The Secrets We Bury (Scorpion Kings #3)

Prologue

JULIET

I am raw. Emptied of all thought and feeling save for one: shame.

My insides are no longer my own. I live in skin that feels as if it doesn’t belong to me. The mind inside is wrong. It doesn’t match the limbs attached. Warped dreams wrap clawlike hands around my head, burrowing into my brain with flashes of something I don’t want to see.

A nightmare.

The click-clack of heels on marble has me jolting out of my head and I turn as my mother strides into the kitchen and holds her hand out for Chef Barker’s perfectly steamed mocha cappuccino. One manicured hand closes around the oversized mug as the other types away on the screen of her phone.

“Don’t think I didn’t hear about you drinking in the hotel bar, Juliet,” she snaps without ever lifting her head. “I’m very disappointed in you.”

Chef Barker moves away from the counter and back towards the stove where he continues to clean away the remnants of the breakfast spread currently set in front of me. Belgium waffles, fluffy omelets, and an array of fruits and cold veggies chopped and shaped into fancy flowers.

It’s only half past nine in the morning and I’ve been home for less than thirty minutes—having jumped into a waiting car straight from the hotel to home—but it feels like a million years at this point. Words form in the back of my throat.

“Your father is heading off on another business trip this afternoon, and we will be discussing your behavior at the party and after before he gets back.”

“Mom.”

“Don’t ‘mom’ me, young lady.” Taptaptap . She takes a sip of her cappuccino and moves towards the breakfast table without ever looking up from her phone.

My skin crawls with sensation. The waft of air pushed about by the sluggish spin of the fan above our heads lifting a strand of my hair and sliding it over my back. I look down at my hands. They look different to me somehow, not like they did last night. Mom looks different too. Everything does.

“I understand that drinking at your age seems like such a grand sign of adulthood,” Mom continues. “The Donovans have a reputation to uphold, and I’ll not have you ruining any of your father’s deals with prospective investors with your attitude.”

She finally sets the phone down and as she lifts her drink to her lips, turns her head in my direction. Mom pauses. “Juliet?”

I swivel to face her. My plate sits in front of me. Empty as it has been since she entered. A glass rests to the side, equally unfilled. Mom’s brow dimples, just enough to tell me that she’s probably ready for her next Botox appointment.

A sinking sensation grabs hold of my gut and tugs. “I…” What do I say?

Mom puts her mug down. The sound is loud to my ears, clacking against the flat surface of the table. “Chef, please leave us alone for a moment.”

Chef Barker doesn’t say another word as he dips his head, despite the fact that she’s not looking at him, before he slips from the room.

It’s not the first time she’s demanded one of the staff leave our presence even when they’re in the middle of their workday.

Usually, though, it’s to pitch a fit or chastise me for something more severe.

God, I hope that’s not what she’s planning.

Mom waits until Chef Barker’s footsteps have faded and the only sound that fills the room is the distant rumble of the landscaping company mowing the back lawn. My lips part, but nothing escapes. Silence stretches, winding around and around the room, squeezing me until I think I’m going to pop.

Something’s wrong with me. It’s as if someone else woke up in my body today with memories that I shove into a deep, dark corner of my head. They keep peeking out at me, asking if I’m ready to see them now.

I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be.

What did I do?

“Juliet.” I blink and lift my head at my mother’s prompting. For a moment, I think she’s going to reach for me. That she’ll take my hand in hers, tell me something good. Her brow creases further, as much as it can anyway, which is to say not much at all.

Then she closes her mouth and swallows before getting up. I follow the movement with my gaze, confused as she turns away from me and walks out of the room.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack. I’m left alone in the cold breakfast nook, dressed in last night’s clothes.

Despite the fact that I’d showered at the hotel the second I’d woken up and that I’d scrubbed my skin until patches of red had formed, I still feel…

grimy. As if something grotesque has crawled under my skin and found its home in my pores.

Wrong. I feel utterly wrong.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack. My mother returns after a few minutes, preceded into the room by the sound of her heels.

I look up as she stops next to the table.

An orange pill bottle appears before my eyes as she carefully sets it in front of my empty plate.

Then, she sets down a small bottle of what looks like lotion.

