Chapter 13 – Genevieve
GENEVIEVE
Idon’t know how long he stays in the bathroom, and I don’t care.
Once he’s done coming, I flop down onto the bed and position my back so it’s facing the other side of the bed.
I switch off the lamp, bathing myself in welcome darkness.
My heart is still slamming against my ribs, but I will myself to calm.
A few minutes later, the door opens, and he comes out, quiet and determined as he climbs into bed without a word.
He rolls onto his side away from me, and I release a silent breath.
It won’t be so bad. It’ll all be fine. Tomorrow we’ll get a car and go to the beach, and in a few days’ time, well, I don’t know what will be for my life, but I already know it won’t include him.
He’ll get his necklace and be gone the next moment. And that’s fine. It truly is.
I’m using him, he’s using me, and it’s as it should be.
Except when I wake up, I’m no longer facing the window.
I’m facing him. More than that, his arm is over my hip, and his hand is…
on my ass. Not to mention our faces are inches apart.
My breath catches, and I don’t move. I hardly breathe.
He’s sleeping so peacefully, his eyelashes fluttering as if he’s dreaming, his full lips parted.
Another first. I’m being held by a criminal.
I nearly laugh. As it is, I don’t want him to wake up and find us like this. Last night was last night, and that’s where it’ll stay.
Ever so slowly, I slink out of his grasp, doing everything I can not to wake him. I tiptoe into the bathroom, pee, brush my teeth, and get dressed. It’s still raining, the sky gloomy and gray, but somehow Rhys is sleeping through it.
I decide to let him do that. I’ll get us breakfast or something.
Coffee. I know he likes coffee. It might be the one thing we have in common.
Ruefully, I shake my head. I’m jumpy. Walking into town was a big deal, but getting in a car and driving somewhere feels like I’m taking this to the next level.
The farther I get from home, the more this grows.
I go to leave when I snag on his phone plugged in and sitting on the nightstand beside him. Instantly, I think about the curse. About the princess and what the clerk in the store said to me about her. About me.
I gnaw on my lip, debating this. Fuck it. He’s a thief, I can be too.
I unplug his phone, use his face to unlock it, and sneak out. I tap the screen, not wanting it to go dark as I wind my way down the stairs and onto the street. It’s raining at a good clip, and I tuck myself into an alcove a few buildings down. Then I continue my search for the curse of Messalina.
Instantly the page fills with numerous… whatever you call these things.
There’s one after the other. I click on something that mentions curse lore, and immediately, King Sebastian’s altercation with Samil Batorini, the former prime minister, comes up.
I scroll down, past Queen Nora’s death, briskly reading as I go, onto the illness of Princess Brea, who has disappeared from public life, and finally to the death of the former king and the abduction of Princess Desta.
This isn’t giving me much, just facts about that night and what they know.
There was a male suspect who was never found, nor was the princess, which I already knew from last night.
I do a new search on Princess Desta and click on the first one that populates.
The page comes up, and I read about her.
The night of her kidnapping, she was two months shy of turning two, a small little girl with blonde hair and gray eyes.
Blonde hair and gray eyes.
There’s a picture of her with her family.
A tiny thing standing beside her older brothers, father, and mother.
Something claws at my skin. Something ugly that hits like a heat wave.
I’m being ridiculous. Many people have blonde hair and gray eyes.
That doesn’t mean anything. Yet a war is brewing within me.
“This festival is for you. Your birthday. A day of celebration for both of us.”
The woman held tightly onto my hand until I had to go to the bathroom. I asked her if I could go in alone, and with reluctance, she said yes. She was waiting for someone. A man who had another little girl who was going to be with us, and she was distracted.
It was a large bathroom with a lot of people, and she told me she’d wait for me at the entrance.
I remember I was washing my hands when my mother came rushing over to me.
She said, “Thank god I found you. I’ve been searching for years for you.
That woman you’re with took you from me when you were a baby. I’m your real mother. She’s dangerous.”
I was little and scared and didn’t know what was going on. My mother took me by the hand and led me out through a different exit than the one I came in through. That was it. I never saw the other woman again and have been locked away since.
I turn off his phone and shove it into the back pocket of my shorts.
I don’t know what any of this means or even if it means anything at all.
