Chapter 9 #2
That beautiful husky voice calling my name like that. It’s a dream come true.
“Huh?” I murmur, dragged back to reality.
“When did you talk to Julian?”
“Um… This evening, after dinner.”
“Did he say anything else to you?”
His eyes make a note of every shift in my expression.
His interest in me and my emotions is flattering and perhaps misleading.
“No, not really,” the old Leilani says to him.
The change in my tone doesn’t go unnoticed.
He pulls a chair back and sits at the table, in no hurry to send me away.
I watch him place his drink in front of him, a tall wine glass with a delicate stem, and notice how his white dress shirt strains across his broad shoulders.
Some ink peeks at the edge of his starched collar, above the neckline.
It’s also visible on his bare forearms.
“Has he done anything to you since that night in New York?” he asks, his stare still tilted down, the wine swirling in his glass.
As he moves his hand, the deep hue of red mixes with the candlelight.
My chest tightens, and my hands begin to shake.
Clumsily, I pull them back to hide them in the folds of my skirt, making him aware of my unraveling.
I have imagined a lot of things going on between Callum and me, but I never wanted to consider that one day he’d inquire about this.
At the time, I thought he was so cold and indifferent, so self-absorbed, that even if he’d noticed the dire situation I was in, he must have considered me responsible for it.
Besides, everyone in the house had been convinced I was making stuff up.
“What did he do to me that night?” I ask.
I want to hear it from him.
One night, Julian York, who hadn’t quite understood the dynamics in our house, started to harass me.
Back then, he wanted to kiss me.
Before that, he wanted to see me naked.
These days, he wants to spank me.
His obsession with me has been unreliable at best and frightening at worst.
I never knew when he’d move from one phase to the other, and couldn’t gauge him for how violent he’d get.
Back then, no one had listened to me––they never did––so I did the best I could to stay away from him.
Once Callum stepped into the house, Julian’s harassment diminished, not because O’Hara paid attention to me, but because, like everybody else, Julian wanted to be on his best behavior, not knowing the extent of Callum’s power in our house.
Eventually, he figured out that Callum O’Hara had no interest in anyone other than himself and his wife, perhaps.
They were right at the beginning of their marriage, so things were still unclear to all of us.
Before long, they had settled into their routines, and Julian York was prowling again, moving around the house, looking for me.
I was told by my beloved mother, and later by her dear mother, that that was just a phase.
That Julian York was a kid.
What they’d always refused to acknowledge was that he had caught me and pressed my back into the wall too many times to count.
On one of those nights, I ran away from him, took the stairs up, and walked to where Callum lived.
It was sheer luck to run into him.
I rarely had the chance to be alone with him.
Julian's footsteps trailed up the stairs when I pulled to a halt in front of Callum and asked him something stupid, like what time it was––I think.
He looked surprised and baffled, and soon after, he knew exactly who was after me, so he played along.
He told me what time it was just as Julian loomed at the end of the corridor.
He thought Callum hadn’t seen him, so he pulled back and hid in a cranny, while I checked Callum's eyes.
Like now, he wasn’t sending me away, but he wasn’t warm toward me either.
Yet… He let me use his authority to push Julian York away.
If Julian bought into the idea that Callum O’Hara had a semblance of a normal relationship with me, he most likely would’ve given up harassing me.
That’s what I thought.
That was also the first time I touched O’Hara.
I put my hand on his chest and, smiling so Julian could see me, thanked Callum O’Hara.
Then I pushed up onto my toes, and my lips touched his skin below his ear.
He stood there without reacting, without pulling back, and I was convinced that Julian had bought into the idea that I somehow mattered to O’Hara.
Julian York left me alone for a good while, but that has changed recently.
And now he thinks I’m more vulnerable than ever.
For the first time in his life, he might be right.
Since my time to respond to Callum’s question has expired, he tilts his gaze to his hands.
“What did he do to you tonight?”
Suddenly, his voice no longer has the feel of a casual conversation.
He’s not looking for an answer.
He’s testing me.
He talks like someone who knows that something bad has happened tonight.
He said someone would watch me, so maybe he knows the truth, and this is not the time to lie and prove to him how fickle I am. How I lack integrity and character, two things adults would normally have.
Why didn’t he do anything for me if he had his people follow me?
