Wendy
The silence in the car after the storm is louder than the screaming tires.
I am draped over Peter’s lap, a tangle of torn emerald silk and cooling sweat. The cool Chicago air hits my bare back, making the goosebumps rise, but the heat where our skin meets is still a blistering fever.
My breath comes in jagged, pathetic hitches against the pulse point of his neck. I can feel his heart—steady, slow, and arrogant—thrumming against my jaw.
He doesn’t move. He just rests his large, tattooed hand on the small of my back, his thumb tracing the line of my spine with a terrifyingly gentle possessiveness.
“Look at that,” he murmurs, his voice a low vibration that travels straight to the ache between my thighs. “The lioness has gone quiet.”
I pull back, my hair a matted halo of chestnut tangles. I look at him—really look at him. His pupils are still slightly dilated, his lips curved into that permanent, witty smirk that makes me want to kiss him and kill him in the same breath. He looks invigorated. I look like a casualty.
“I still hate you,” I whisper, though the words lack the venom they had ten minutes ago. They sound more like a confession.
“I’m counting on it,” he says, his eyes sparkling with a dark, intelligent light. “Love is fickle, Wendy. It’s soft. It forgets. But hate? Hate has a long memory. Hate stays awake at night. I want you to remember every second of how I just made you fall apart in the front seat of a Mercedes.”
He reaches out, his fingers hooking under my chin to tilt my face up. He studies the ruin he made of me with a clinical, hungry eye. “You’re bleeding again.”
He leans in, his tongue flicking out to catch the bead of blood on my bottom lip where his teeth broke the skin. It’s a slow, filthy gesture that makes my stomach flip.
“Clean yourself up, Darling. We have an audience.”
He nods toward the mouth of the alley. The black SUV carrying Clara and Silas has pulled to a halt, blocking the exit. The headlights are blinding, cutting through the shadows like twin suns.
Peter doesn’t even flinch. He just helps me slide back into the passenger seat, his hands lingering on my bare waist a second too long.
I scramble to pull the shredded pieces of the Valentino dress together, my face burning with a shame so hot it’s physical.
I wrap the cashmere overcoat tightly around me, buttoning it to the chin, but I can still feel the wetness of him on my skin, the weight of him in my bones.
The car door of the SUV slams. Clara is running toward us before Silas can even put the vehicle in park.
“Wendy! Peter, if you—” She stops dead at the side of the car, her eyes darting between my flushed, tear-stained face and Peter’s disheveled shirt. She sees the torn silk peeking out from under the coat. She sees the way Peter is casually zipping his fly as if he just finished a light jog.
“You’re a fucking animal,” Clara whispers, her voice shaking with a revulsion that makes me want to disappear into the leather. “In the middle of the street? Like she’s a whore?”
Peter turns his head, giving his sister a look so cold it could freeze the lake. “She’s not a whore, Clara. She’s my future. And as for the ‘middle of the street,’ I believe this is a private alleyway. Accuracy is important.”
“I’m taking her. Right now. I don’t care about your men or your North End bullshit.” Clara reaches for the door handle.
“Clara, stop,” I say, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears.
She freezes, her hand inches from the chrome. “Wendy?”
“I’m… I’m okay.” I don’t look at her. I can’t. I look at the dashboard, at the expensive silver dials, at the phantom chains I can feel tightening around my lungs. “Just… let’s go home.”
Peter’s grin is audible in the silence. “You heard her. We’re going home. Why don’t you follow behind? I’d hate for you to miss the arrival.”
He puts the car back into gear, the engine purring like a satisfied cat. As we pull past a devastated Clara, Peter reaches over and takes my hand. He doesn’t squeeze it; he just laces his fingers through mine, forcing me to feel the strength of his grip.
I realise then, with a terrifying clarity, that the door isn’t the problem.
The problem is that I’m starting to wonder what I’d even do if I found the key.
The drive back to the estate is a blur of high-speed curves and the suffocating scent of sex and expensive leather.
Peter doesn’t speak. He just drives, his hand still clamped over mine, his thumb drawing slow, rhythmic circles on my palm. It’s not comforting; it’s a pulse check. He’s feeling the way my blood is still racing, the way I haven’t come down from the ledge he pushed me off.
When we pull up to the limestone steps of the house, the sun is beginning to dip, casting long, bruised shadows across the manicured lawn. The estate looks like a fortress. Or a tomb.
“Out,” Peter says, his voice back to that crisp, commanding snap.
