7. Ellie
Ellie
The upstairs bathroom at Waterson Manor hasn't changed at all since I lived here.
There are still the same white marble counters, the same gold-framed mirror that makes everyone look slightly emaciated, which kind of makes you feel better when you look like shit because at least you can blame it on the mirror.
And I always feel like shit here.
That's a guarantee anytime I have to spend an evening in Todd's presence.
I lock the door behind me and lean against it, breathing through the tightness pulling at my ribs that started somewhere around the second course and hasn't let up for a minute ever since. Every breath makes me wince.
My hands are trembling, and I know why. It's because I've usually taken a pill by now. I press my sweaty palms flat against my thighs and count in fives until the tremor fades.
Okay.
Dinner was two hours of watching Todd carve a duck with his hands and carve my mother and me into even smaller pieces with his words at the same time.
The worst part isn't even what he said.
The worst part is that Cyrus was watching the whole damn thing.
The marble is cold under my palms when I lean over the sink. I look like shit in the gold-framed mirror.
Don't know what I expected. The blue dress washes me out, but Mom likes me in blue and it feels like a small concession to make for her, all things considered.
I splash water on my face and then blot it with one of the monogrammed towels. They're all embroidered with T.W., of course. My mother lives here but she doesn't have any stock in this house. Certainly nothing that would actually make it feel like her home.
Or mine.
But then I remember that isn't quite true.
I crouch and open the vanity cabinet beneath the sink, reaching past the spare hand towels and the backup bottle of Todd's imported hand soap until my fingers find the back corner where the baseboard doesn't quite meet the wall.
There's a gap, barely wide enough to fit two fingers into, and behind it there should be a plastic bag I taped there a few months ago.
It's still there. The housekeepers Todd cycles through every few months don't stay long enough to learn the secrets this place is hiding.
Or to notice the bruises on my mother's skin are permanent, even if the locations change.
She's like a living Rorschach blot of his violence, and so was I before I moved out.
I pull the bag out and unzip it. Five pills left, lifted from Mom's medicine cabinet since she has enough prescriptions floating around the house to stock a small pharmacy and never notices when a few go missing.
My own script ran out yesterday and I haven't had a chance to get it refilled since moving into the boys' house put a significant dent in my ability to casually visit my psychiatrist without an armed escort.
The last thing I need is their judgment. And Kade would probably try to take these, too. He wants to control everything else.
I shake one pill out into my palm. It's small, oval, and blue like my dress, but infinitely more calming.
I've been rationing what I had left at the house, cutting the pills in half and trying to stretch them, but tonight was a two-Xanax dinner at minimum and I've been white-knuckling it on nothing.
I pop the pill into my mouth and lean over the sink to wash it down with water from the tap, and that's when the door opens behind me even though I fucking know I locked it.
I choke, water going down the wrong pipe, and spin around with my heart trying to exit through my throat.
Cyrus is standing in the doorway in his butler outfit that he somehow actually manages to look hot in, one hand still on the doorknob of the door I definitely locked.
"What the fuck," I wheeze between coughs. "I locked that."
"You did." He holds up a small metal pick between two fingers and pockets it without ceremony. "What are those?"
His eyes are on the plastic bag in my hand, the remaining pills visible through the clear plastic.
I shove it behind my back, which is about as effective as hiding a body behind a throw pillow. His eyes follow the movement, flat and cold and I can already tell he won't believe whatever I tell him.
"None of your business."
"Interesting. Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you just swallowed a benzodiazepine you pulled out of a wall cavity in your stepfather's bathroom."
"It's Xanax, not heroin. And you're supposed to be downstairs doing whatever butlers do, not picking locks and scaring the living shit out of me."
"I was concerned. You've been up here for eleven minutes."
"You timed me?"
"I time everything, Princess. Besides, you're not one to talk." He steps inside and closes the door behind him, and the bathroom that felt spacious thirty seconds ago suddenly feels like a linen closet. I back up until my ass hits the sink. "How long have you been taking those?"
