sixteen #2
Even when I bought a bus ticket with cash, when I went to Chicago and New York and Philadelphia and Boston; when I went to Milwaukee and Minneapolis and Montana; and to Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix and Amarillo and Memphis.
Finally, I was satisfied that no one could have followed that track, all paid in cash, on different bus lines and taxis and even a plane or two.
Finally, I settled in and became Dahlia, and like Preston, I was ready.
“Ready?” Baron asks, and I realize he thinks I’m stalling because I don’t want to face my grandfather.
“Yes,” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt. I climb out of the car and smooth my daisy sundress down.
Preston meets us at the door. “Do you have any weapons?”
He’s wearing a holster on his hip with a black pistol in it and a plain white mask that covers the side of his face that Baron ruined.
“No,” I say, then turn to my companion.
He shakes his head no, then pulls up his shirt and does a full turn so Preston can see his waistband. When he’s satisfied, my cousin steps back and lets us enter.
“My family is out,” he says. “So there’s no one to take hostage if you turn feral.”
“We’re here to see her grandfather,” Baron says coolly. “That’s all. I have no interest in your family.”
But I’m glad Dolly isn’t home. I don’t like that she slept with Baron, even if it was before he ever spoke to me.
Preston leads us up the staircase to the left and unlocks the door to the west wing of the old brick mansion that sits creaking under its own weight in the midday sun. Then he looks at me.
“Do you want me to go in with you?”
“No,” I say. “I want to talk to him alone.”
He glances at Baron.
“He’s coming with me,” I say.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Preston asks.
“You think I can’t protect my girl?” Baron growls, wrapping an arm around my waist.
I flinch, and Preston notices. His good eye locks on my face, but his expression never changes. “I think you’re capable,” he says to Baron. “I think you’re equally capable of holding her down and letting our grandfather do what he wants to her.”
“Anyone’s capable of that,” Baron says. “That doesn’t mean I’d do it.”
Preston’s eye moves to me. “You trust him?”
I swallow hard and nod, giving both men the answer they want.
“I’ll be standing outside,” Preston says, leading the way down the hall. “If I hear anything that tells me I need to interrupt, I will. And I won’t hesitate to repay the favor you did last time you were here.”
He stares Baron down with his mismatched eyes, one real and one prosthetic, as he unlocks one of the bedroom doors. Then he steps back and lets us in.
Inside, the room is spacious like all the rooms in the manor house, a suite with its own bathroom, a king bed, and a cozy living area with a coffee table and comfortable seating near the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over his expansive estate.
My grandfather sits in one of those chairs, surveying his domain.
He rises when he sees us. He’s aged more than the three years since I’ve seen him can account for.
“Mabel,” he says, stepping toward me and holding out his arms like he thinks I’ll run into them. “It’s good to see you!”
“Grandpa,” I say, nodding. “I’m not much of a hugger.”
“And you brought a friend,” he says, striding over and extending a hand to Baron.
Even though he’s in his seventies, he’s still stout and solid and straight, without a tremor in his big hand when he holds it out to Baron or a curve in his spine.
He looks like he has a good twenty years left in him.
Darlings do tend to age well and live long—at least the men.
“If I take that hand, it won’t be attached when you get it back,” Baron says. “So I suggest you keep it far away from me. And Mabel.”
“Oh—of course,” Grandpa says, laughing like it’s a joke. “Mabel, you sure I can’t interest you in that hug? One for your papa, for old time’s sake?”
Baron’s hand drifts my way like he’ll put it around my waist, but he must think better of it, knowing I can’t handle the contact right now.
So he just puffs up and stares down the older man.
“Preston’s outside, and if he hears any sounds of distress, he’ll come in guns blazing,” he says.
“Otherwise, I’d gut you alive right now.
The only thing stopping me is that Mabel wants to talk to you.
The second she says the word, though, this meeting is over.
And for you, that could be a permanent situation. So I’d tread carefully, old man.”
Grandpa looks from me to Baron and back, and then he laughs.
Not like he’s mocking us, but like this is all fun and games, like Baron’s teasing him the way his buddies would when they came by to shoot the shit with him on the dock of the catfish pond.
More deals were made out there than anyone probably knows—he was the most powerful judge in the county, and alliances were made and lost out there by the water, with no witnesses and no one to overhear.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” he asks heartily, like everything is under his control, like it always was. He’ll never admit otherwise, even when he’s locked away in his bedroom and can only come and go at Preston’s discretion.
“I wanted to talk to you about some things,” I say.
“Of course,” he says. “Come right in and make yourself at home. It’s been so long. Not that I get many visitors anymore, you know.” He makes a half-hearted laugh. “I keep to myself these days.”
“Is that because you’re locked up where you belong?” Baron asks.
“He’s not where he belongs,” I say. “He belongs six feet under.”
“Mabel,” Grandpa scolds, but his tone is wheedling too, like he thinks I’m being too hard on him.
“Am I wrong?” I ask.
“Why don’t you sit down and we can have a nice talk,” he says. “I’ll get the maid to bring up some iced tea. Unless you’d like something a little stronger.”
He winks at us, smiling his big jovial smile that shows too many teeth, the one he gave while he shook hands with politicians and prosecutors that made them think he was friendly and clever—you scratch my back, I scratch yours, and we can all go home for dinner.