He doesn’t wait for me. He’s around the car in three strides, hauling me out of the passenger seat before my legs even have a chance to remember how to function. I stumble, the shredded remains of the emerald dress rustling under my coat like dead leaves.
Clara’s SUV screeches to a halt behind us. She’s out of the car before Silas has even killed the engine, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
“You aren’t taking her back into that room, Peter! I’m calling the Council. I’m calling everyone! You’ve finally lost your goddamn mind!”
Peter stops at the bottom of the stairs, still holding me by the elbow. He turns slowly, and the look he gives her is so devoid of humanity it makes the air turn to ice.
“Silas,” Peter says, his voice dangerously low.
“Boss?”
“Take my sister to the West Wing. Lock her in the library. If she tries to leave, or if I hear so much as a squeak of her voice before dinner, you can tell her exactly what happened to the last person who interrupted my afternoon.”
“Peter, you can’t!” Clara screams as Silas steps toward her, his face a wall of immovable stone. “Wendy, tell him! Tell him you want to leave!”
I look at her, my best friend, the girl who represents everything good and normal in my life. And then I look at Peter. He’s watching me, his eyes dark and expectant, his hand tightening on my arm. He’s not even worried. He knows.
He knows that even if I ran, I’d be running with his taste in my mouth.
“Go to the library, Clara,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Please. Just… just go.”
Clara’s face falls, the betrayal written in the black streaks of her mascara. Silas takes her arm, firm but not cruel, and begins to lead her toward the side entrance. She doesn’t fight him. She just stares at me until the door clicks shut behind her.
Peter lets out a soft, satisfied hum. “Well. Now that the children are in bed, let’s get you ready for dinner. We have guests, Wendy. And you’re the centrepiece.”
He hauls me up the stairs and into the house. The foyer is silent, the staff having vanished like ghosts. He leads me straight to the master suite, throwing the double doors open with a violence that makes the hinges scream.
He shoves me toward the centre of the room. I trip, falling onto my hands and knees on the thick, charcoal rug. The coat falls open, revealing the ruined Valentino dress, the green silk torn open to my navel, my skin mottled with the marks of his teeth and fingers.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, walking a slow circle around me. “A mess of silk and sin. You look like a war I’ve already won.”
He reaches down, grabbing the back of the dress where it’s still intact, and yanks me up. He hauls me toward the massive, walk-in closet—a room of glass, mahogany, and enough designer clothes to dress a small army.
“Dinner is in an hour,” he says, his voice a jagged rasp against my ear as he shoves me toward a rack of evening gowns.
“My lieutenants are coming. The North End is watching. You’re going to walk down those stairs, you’re going to sit at the head of my table, and you’re going to look like the queen of the fucking underworld. ”
“I won’t,” I choke out, spinning around to face him. “I won’t be your trophy, Peter. I won’t sit there while you discuss who you’re going to kill next.”
Peter laughs—a short, sharp sound that has no humour in it. He steps into my space, his chest pressing against mine, his scent of gin and woodsmoke filling my lungs.
“You’ll do exactly what I tell you, Wendy. Because if you don’t…” He leans down, his lips brushing mine. “I’ll bring the North End scout up here. I’ll let you watch what Silas does to him while we have our second course. Is that what you want? More blood on your hands?”
I stare at him, the horror of it sinking in. He’s not joking. He’s never joking.
“Choose, Wendy,” he whispers, his hand sliding up to my throat, his thumb pressing into the soft dip above my collarbone. “The silk or the salt. Which one do you want to feel tonight?”
My breath hitches. I look at the row of dresses—gold, black, silver—each one a different version of the same cage.
“The silk,” I whisper, the words tasting like ash.
“Good girl.” He kisses me then—hard, fast, and full of a terrifying triumph. “I’ll send the maid in to help you cover the bruises. But leave the one on your neck. I want them to know exactly whose breath you’re stealing.”
He turns and walks out, the door locking behind him with a heavy, final thud.
I stand in the middle of the room, surrounded by a fortune in clothes, and I realise I’m not fighting the door anymore.
I’m fighting the urge to pick out the dress that will make him look at me like that again.
The closet isn’t a closet; it’s a mausoleum for the woman I used to be.
It’s a vast, vaulted chamber of backlit onyx and smoked glass, smelling of cedar and the suffocatingly expensive scent of brand-new leather.
Row after row of gowns hang like colourful corpses, their silk sleeves brushing against one another with a sound like a thousand hushed secrets.