Page 50

DELILAH

M y grandparents are watching me. I sit tall with my shoulders straight so they’ll allow me to leave their house. But arms are tightly wound around me, forcing me to stay in place instead of the sharp points of the bench puncturing my skin.

“I’m sorry,” a deep voice whispers against my neck.

My fingers slip against the piano keys, and I quickly pull my hands up then restart, hoping that my grandparents didn’t hear it. I just want to go home. I hate it here and I hate it when they take control of my lessons. It always leaves me unable to walk from sitting on the needles for so long.

But the voice comes again, soft lips brushing the shell of my ear as the phantom says, “I’m sorry, my pretty girl. I shouldn’t have hurt you.”

Kane.

No one else calls me that. They’ll say I’m beautiful or attractive. Words that are mature. Not “pretty,” because that’s a word that’s used for children. I have to be a lady.

He kisses my neck. I blink like the contact of his skin on mine is enough to pull me from the brink of paralyzing fear.

My blinking gets faster as he peppers kisses over my pulse point like he knows I need him.

The room in front of me comes through in little snapshots between the darkness behind my eyelids.

It’s not my grandparents’ house. This is somewhere different. I turn my head to the side, where there are large glass panels showing a steep drop down into deep waters.

An ache forms at the base of my skull and I don’t understand how I’ve gone from my grandparents’ house to now. But Kane hugs me. “Come back, koukla mou. I’m sorry.”

I tilt my head back to get away from his lips.

He’s fake. It always happens when I’m at my grandparents’ house.

I’ll imagine that Kane is with me until I can walk out of the room like I’m not bleeding and lock myself in the bathroom to cry.

Ladies don’t cry. They speak softly and smile, only enough for their lips to move, never with their cheeks or their eyes because that’s not ladylike.

Or worse, they’ll get wrinkles. Wrinkles, creases of any kind, are bad.

Especially laugh lines. They show that you don’t have decorum, that you can’t control yourself, so you have to keep your face blank unless there’s someone important in front of you.

But Kane doesn’t allow me to escape him. He softly kisses my collarbone, then works up my neck to my ear with even more gentleness. “Stay with me, Delilah. I can’t fix this if you don’t.”

His arms tighten around me further. Both of them crossed over my middle.

His biceps crush my ribs. It forces me to breathe, and he does it harder until I lift my fingers from the piano keys.

The pain helps me differentiate what’s real and what isn’t.

If I can feel it, then I know I can trust my sight.

This isn’t a memory, because it gets harder to breathe and a little girl stands on the other side of the piano.

Her eyes are huge, and she smiles. At me. She’s smiling at me, so I do it back.

The smile falls as a door bangs further away from the room we’re in.

She whips her head to the side and holds herself taut.

Her chin slowly rises so her neck is stiff and rigid like her spine.

I know that posture. The only thing preventing me from doing the same are Kane’s arms wound around me.

The teacher is going to come in and assess our performance.

If we miss a note or falter in any way, they’ll hold our shoulders and push us deeper into the pinned bench.

I must have been sitting on it too long because I can’t feel the sharp sting of each thin point pushing through my muscles.

The piano bench is special. That’s what my grandmother always called it.

The first time I sat on it, I never felt any pain or discomfort.

But the longer gravity pulls me down, the deeper they burrow into me.

The thin points don’t leave deep scars since she always carefully removes the pins so the curved end slips out of my skin with ease rather than tearing through it.

Another way to make sure I’m a lady. Scars aren’t ladylike.

I look down as Kane tenses. His thighs are directly under mine and blood stains the back of his gray sweats. It sticks the material to the tops of his calves and multiple little crimson pools collect under the bench.

The crazy fucking idiot is sitting on the needles.

He’s sitting on them, and I’m sitting on him.

His arms tighten around my waist when I try to stand, and he forces me to remain on his thighs, applying even more pressure against the bench.

He bites back his pain on a low grunt, then grits, “Don’t. Move.”

One pair of hesitant footsteps comes closer.

My heart leaps out of my chest at the sight of Anna walking into the parlor.