Quiet surprise enters me. Pills and… lotion?

I glance up at her and nearly jerk away from her.

My mother doesn’t look at me as she takes back her seat and lifts her coffee from the tabletop.

There’s a slight tremble in her fingers as she takes a long, slow sip from the mug.

But not by the flicker of an eyelash does she reveal whether or not she tastes the liquid she drinks.

“Those are for the nightmares,” she murmurs, nodding to the pills. “They’ll help.”

“Help?” I repeat the word. Odd that I’ve heard it before and yet now I have to wonder if maybe I’ve been wrong about its definition all along.

“The lotion is for your skin,” she continues without acknowledging that I’ve spoken. “Your…” She finally looks at me and her lips turn down. “You’ve scrubbed yourself raw, Juliet. Your skin needs to heal.”

My skin needs to heal? From washing?

It’s not clean, though.

I look back at the lotion and try not to pay any attention to the orange bottle. “Will it… feel clean?” I find myself asking.

It takes longer than I expect for my mother to answer and when she does, I don’t expect the truth. “No.”

Something cracks inside of me. I open my mouth, but my next question never leaves my mouth. I’m not sure I want to know the truth to this one.

Will I ever feel clean again?

I’m pretty sure the answer is the same and I don’t know that I can bear to hear it.

When I reach for the lotion, I find myself skipping it and latching on to the orange bottle. The one I tried to ignore. I lift it. There is a collection of little capsules inside.

“These… take away nightmares?” I ask.

“Yes. You won’t dream at all with them.”

I tilt the bottle to one side and then the other. The pills collapse together, each one following the next until they’re all collected on their sides, smashed against the inside of the bottle’s walls. My fingers close around the white label and I drag the orange container closer to my chest.

“What if I run out?”

“I’ll get you more,” she says. “As many as you need, Juliet. But just one. Only ever take one a day.”

“What happens if I take more?” I ask. Will it erase the nightmare forever? Will it take back the last twelve hours? Will it wind back time?

Mom’s hand comes out and grabs mine, startling me with the sensation of warm fingers on my cold ones. I turn and freeze at the look in her eyes—eyes a different shade of blue from my own but rounded in much the same way.

“Don’t ever take more than one a day, Juliet,” she hisses, her expression darkening. “If I ever catch you taking more than you’re allowed, I’ll take them away from you.”

“No!” I jerk out of her hold, my chair squealing across the marbled floors as I stand up and clutch the pills to my chest.

“If you don’t want to remember the nightmares, I suggest you do as I tell you,” she states.

“Okay,” I agree readily. “I will. I won’t take more than one a day.”

I want the nightmare gone. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to…

Tears burn in the back of my eyes as I glance down at the bottle.

It wasn’t real , I remind myself. It was a nightmare. A horrible, terrible dream and with these, I won’t ever have them again. It’ll be like they never existed.

“I…” I glance at my empty plate. “I’m not hungry this morning.”

Mom is quiet for a moment, then she answers. “Okay.” She leans forward and nudges the lotion towards me too. I don’t want to take it. It won’t help, but I do anyway. I carry it with me as I round the table.

“Juliet?”

I stop in the entryway to the hallway. I clutch both items to my chest and slowly pivot to face my mother once more.

She doesn’t look at me as she reaches for her phone and drags it closer.

I realize now that her hair is piled up into a neat chignon at the back of her head, revealing the nape of her neck.

There are little bumps raised along her flesh, barely discernible, but the early morning light hits her just right for me to see them.

“I’ll get you an appointment with the gynecologist,” she says. “Don’t skip it.”

It would have been easier had she slapped me instead.

“The gynecologist?” I repeat, my own voice sounding miles and miles away.

Mom lifts her phone and starts tapping frantically again. “Yes,” she says. “It’s important. I’ll make sure to have my assistant reach out with the details—it’s better to get these things out of the way sooner rather than later.”

With that, Mom lifts her coffee mug and heads for the sliding glass doors leading onto the back veranda. She doesn’t say goodbye and she doesn’t look back at me as she leaves. It wouldn’t have mattered if she did. Those words of hers have done what the nightmare couldn’t.

They break me.