I take a deep inhale as I step onto the sidewalk, my lungs filling with air. It’s early still, not even seven, and the streets are empty. I tilt my face toward the sky, the rain cold and wonderful.
That is, until I feel the press of something metal against my forehead.
That’s immediately followed by a hand on my forearm, gripping me.
I can’t believe Rhys is putting the gun to my head.
Yes, I took his phone, but it’s not as though I actually stole it.
I was going back for him. I should have known he’d do this.
He warned me, and I was stupid for not believing him.
For trusting him despite that. Ire burns through me, and I slowly open my eyes, ready to scream at him, only to see it’s not Rhys.
It’s some guy with an eye patch and a thick, white scar that traverses from the top of his bald head past the patch and onto his nose. I have no clue what could cause a scar like that, but that’s not what I need to be focusing on.
Fear as I’ve never known has my heart pounding to the point of pain. I can hardly catch my breath. Oh god.
“Give me your money.”
Except I don’t have any money because I left my money in my bag back in our room. I brought twenty euros to get breakfast. That’s it. I was too distracted by the bed and the man in it, and I left the gun and the knife behind.
“I only have twenty euros.”
His gaze is all over my face, and his grip on my arm turns bruising. A slimy smile crawls up his lips, revealing decaying teeth. “Pretty one, aren’t you?” He jerks me forward. “No money? You can pay me in other ways.”
“No!” I try to shove him, but he presses the gun deeper into my forehead, eliciting a whimper from me.
“If you scream, I’ll shoot. So shut the fuck up.”
Jesus, this is bad. I have the phone. That’s it. Not much good it’ll do when he has a gun, but I have to try something. I’m likely dead either way, but I won’t let him take me. I’ll hit him over the head with it or something.
My free hand slides along my hip toward my back, but he sees it.
“Oh, no, bitch.” A murderous look takes over. The gun is gone from my forehead, a split second before it whizzes down faster than lightning, cracking me on the side of the face.
I woof out a gasp that’s immediately followed by a cry as searing white-hot pain shoots across my temple. My vision goes double, then sideways, and I collapse to the ground on all fours, blood dripping onto the sidewalk beneath me.
A hand at my lower back jars me out of my stupor, and I scream, righting my body, and twisting to push him off while I grab for the phone before he can get it.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch.” His fist swings and lands on my cheek just below where he hit me with the gun. The side of my body hits the ground with a thud before I’m hauled up by the back of my shirt and my braid.
I’m fighting, twisting and thrashing, my hands wildly lashing out to scratch him.
It’s useless. He drags me, and my feet kick out from under me.
I partially fall again, except for the grip he has on me that’s keeping my ass off the ground and making it so my feet can’t get purchase beneath me.
Pain rips at my skull, and my shirt pulls tight around my neck, choking me.
I reach up for his hands, clawing and scratching. He jerks harder on my shirt, cutting off my oxygen. I rip at the shirt, desperate for air.
Why hasn’t anyone heard this? Why is no one on the street?
“No! Stop!” I scream as best I can, hoping someone will come out and stop him or at least make him drop me and run. He’s pulling me toward the alley between two buildings, and if he gets me there, that’ll be it.
I feel the gun pressing into my head. “If you make another sound, I’ll fucking kill you.”
Click. Everything stops at the sound of a gun cocking, but I’m still held in place, half up, half down by my hair and shirt.
“Not if I kill you first. Let her go.”
Rhys. Holy shit, he’s here.
“Listen—”
Crack. The man bellows in pain, and I’m dropped to the ground hard on my ass.
The guy is on the ground beside me, bleeding from his head in the same spot I am.
Before I can comprehend what’s happening, Rhys has him by the throat and pulls his head and back from the ground.
He hovers over him and spits in his face.
“You messed with the wrong girl.” Rhys squeezes the man’s throat as he pulls his other fist back and hammers it down, knocking him in the jaw with such force I almost grimace.
The man’s head flops back, and I think a tooth goes shooting from his mouth.
Rhys shakes him, forcing his head back up from its lolling position before he hits him again.
His eye rolls back in his head, and Rhys drops him, his head smacking the pavement with a thud that makes me wince.
Rhys winds up and nails him in the flank with his foot, the crunch of bone audible.
I crawl to a nearby lamppost and use it to pry myself up.
My face is throbbing and bleeding and swollen. My vision isn’t great either.