"Cyrus."
"How long?"
"Since I was sixteen. My psychiatrist prescribed them for anxiety.
For the—" I gesture vaguely at myself, meaning the compulsive counting and the rigid rituals and the whole tangled fucking mess of my brain that can't just let things be wrong without trying to fix them into patterns of five. "You know."
"And these are from that prescription?"
His tone makes it instantly obvious he already knows the answer, and he knows he knows it, which is fucking annoying.
"Does it matter?"
"I'd say it matters quite a bit, actually."
I lean against the counter and stare at him. He's infuriating when he's like this. That's the exact same look he has on his stupidly hot face when he's debugging code, except it's me instead of a random string of letters and numbers on his screen.
"My prescription ran out. I've been stretching what I had. Tonight was..." I trail off, because I don't have a word for what tonight was. "I needed one. That's all."
"So you're self-medicating with stolen pills from a stash you hid here. How many others are there?"
"Is this an interrogation or something?"
"It's whatever it needs to be." He frowns. "Especially if you're taking stolen pills."
"Oh, that's rich coming from a man who hacks federal databases for fun and just killed someone to take his job."
"The previous estate manager is alive, he'll just be shitting himself inside out for a few hours." He says it so casually, too. "He'll sleep it off. And we're not talking about me."
"Maybe we should be, considering you're the one who's going to get caught if you don't get out of here." I shove the bag into the cabinet and close it. "Todd has cameras, Cy."
"I know." He doesn't look remotely concerned. "I'm running recycled footage on the one in the hallway right now. It's on a nine-minute loop, which gives us about seven minutes before I need to refresh it, so if you're done lying to me about the pills, maybe we can have an actual conversation."
"I'm not lying."
"You're not telling the truth, either. Those are two different things and you know it.
" He folds his arms over the vest stretched across his broad chest, making him look like some hot guy on TikTok cosplaying a butler rather than someone who actually has any business working here.
"Your hands haven't stopped shaking since the appetizers. "
"So you were watching my hands instead of doing your job."
"Watching you is my job tonight, Princess," he corrects.
I purse my lips, trying to keep it together. The pills aren't kicking in as fast as usual. "So what's the verdict? Am I a traitor or not?"
"You are," he says, but there's no sarcasm or triumph in his voice, only sadness. "But not the way Kade thinks."
It's a gut punch and he knows it. But not one I can defend against without unraveling everything, and it already feels like I'm coming apart at the seams.
I look away. The marble counter is cold against the backs of my thighs where I'm leaning against it, and I press harder, letting the chill ground me.
"Tell me why you're afraid of him."
"I'm not afraid of Todd. He's a controlling, narcissistic, verbally abusive asshole, and I want him dead because the world will be a better place without him, but that's the whole story."
"Ellie."
I grit my teeth. I fucking hate when he looks at me like that, like he sees right through me. "That's the story, Cyrus."
"Then why is your mother walking around this house like a ghost?" His voice is quiet, and the question jolts me because he saw it too. Of course he fucking saw it. Cyrus sees everything. "That is not Marney Riggs. I know Marney. That is a woman who's been completely hollowed out."
My jaw tightens. "She has a problem, but she's dealing with it."
"Is she?" He looks pointedly at the cabinet where I just shoved the bag. "Because it looks like she's not the only one."
"That is not the same thing."
"No? You're both in this house popping pills to get through the evening, and neither of you will talk about why."
"Because there's nothing to talk about." My voice comes out harder than I mean it to, honestly, and I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks that means I'm about two sentences away from saying something I can't take back.
"You think you understand because you sat through one dinner with us?
You don't know shit about what goes on in this house, Cy.
You stood behind his chair for two hours and now you think you've got the whole picture? Congratulations. Try living in it."
"I'm trying to help you, Ellie."
My name somehow feels more intimate on his lips than the nickname.
"I didn't ask for your help. I asked for you to kill him. There's a difference."
"And yet here I am."