To me, it was always the smile of the big bad wolf in a fairytale, prowling and hungry for a little girl to gobble up. Too bad the girl he swallowed was more hemlock than honey.
“I think tea will be just fine,” I say.
“You want to have a tea party?” Baron asks, raising a brow.
“Yes,” I say. “I think we have some things to discuss. Don’t you, Grandpa?”
“Certainly,” he says, taking his seat in the easy chair again. He gestures for us to join him. “You’ve been gone what is it? Three years? Tell me about your schooling. How’s university life treating you?”
“I’m not here to talk about school,” I say, watching him put in the order on his tablet. He may not get to do all the terrible things he used to, but he’s still living like a king up here.
“What is it you’d like to discuss, snowflake?” he asks, setting down the tablet.
I wince at the nickname. “Do you remember that time when I was little, and you took me to that burger place after it was closed, and there was a girl there with her baby?”
“No, I can’t say that I do,” he says, watching me expectantly, as if this is the first he’s ever heard of the night in question.
“Who was she?” I ask.
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he says. “Are you sure it wasn’t your dad or one of your uncles that took you? I can’t say I made a habit of going out for fast food, and I wouldn’t have even known how to get into a place like that once it was closed.”
“Baron already knows,” I say. “And you got away with it. I never went to the police, and no one would believe me anyway. It’s my word against yours, and just like you’re doing now, they’d say I misunderstood because I was a kid. But I remember.”
I remember the way I remember everything then, the facts laid out like a dusty card catalogue or a series of bones bleached by the sun, each one faded but still in its place.
Back then, each thing that happened was simply catalogued, one event as meaningful and meaningless as the next.
That night, I was a big girl. I helped by getting a bottle of water when he asked.
I sat in my car seat on the way home, licking my ice cream cone.
“Well, you must be remembering wrong,” he says, like it’s the end of the discussion.
“You threw her baby in the vat of fryer oil,” I say. “Does that ring any bells?”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” he says. “You always had quite an imagination, I’ll give you that. I can’t even imagine what else she’s told you.”
He looks at Baron for this, like he thinks Baron will believe him over me.
For one sickening moment, I consider what will happen if he does.
If he’ll say I never told him this, and I made it all up, and Dahlia too, and all the dates we went on, everything we ever said and did.
He’ll say there’s no Jane, there never was a Jane; there’s no baby, there’s no us.
There’s not even a Duke. There’s only one of them, and he barely knows me.
My heart starts skipping and I have to grip my chest at the stab of pain there.
But he’s on his feet, hauling my grandfather up by the front of his shirt.
“Mabel doesn’t lie,” he growls, and then he shoves Grandpa back, hard.
Everything happens slow, and then fast.
His arms pinwheel. He stumbles backwards. He trips over a potted plant.
Glass shatters. And then he’s gone.
He screams, but he doesn’t even get to finish before there’s a solid, gruesome thud.
Glass shards are still raining around us, cascading over the furniture.
The door flies open, and Preston is standing there, his gun drawn.
“What happened?” he demands, scanning the room. “Where’s Grandpa?”
“He seems to have had a little accident,” Baron says. “Stumbled right into the window.”
Preston looks from me, to Baron, and back.
“Oops,” I say with a shrug.
“You’re not hurt?” Preston asks me. “You’re okay?”
“Never better,” I say. “But you might want to call down and tell the maid we only need two glasses of iced tea now.”
“Better yet, tell her we’ll come down and get it,” Baron says. “We need a moment to grieve. But you might check on that body. If it’s still breathing, I trust you’ll take care of that.”
Preston mutters a few curses and turns on his heel, disappearing out the door as suddenly as he came.
A hiccup of a laugh bubbles up inside me and bursts forth, high and slightly hysterical. Baron looks at me and grins, then picks me up and drops into the furthest armchair, pulling me astride his lap. His eyes blaze with a hunger I rarely see there.
“You sick little monster,” he says, raking his hands up my thighs, pushing my dress to my hips, his fingers ghosting over scars. “Ride me while he’s dead on the ground outside.”
“Preston might hear,” I point out, trying to squirm away. “He’ll shoot you.”
“Then save your screams until we get home,” he says, undoing his pants and dragging his cock out. “I’ll savor them even more after what we just did. But right now, I want that tight cunt showing me just how much it appreciates what I just did for you.”
I swallow hard and nod, lifting up. Biting my lip, I fit him to my entrance, forcing myself down onto him.
The sting of him entering me when I’m so completely unaroused has tears dripping down my cheeks, and he growls his approval, lifting his hips to force himself in further.
His girth stretches me, and I choke on a cry as he starts dragging himself out and then tearing into my dry opening.
I hold in the sound, swallowing it like I did so many nights in this house, sealing the horror and pain and shame up tight inside the seamless blank of a doll.
I let him play with me the way he likes, because I’m his doll now.
I made a bargain with the devil, and these are the terms. He hurts me because that’s what he needs, but he will make sure that no one else ever does.
And because I give him this, he gives me his loyalty, and the promise that he won’t hurt anyone else.
Just me. I’m his special little monster. And he is mine.