Chapter 12
Lyse
Felix had failed, and I should be dead.
So, what the hell happened?
That was something I tried to figure out for the rest of the day. Omar had stood on that dock, watching me drown, only to save me. It didn’t make any sense.
What bothered me more was his sweetness afterward. It contradicted everything I thought I knew about La Bestia. He wasn’t allowed to be sweet to me. It went against every rule in the book…and it was making me hopelessly confused.
Maybe that’s what he wants, I thought. Maybe it’s just another tactic to torture me with.
I pushed myself up on my elbows in bed: my prison remained the same.
It was the same beige walls that I had endured for the last week, but it felt different now.
Safer, somehow? The world outside of these walls was full of uncertainty.
Here, at least, there weren’t any surprises… outside of Omar’s shifting personality.
Helena should be coming upstairs with my breakfast tray soon. Since the older woman had an issue with me being in pajamas past a “respectable time in the morning,” I went to the drawer and retrieved more oversized clothing, pulling on shorts and a tee shirt.
So far, Helena had been precise in what time she brought me meals. Breakfast came around 8 a.m., lunch around noon, dinner at 5:30 p.m. I could have set a watch by her predictability. But the digital clock on the bedside table soon read 8:30. Then, 9:00. Then, 9:15.
Fear chewed at my stomach. Is this his new plan?
To starve me to death? It seemed like something that Omar would do…
but the shockingly soft look on his face while he’d washed my hair kept popping into my mind.
That man couldn’t be the same one who threw me off the dock yesterday, but he was, and there was no telling what he had planned next for me.
Sudden, white-hot anger filled me, and I threw myself off the bed, intending to pound on the door until someone answered or it broke. Whichever came first.
But when I reached the door, I could see that it was cracked open. It wasn’t locked. There hadn’t been a slip-up in the last week — that door was always locked unless Helena or Omar was coming in or going out — so what was happening now? Was this some sort of trick?
Blood pounded in my ears as I pulled the door open and peeked out, fearing that Omar would somehow be waiting for me in the hallway. But there was no one.
Emboldened, I stepped out into the corridor. Everything was bright and white, just like it had been the night we arrived, and it looked so damn…cheerful. Full of sunshine. It felt like the world’s biggest lie, given what I knew about the Castillos and Omar in particular.
Not that my own family was any better. We put on the same mocking pageant of normality as well, despite the small empire that my father was trying to build.
The house was unnaturally quiet as I padded down the hallway.
The carpet was plush and soft under my bare feet, which I hadn’t noticed the last time I was out of my room, but then again, I’d been mindless with terror.
Now, I barely made a sound as I headed to the stairs.
Good, I thought. Maybe I could walk right out the front door of this hellhole.
But where would I go? The thought of being anywhere near the water made my stomach churn.
I slipped down the stairs, the oak floor cool under my feet, my eyes darting to every corner as I made my descent.
The stairs led into the foyer; the front door was right there…
but I didn’t touch it. It was futile to even try.
Instead, I made my way down the little hallway that surely led to a living room or the kitchen.
Or both, as it turned out. The room was cavernous: half dedicated to a lounging space, and the other dominated by a chef’s dream kitchen. Helena was standing at the stove, prodding at what looked to be sweetbreads that she was shallow-frying in a pan.
The smell of cooking onions made my stomach burble. I wasn’t sure if Helena heard me or sensed me, but she turned to me with a wide smile. “Mi amor! It’s so good to see you in my kitchen! You must be starving.”
I was. I hadn’t had much of an appetite yesterday for obvious reasons, but it was hard to match her radiant energy.
“Thank you for making breakfast,” I mumbled as she shooed me onto a stool at the large, gleaming island.
She turned and plated up some of the finished sweetbreads, and added some scrambled eggs that I hadn’t noticed to the plate as well.
“Eat,” she said as she dropped the plate in front of me. “You’re too skinny as it is.”
I hummed, smiling down at the healthy portion of food.
“My mother would not agree with you there,” I said, and I felt a pang when I pictured my mother’s frowning countenance.
She and I might not have had the greatest relationship, but I was sure that my being gone was worrying her sick.
Poor Madre, I thought. That thought disappeared with the first bite of my breakfast. I let out a little groan of delight.
It was easily the best thing I’d eaten so far this week.
The smoothness of the eggs soothed the leftover sting in my throat from choking on saltwater. “Gracias, Helena.”
The older woman waved me off, but her grin was wide and proud. “It’s nothing,” she assured me. “I just thought this morning warranted a special kind of meal.”
Her words felt like a kick to the chest, and all the good feelings drained out of me.
My eyes darted around, looking for Omar and his threatening glower.
“Where is…he?” Even saying his name felt like it might summon him, and while I knew that seeing him was unavoidable, I wasn’t ready yet.
Which man would it be today? My captor or my savior?
Which would I rather see?
“Omar is busy this morning,” Helena said with a shrug that could mean a million different things.