Rhys pulls the knife from his back pocket and picks up the man’s gun from the ground, pocketing it, but holding the knife in his hand as if he’s deciding what to do with it: put it away or slice the guy’s throat.
His chest is heaving, his face twisted in rage, and his fist is covered in blood.
He spots me leaning against the post, and that decides it for him.
He closes the knife and slips it into the front pocket of his pants.
In a flash, he’s on me, his hands on my cheek, his frantic eyes, still venomous and bloodthirsty, all over me.
“Genevieve, look at me, darlin’. Are you okay?”
Am I? I hardly know what I am. Isn’t that my common thread? Only now I mean that in a very different way. I’m shaking uncontrollably, all my adrenaline abandoning me in my moment of need. I want to be fierce. I want to stay strong.
I snarl and push him off me. “I’m fine.”
“Hey.” He grabs my cheek again, holding me tighter. “You’re not.”
I emit a shrill cry and shove past him, going over to the man on the ground, rage burning through me like an inferno. I kick the man on the ground in the spine, in the ass, in the legs. Over and over, I kick him, screaming and wailing on him with my fists when my legs prove to be ineffective.
“Fuck you!” I bellow, hitting his face. “You weren’t supposed to prove her right! This was my shot. I needed this! Don’t you know I fucking needed this?”
Tears scald my face, worsening my vision.
I’m swept off my feet and tucked into a strong, wet chest. “Hush now. We need to get off the street. The cops will come any minute, and neither of us wants that.”
He’s right. I don’t want that.
We make it halfway up the block, my body tight against him, my arms clinging. He smells like rain and fury and something that’s distinctly Rhys. I don’t like this. I mean, I do, it’s wonderful, despite everything, and comforting beyond expressible words, but it’s not safe for me on several levels.
“Put me down,” I whisper, my voice hoarse, and I clear it when he doesn’t listen. “Put me down, Rhys.” This time it’s a demand.
“I can’t,” he grits out.
“Do it.”
“No, princess, I really fucking can’t.”
“Put me down. I don’t want to be carried.”
He adjusts me, shifting me up higher on his chest. “If I put you down, I’ll go back and kill him, and it won’t be fast. I’ll take him somewhere and torture him, but you’re bleeding and were hit in the head. I need to hold you, or I’ll kill him, and I can’t leave you like this.”
My eyes squeeze tight, and I press my lips together as I cling to him, allowing him to carry me out of the rain and back to our inn. The air conditioner hits me, and I shiver, my teeth chattering, and let me tell you, that’s seriously not fun for my cheek.
I hear the owner ask what’s wrong, and Rhys tells him I tripped and fell face-first into a lamppost. He asks if there’s a pharmacy close by for some first-aid items.
“I have a kit.”
“Grand. I’ll be back for that in a minute.”
“No. I’ll bring it up.”
“Thanks.”
He walks us up the stairs, holding my weight as if it were nothing. We reach our door, and he moves me again to fiddle with his pocket for the key, but he also has freaking guns in there, and I wiggle around, forcing him to set me down.
He’s fuming, his jaw locked tight and his eyes wild.
His wet hair is pressed to his forehead, his shirt to his chest, and despite everything, despite the way my head hurts and how I was just attacked, I feel my skin growing tight, and I look away.
“You took my phone and left.”
I frown. “I was coming back. I wanted to look something up.”
“First time in twenty-five years I sleep past dawn, and you sneak out on me. No one gets the slip on me, and yet you did.”
I don’t know what that means, and I’m too wrecked to question it. He manages the door, and I’m off my feet again before I can take a step. He brings me into the bathroom and sets me down on the closed toilet seat.
“Don’t move.” His voice is barely above a whisper. Then he’s gone, the door shutting, but I hear him talking to the owner, thanking him for the kit and ice.
Tears continue to fall like rivers down my face. They haven’t slowed. Not even a little. I’m shaking so badly I can hardly sit. I can’t believe that happened. I nearly died. I would have if my own criminal hadn’t saved me.
She was right. It’s too dangerous here. Someone will always try to take me.
A sob rattles through me, and I stare at the blood dripping onto my lap from my chin drop by drop. The thought of going back… oh god, I won’t make it. I can’t live that life, and I can’t live this one.
What am I going to do?