She’s paler, and it makes her copper hair look like flames.

Her face falls when she notices me, and she pales further, to the point that her skin is nearly blue.

Slowly blinking, she takes a breath and audibly gulps before turning to my grandparents and Helene. “Madam, you called for me.”

What kind of backwards cunt wants to be addressed as madam?

My question is answered when Helene steps forward, uncaring that her pant leg is covered in dried, dark blood.

The edges of the seams are stiff, crinkling as she walks towards Anna.

She then places her revolting hand on my nanny’s shoulder and smiles without any warmth.

“It is my understanding that you remember your time with my family. Is that still correct?”

Anna gives her a curt nod as her fingers tremble despite her attempt to hide them by tightly clasping them in front of her.

“Those memories will serve you well whilst you’re in my servitude.” Helene pats her shoulder. “Take Delilah away and make her presentable.”

Fabric tears as Kane abruptly stands. I’m going to have bruises from how hard he holds me to swallow the pain of the needles ripping through his skin. His voice comes out deeper, rougher, violent, due to it as he stands at his full height. “My wife stays with me.”

He unwinds his arms from around my middle to hold my hips.

The point of him touching me is hidden with the lid of the piano and I move forward to stop myself from leaning back against his tense chest. He erases the space, trapping me so my thighs are fully pressed against the piano before he wrecks me.

“I only have a few days before my training begins,” he says to his grandmother. “Do you want the agreement to be solidified or not?”

I look at Anna, who quickly looks away, choosing to stare at the shitty wooden floor like it holds any interest as the side of her jaw pulses.

I can’t understand why she won’t look at me.

She’s spent years putting up with my mother’s shit and she never, not once, took that out on me. She never pushed me away or ignored me.

A heavy hand wraps around my jaw, the fingers harsh and unyielding as I try to peel them off. But Kane drags me beside him like my nails aren’t digging into his skin as I fight to find any space to get him the fuck off me. They dig in even harder as he barks, “Move.”

My feet skid against the wood as he drags me through the room with his palm covering my mouth.

Pain lances through me because he’s a fucking liar.

He held me, kissed me, promised not to fucking hurt me, yet he’s worse than everyone else because I believed him.

I believed him when he was pretending to be someone else. He’s fooling me. Again.

Silly Delilah. Such a stupid girl, eager for anyone to love her.

I can’t recall the conversation, but it’s my mother’s voice in my head. And she was right.

How fucking stupid or starved of care am I that I keep accepting everyone’s shit?

But what is so wrong with me that I’m deprived of it in the first place? Is it something I can change or just my existence that makes everyone see me as an object?

I don’t fight him or attempt to move his hand again. I go numb, staring at the blood on his sweats. Was that another thing to manipulate me? He did it so that I would see and I’d what? Fall into his toxic fucking arms?

Kane pulls me closer as I stare at the wide, blank eyes of the dead man laying on the kitchen floor. I don’t even know his name. It seems wrong for a life to be taken when I can’t even refer to him by name.

I’m gently guided forward as we reach the doors leading to the spiral staircase.

Kane slips his hand off my face and I push myself forward to get the fuck away from him.

I might not know where I am or how to leave, but they got Anna here somehow.

I just need to find the plane and I’ll hide or swim until I drown if I have to.

The multiple layers of socks help mute my steps against the tile and diminish the harshness of the hard floor as I run with Kane hissing behind me, “Delilah, stop.”

The vines squeezing through the cracks in the windows get denser as I pass the staircase.

He thunders behind me as I run in zig-zag lines to avoid the thick, prickly vines crawling along the tile.

My hair whips my back and nape. Little pricks of pain erupt on the back of my thighs, stinging as my sweats rub against them, but I keep running.

Away. Away from them. Away from everyone. Away from myself.

“Delilah,” he snaps as his fingers brush my hair, but he doesn’t pull me back.

I run faster. My legs pump and my chest heaves as the atrium narrows.

We’re right on the edge. I push my body to move faster as the glass wall gets closer to my shoulder.

The other wall is stone so there must be something behind it—freedom, air, or death. I’ll take any of them.