Busy could mean doing paperwork in an office…
or smashing the skull of an enemy. That was an enforcer’s job, after all.
It was the role that Apá expected Matteo to fill, even if my tenderhearted little brother would never be anywhere near as ruthless. He didn’t have it in him.
Omar Castillo, however, did. In spades. He seemed to relish the destruction that he caused. “Why did he let me out?”
Helena shrugged again. “You’ll have to ask el jefe that yourself. He doesn’t tell me much.”
I laughed, and it wasn’t a happy sound. “Now, why don’t I believe that?”
She waggled her eyebrows at me. “I would be a poor housekeeper indeed if I didn’t lend an ear to my very stressed-out employer at times,” she said, “and I’d be an even poorer one if I let any opportunity to eavesdrop pass me by.”
Helena said the last in a dramatic whisper, and I laughed again, more genuinely this time. But just as suddenly as the burst of laughter came, it died, and my stomach twisted. “He nearly killed me yesterday, and now I’m sitting in his kitchen. Why?”
“I wish I understood the way his mind worked, but Omar has always had his own way of processing things.” She raised her hand when I opened my mouth. “Not that I’m excusing what he’s done to you. It’s despicable how he’s behaving.”
“Do you know what happened in Miami?”
She gave the same, delicate lift of her shoulders. “I’ve gleaned enough information from what I’ve heard. He killed a lot of your family, didn’t he, mi amor?”
I forced myself to eat another bite of the sweetbreads, despite my swirling stomach. “My father sent men after Angel. He’s in a coma.” Her gasp told me that she hadn’t quite known that part. Mierda. “That’s why Omar went after my family.”
Helena was quiet for a long moment. “It doesn’t make it right,” she said finally, not looking at me.
I reached out and touched the woman’s arm, bringing her warm eyes to mine. “It’s okay to be glad,” I told her. “You’re loyal to the Castillos. You obviously care for Omar; I’m sure you feel the same way about Angel.”
Helena’s carefully constructed neutrality cracked, and her eyes filled with tears. “Those monsters ran me ragged in the summertime,” she said, voice breaking ever so slightly. “But I do adore them. If Angel—” She whimpered, unable to say the words, and I squeezed her arm gently, comfortingly.
“He’s going to be okay,” I said, even though I had no idea if that was actually true. “He’s Angel Castillo. He’s strong…even my Apá is frightened of him.”
Helena stepped back and wiped at her eyes. “Eat,” she said thickly. “No more talk about what we can’t change, yeah?”
Dutifully, I took a bite of eggs. “Tell me about my newfound freedom,” I said, changing the subject just like she wanted. “Am I to return to my room after this?”
The older woman shook her head. “You have run of the island, according to Omar.”
“Run of the—?” She couldn’t mean that. La Bestia would never be so kind. “All of it? Why would he allow that?”
“Where are you going to go?” Helena threw the question that I’d asked myself earlier back at me. “Unless you build some kind of signal fire to get a passing boater’s attention, we’re pretty isolated here. It doesn’t make any sense to keep you trapped in that room until you lose your mind.”
It was a trick. It had to be. “Are you sure?”
“The only places that you can’t go are his office and his bedroom…though I can’t imagine that you’d want to be in either of those rooms.”
Absolutely not. I wanted nothing to do with the Castillos’ business, nor did I want to be anywhere near Omar’s bed.
Except…it was nearly impossible not to think of the way he had touched me. Even if it had all been a cruel joke, a punishment for being so brazen in the first place, he had evoked feelings in me that I hadn’t known were possible.
I shouldn’t be thinking about it now, not after what he did, but still, the word “bed” had brought it to the forefront of my mind. “So, if I wanted to spend the day outside, I could do that?”
Helena reached out and patted my cheek. “I think that’s absolutely what you should do, mi amor. You have been cooped up in this house for too long.”
After finishing my breakfast, and helping Helena with the dishes despite her protests, I walked out the front door and into the sunshine. I hadn’t actually seen much of the island the day before; I was too terrified as Omar carted me outside.
The sun was high in the sky, and it was hot, but as I stood on the porch, blinking while my eyes adjusted, my chest relaxed for the first time in a week.
The beach sloped to the edge of the blue water, and terrifying dock aside, it was beautiful. The water stretched out to the horizon, brushing the sky.
I want to paint.
It had been so long since I'd touched a canvas. My hands suddenly ached for it.
Spying a piece of driftwood, I walked down to the beach and smoothed the sand.
Picking up the driftwood, I began to draw.
It was messy and not good at all — drawing shapes in the sand with a stick wasn't exactly the best of materials — but the more I added to the drawing, the less tension there was between my shoulder blades.
Painting and sketching had always been a source of peace.
For the first time in far too long, I got to feel it again, and it was glorious.
That was until a loud rumbling sound erupted from somewhere on the island, sending birds scattering into the sky.