Hollow inside, I review the most unpleasant scenario.
Maybe he acted this afternoon.Maybe he set me up.
He looks at me as I get lost in my thoughts and don’t seem to be able to find a way out.
“Sit,” he orders, and I take a step forward but show no intention to do what he’s asked of me.
His eyes bore into mine, leaving no other choice but to do what I’m told.
Hoping to hide the pain, I brace myself, clutch my skirt, and slide into the seat across from him, my face carved in stone.
It takes one slide to the left, and the frame of the chair cuts into my sore flesh, and just like that, I grimace and almost fall off.
I catch myself and straighten, unable to pretend I’m not in pain.
Suddenly, his eyes flicker dark.
“Get up,” he barks, doing the same himself.
Towering over me as I slowly slide up, he pushes his stare to my skirt.
“Turn around and lift your skirt.”
“I can’t.”
Our eyes meet.
It takes him a second to change his mind and grab the hemline of my skirt himself.
He lifts it up, almost creating a wall between him and me, and grabs one of the candlesticks, bringing the light closer.
“What is this, Leilani? He did that to you?”
He runs his finger down my sore behind, and I jolt and wince.
My skirt falls back in place while he tilts my chin up.
His grip is a little harsh as he fixes my eyes with an angry stare.
“Julian York did that to you tonight?”
Tears pool in my eyes, my assuredness gone, my brattish moods non-existent, my confidence that this will ever go my way completely vanished.
My teary eyes are his answer.
“When did he do that?”
“He ambushed me when I walked back to the bedroom.”
“Did he do that to you before?”
“Not like that.”
“What do you mean by not like that ?”
“He did other things.”
“I’m listening,” he thunders.
I might look scared as he adjusts the volume and speaks again.
“Tell me.”
“He harassed me.”
“Elaborate.”
“Why does it matter?”
“I want to know what he did to you?” he pushes out through clenched teeth. “Did he do anything inappropriate to you?”
I find my mojo.
My jaw tenses as I look up at him and fiercely hold his stare.
“Define inappropriate?”
“Don’t play games with me, Leilani,” he says, his hand falling away from my chin as he steps away from me, visibly irritated.
“What do you think can happen to someone like me in the family you married into?”
He dismisses me with a clipped motion of his hand and swiftly reaches for his phone.
“Cosimo? I’ve got a job for you.”
Just as quickly, I get a feel of what he is about to do, and snap out of my paralysis.
My hands reach for his phone, while he pulls away from me.
“No, no,” I bark, trying to drown out his voice. “Don’t do that.”
“Stay out of this, Leilani,” he warns me as I wrestle him to get his phone, having no chance of accomplishing that.
“He’ll know I’ve talked to you,” I finally argue, and my words make him shift his attention to me.
“Give me a second,” he says to Cosimo and ends the call.
“I need to know what happened to you.”
“Why?”
“I just do. And stop asking silly questions.”
“You can’t change anything about this.”
A dark smile creeps up his lips.
“You’d be amazed at the kind of things I could do.”
“Harming him will make them lock me up. They can’t do anything to you, but they can do a lot to me.”
“Then talk.”
“Only if you promise not to do anything to him.”
“I can’t make that promise. You need to talk if you want to reason with me.”
I tell him everything about what happened tonight in shabby little words of guilt and embarrassment.
“Why did you let him do it?”
“Because I thought he’d stop?”
“Did he?”
I nod.
“After he jerked off,” I add.
His fist hits the table so hard that his glass of wine shatters into pieces.
No one in the house even opens a door to ask if either of us needs any help.
"You watched him jerk off?”
“No. I couldn’t see him. Besides, I didn’t want to have that image in my head.”
“What else did he do?”
“He laughed and smirked and said no one would pay attention to me even if I went to Giorgio and Sylvia and lodged a complaint. He was right about that. Then he said my family was way more focused on my new husband. And then he dropped Stefano Varela's name.”
“How did he know about him?”
“The walls have eyes and ears in that house. You know that. You lived with us.”
His eyes soften as my voice breaks.
He hands me a handkerchief, and I blow my nose before he studies my face.
“Do you know who Stefano Varela is?”
I shake my head before I speak.
“All I know is that he’s ugly and disgusting. He doesn’t even have to be ugly to be disgusting, if you ask me. Julian is just like him.”