Present Day
Marcel had changed from his suit into something more casual. I smiled, feeling thankful for his willingness to make our sessions seemingly informal. The tie and jacket always made me feel like I was being psychoanalyzed.
I sat across from him in his new home office. I loved everything about this room. It was situated in the heart of the grand mansion, and it screamed Marcel. Sophistication and elegance. It was unmistakably him in every way.
The walls were painted in a warm sage gray, and it had a spa-like feel.
One wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the gardens.
His desk stood off to one side, its surface polished to a high shine and adorned with an array of papers and two frames.
One of Victoria and one of him and Declan.
We were comfortably seated opposite one another. A fire was blazing, and I nestled into the plush sofa, hugging one of the pillows in my arms while he sat in the leather armchair. I ran my fingers through the fringe at the sides. The texture tickled my palms and soothed me.
He rose and reached for the crystal decanter of brandy he always kept on hand and poured himself a glass. The comforting aroma of cinnamon and lavender surrounded me. I couldn’t help but smile. Never in a million years did I think I would actually enjoy counseling, but the reality was that I did.
My mind began its ceaseless dance of contemplation. The coping mechanism I’d developed was as skilled as my girl Kinsley was in ballet. My thoughts had thoughts and were like a whirlwind, swirling and churning. I’d become an expert at dissecting and analyzing every facet of my existence.
I knew how to shut down the most intrusive of them and send them scurrying.
It was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it protected me from the raw sting of emotions I often experienced.
I knew how to compartmentalize and put things into a rational perspective.
And on the other hand, the endless introspection was exhausting.
For better or worse, it was a part of me, and I’d come far. Thanks to him.
“What’s that look for?” he asked.
“Just thinking, what if I had opened up and shared the truth with you earlier? How much farther would I be in life?” I shifted.
“Ah, but therein lies the beauty of growth, my dear. It’s not about when it happens, or where you might be now if we had. We can’t change those things, and it’s wasted energy lamenting missed opportunities. Especially when I firmly believe you’re where you need to be today.”
“You think?” I asked.
Each session had become easier, and being vulnerable with him didn’t leave me shaking and with nightmares anymore.
“It’s about embracing the moment, the here and now. We channel any new-found wisdom, take out the rubbish bin of negative thoughts and create a future. You’re here, stronger and wiser for the journey you’ve traveled. Which leads me to last week’s homework and this week.”
At the beginning of each session, he checked in with me on the previous week’s homework and gave me a new one. It almost never involved dealing with anything traumatic. It was the way he started our time together.
“So I suppose you want to know if I enjoyed visiting God’s Own Junkyard? I probably would have enjoyed it more with one of the girls, but you said I had to go alone.”
“I didn’t say you had to. I said it might be nice to do something without them along.”
“Except now I’ll be visiting it again because Kinsley is dying to see the neon jungle. Something about the Soho sex club’s signage from the 60s has her intrigued. She’s determined to see them. But I did see some cool retro movie props.”
“I had a feeling you’d like those. Now, do you want to hear about this week’s homework before we get into your session?”
“Of course, lay it on me.”
He leaned back in his chair, signaling the official beginning of our session. His gaze was warm and encouraging. He tapped his pen against the notepad on his lap.
“I want you to think about some things you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t, for one reason or another. It could be anything—big, small, silly or serious. A bucket list.”
“A bucket list? Like the one you make right before you die?”
His rich laughter rang out and wrapped around me like a warm blanket. “Exactly, although I strictly forbid you from dying.”
“Thanks. I’ll pencil in ‘do not die’ at the top of the list.”
“People make them for loads of reasons. I think it would be key to helping you grow. But as you know, I have to throw in a disclaimer and a challenge. No involving the girls.”
“Why not?” I asked, growing serious. They were such a huge part of my life. To do it without them seemed sacrilegious, almost.
“Because the thing is, this list needs to be about you. No tag-teams with the girls. I know they mean well, but I also know how you are. One thing will lead to another and then it’s their bucket list and you’re just along for the ride.
Which we both know you would prefer. It needs to be about you, your journey, your discoveries. ”
I nodded as his words gave me pause. The idea of taking charge of my own life, without their input, felt daunting. Would I be able to make decisions, good ones, ones that would push me without them? Uncertainty stirred within me and, as always, he read my mind.
“Trust me, it will be so rewarding this way. Just no bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower. You might die.” He chuckled when I rolled my eyes. “I’ll even add that you can ask anyone else outside Kinsley and Victoria for ideas. The only caveat is that you must be able to justify them.”
I considered his words for a moment and then shrugged. My thought process was already trying to run with the idea and subsequently shut it down. I’d need some time to really think about them, and he sensed that.
“You can add as many items as you want. They can be small or big, but they must cause you to grow in some way. There is no time limit on this homework assignment, or the list, for that matter. Once you make it, you and only you will determine how fast or slow you want to take it.”
“That makes sense. I could get behind that. Thanks for not making me have it by next week.”
“Is that how you see our sessions? Me making you do things you don’t want to?”
His question hung in the air. It made me pause once more and reflect on my choice of words. The subtle shift in his tone prompted me to dig deeper.
“No, that’s not how I see it,” I replied. “Sometimes it’s hard. I used to follow commands. It’s how I stayed safe.”
His gaze softened, understanding washed over his handsome face. “Understandable, that you’d do that. It’s a natural reaction.”
“Yeah, I know. I guess it’s the guilt for me.”
“Let’s start there then. When did you first notice you were different?”
