’t you see where it would lead?”
Yuki blinked. It was slow and icy. It told me everything.
“You did know. This was your plan. You wanted war. But why?”
Her still demeanor couldn’t mask the feral scream with which she thought it. Unable to contain herself for a second longer, she told me.
“If he can take away something that’s mine, then I can take away something that’s his.”
I fell back into the couch stunned. For so long I had thought I was a monster. No, I was worse than a monster because monsters didn’t kill what they loved.
The worst part was that I could never remember doing any of it. That meant that I could never be trusted. I could never allow myself to love anything, and I couldn’t trust myself if I did.
But now I understood. It was the one person who I thought loved me that I couldn’t trust. I was never really a person to her. I was always just her doll. Her possession. And when her father took it away from her, she plotted to take down his organization as revenge.
“How could you?” I asked allowing the tears to roll down my cheeks. “I thought you loved me.”
She said nothing. Her silence ripped my heart from my chest. I was nothing to anyone. No one had ever cared about me, and no one ever would.
It was then that Dante burst out of the bedroom. Like a bull he charged toward Yuki. Seeing him coming, she attempted to back away but couldn’t avoid his grasp. His large hand encircled her delicate neck and squeezed. I could see the wolf in him fighting to get out.
“Dante!” I yelled.
“What’s this?” he bellowed holding his toothbrush in front of her.
Terror washed across Yuki’s face as her gaze locked on the toothbrush.
“What it is?” he shouted.
“What going on?” I replied panicked.
“There’s something on it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But she does.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Yuki protested fighting Dante’s hand around her neck while never taking her eyes off the toothbrush.
“You don’t, huh? Then I guess it’s nothing. Come here,” Dante said pushing her back onto the couch and sliding his hand from her neck to her jaw.
Yuki hit and scratched Dante fighting for her life. He barely resisted. Instead, he focused on pinching her mouth open.
“Ahhh!” she screamed.
Dante was relentless. With her lips parted, he pushed his toothbrush into her mouth. She raked her head pleading for him to stop. He wouldn’t. And with fiery determination, he brushed her tongue and teeth.
When he was done, he pulled it out. Loosening his grip on her jaw, Yuki cried. I had never seen her express so much emotion. It broke my heart.
“No, no!” she declared no longer fighting Dante’s grip.
“What’d you do?” I asked Dante.
“Only she knows,” he replied backing off and watching her squirm in anguish.
“Yuki, what did you do?” I yelled at her.
“No, no!” She continued rolling from side to side on the couch.
“I don’t understand, Dante. What’s going on?”
“I knew there was a reason she was here so I went looking for it,” he began as we watched her mourn. “There was something on my toothbrush. It was like a gel and it didn’t have a scent. That’s when I remembered what else happened during our wedding. Yuki gave me a drink.”
I looked at Dante shocked remembering it.
“But I drank it too.”
“No, you drank your own and Yuki controlled who got what.”
“She poisoned you.”
“And made it look like a heart attack.”
As we spoke, Yuki’s body convulsed.
“I think, what she put in my drink, she put on my toothbrush. I don’t think you were the one to kill those people. I think she was. No one shares a toothbrush.”
Yuki, between convulsions, rolled off of the couch and struggled to her knees. I had sympathy for her. I knew I shouldn’t. But she was my sister. She had been the only one I loved. She was the only one who had loved me.
“Is there an antidote?” I asked her.
Her eyes bounced up to me. She was possessed with rage. I was finally seeing the real Yuki. Her polite facade was gone. Only the Snow Woman remained.
This was the vengeful demon she had hidden for so long. I hadn’t known my sister at all. My entire life had been a lie.
Fighting her way to her feet, she stumbled around looking for nothing in particular. If she had something to counteract her poison, she would have taken it. If there was anything that would have helped, she would have asked for it.
Instead, she haunted the space like a broken ghost. Her skin turned pale completing her transformation. She now looked like the Yuki-Anno she had always been.
Snarling and shaking, she slithered to Dante and me and launched herself at us. I didn’t know what she wanted. Perhaps it was nothing. But staring into Dante’s eyes with a look that was colder than hell, she whipped her head back, slid down his body and died at our feet.
She had a heart attack. I could tell from the frozen look on her face. I had seen it many times before. It was the look I had woken up to more times than I wanted to remember.
“She had come to here to kill you,” I said aloud trying to make sense of it all.
“Yeah, she had.”
“She wanted me to come home.”
“You are home,” Dante said wrapping his arms around me pulling me tight.
As the tears again rolled down my face, I leaned into my husband’s muscular body. He was built like an oak tree, sturdy, solid, and strong. He was reliable and unyielding. The best thing that had ever happened to me was marrying him. And where ever our life together took us, I would follow.
Unlike anyone, he would protect me. He would hold me when I cried and in his arms I would finally sleep.
“Are you alright?” He asked me looking down at me caringly.
Looking up into his tender eyes, the only thing I could think to say was, “Cherries.”