My head shot up. His question pierced through my racing thoughts like a shard of glass. I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. My gaze drifted to the floor as I gripped the pillow tighter.
Memories long buried resurfaced with startling clarity, flooding my mind with images I’d rather forget. But this was how I progressed and healed. It was all about confronting them and releasing the power they had.
“It was…subtle,” I said and then paused.
“I don’t have a visual comparison since I wasn’t around for the other girls’ welcomes, but I heard the Mask and Kinsley’s exchanges almost daily.
His voice was different with me. His eyes often lingered in my direction longer.
He would always position himself closest to me. ”
I shuddered as if he were standing next to me still.
“I didn’t understand at first. Then when we got our official tour and met his son, Sonny, things changed.
I was asked to do his portrait. That became a week-long endeavor.
He wanted to know all about me. That was the part I hated the most. I didn’t want him to know anything, but was afraid of not answering. ”
“And you didn’t want what happened to Kinsley to happen to you?”
I nodded my head as a tear slipped down my cheek. He handed me a tissue and waited for me to speak. He sipped his brandy.
“I just accepted it, never pushed back. Thanked them as they expected and hated myself for it when I was alone in my room. In my head, I said all kinds of hateful things, yelled at them, told them to go to hell. I imagined killing them,” I whispered.
“All normal responses to a horrific situation,” he offered. He was so steady and firm, a true anchor for me. “Hating them, wishing them death are natural responses to the harm done to you—”
“But aside from the first slap, they never did. Harm me, I mean.”
“Not physically. But in all other ways they did, the end goal was manipulation. Isolating you from one another, rewarding you for no other reason than Sonny took a liking to you. Grooming you. It was all mind games. Maybe they were hoping you’d turn against the other girls and lean into their…
and I use the term loosely, kindness, so they could further align you to them. ”
“I hate the way it makes me feel. The shame.”
“Bella, the level of psychological torment heaped on you during that time isn’t your responsibility to bear. Being the one called away and given special treatment wasn’t something you asked for.”
Our eyes met, and his reassuring gaze conveyed the sincerity of his words, the depth of his empathy.
“If you want to argue you didn’t do anything to discourage it, I’ll point you to the outcome of what happened every time one of you didn’t toe the line. At the end of the day, you were in a lose-lose situation.”
His words pried open the places I kept sealed tight. My jaw clenched. Lose-lose implied I hadn’t chosen. It implied that I hadn’t failed. And that didn’t sit well.
My fingers dug into the pillow, nails grazing the woven fabric until the fringe twisted around them. A part of me wanted to argue. To insist, I should have done things differently. Taken a hit. Spoken out, even just once. Made myself…less desirable.
You failed. You had power. You chose not to use it. You valued your safety more.
I swallowed hard, cutting off the spiral of thoughts.
“You’re no longer controlled by their actions and you’re not to blame for the harm they caused your sisters. The goal of our sessions is to lessen the hurt and to not let what happened define you anymore.”
My stomach tightened. No longer controlled…
the phrase was foreign, because I was only just now coming to the place where their actions didn’t control my everyday freedoms. My shoulders inched upward toward my ears.
My breathing grew shallow. Somewhere beneath the calm exterior, something was breaking.
Lessen the hurt so it didn’t define me.
I had built an entire internal architecture around surviving them. I’d done it with care, almost methodically. Brick by brick. If I let it go…what was left?
“You are Isabella Rose Caruso, daughter, sister, best friend, and an amazing artist. Your significance and worth have nothing to do with their views on you. And you are only starting to live again. Your future is yours for the taking. They may have stolen a small piece of your life, but they do not define your existence.”
Isabella Rose Caruso.
He was right. I was no longer Autumn. Or the favorite one.
I was certainly not Sonny’s perfect little doll.
Not anymore. My throat burned. I pressed my lips together, determined to hold the line.
I didn’t always cry during our sessions.
I prided myself on that. I could analyze, dissect, and articulate.
But the emotions were running too fast for me to shut them down. This wasn’t matching colors on the wheel to see what went best together. It was visceral, and heat gathered behind my eyes. My chest ached as if something inside was being pried open with a crowbar.
I worked to steady my breath. Tried to anchor to things that were tangible—the crackle of the fire, the scent of brandy, the weight of the pillow. It didn’t work. The first tear slipped free before I could stop it. It was followed by another. Then the dam gave way.
As his words resonated, I came undone. The wounds and emotions kept hidden burst forth. The shame didn’t crash over me this time. It seeped in, heavy and suffocating. Tears spilled unchecked as my carefully constructed composure splintered.
He rose and joined me on the couch. I felt the cushion dip beside me and instinctively stiffened. My spine went rigid, every muscle locking into place. Contact meant expectation. Contact meant performance. Contact meant—
His hand hovered for half a second before resting on my back. I almost pulled away. Pride flared. I didn’t need this. I could handle it. I always handled it. But the tremor in my hands betrayed me.
Strong arms wrapped around me, and I resisted for a breath—just one—before the fight drained out of me. This was Marcel, and he was my safe space. My forehead pressed against his shoulder as the weight and anger finally spilled from the darkest corners of my heart.
The facade of strength I normally had crumbled, leaving me raw and exposed.
“Let it all out,” he soothed. “I think we’ve covered enough for today. We can pick this back up later.”
Confronting the past with him wouldn’t erase all the shame or undo the trauma. I knew this, but his guidance and support—the very lifeline he was offering—was everything.
I nodded against his chest, unable to find the words to express myself.