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EIGHTY-ONE

AMETHYST

An incessant ringing wakes me up from the most relaxing sleep I’ve enjoyed since… ever. Last night, after fucking me senseless, Xero carried me to the shower and cradled me to his chest.

Being with him reminded me so much of how I imagined we’d be together while I read his heartfelt letters. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to feel protected. I know our truce is only temporary until he’s dealt with the evil production company. After that, he’ll return to being my worst tormentor, and I’ll start finding body parts beneath my pillow again.

For now, I’ll bask in the afterglow. It’s a distraction from the shock of nearly getting abducted by four crazy men and discovering that Xero survived his execution. Once I’ve gotten my head straight, I’ll work on making him change his mind about using me as bait.

The ringing continues, followed by frantic knocking.

“Who is that?” I croak.

Xero pulls me into his broad chest. “Ignore it.”

“What if it’s those men?”

“It isn’t.”

I elbow him in the ribs, making him grunt. “How the hell can you tell that from the vantage point of being spooned around my back? ”

“Because, little ghost, I have men watching the street and patrolling your backyard. Not to mention the cemetery. Any more assholes coming for you will be eliminated.”

“Amethyst Crowley,” screeches a familiar female voice. “I know you’re inside. How dare you change those locks?”

My heart skips a beat. “It’s my mom.”

Xero growls. “What does she want?”

I scoot to the edge of the mattress, trying to put some distance between him and me, but he pulls me back into his chest.

“Open the door, young lady,” she yells, her voice shrill.

“Release me, or she’ll make a scene,” I hiss.

“Let her.”

“Xero.” I wriggle in his grip, trying to break free, but he’s too big, too strong, too pigheaded to give me an inch of leeway. His deep chuckle reverberates against my back, like he thinks my family strife is one big joke.

“That’s it,” Mom screams. “I’m calling the police to perform a wellness check. And a locksmith. If this is another of your psychotic episodes, you’re going straight to an institution.”

Groaning, Xero releases his grip around my waist. “What does she want? This woman never fails to push you away.”

I flinch at the barb. It only stings because it’s true. It’s a painful thing to have to admit to being unloved by your own mom and dad. Everything I do is a disappointment, from surviving the car crash I can’t remember to being dragged out of college.

It doesn’t matter that they control nearly every aspect of my life. Nothing is ever enough.

“I’m not leaving,” Mom screeches.

I roll out of bed, slip on a robe, and race to the door. “Stay here,” I say, casting Xero a glare over my shoulder. “If she knows you’re alive, there’ll be a swat team here in minutes.”

His broad grin makes my breath catch. It’s as bright as his hair, which glows in the morning light like spun platinum. I shake off that thought. How can a twisted soul like his be encased in such an exterior so beautiful?

If life were fair, he’d have red skin and sprout horns.

“Amethyst,” I hear Mom hissing through the letterbox .

“Coming!” I charge through the upstairs landing and down the stairs.

When the letterbox snaps shut with a dull clink, I imagine her stepping back with a huff to settle her ruffled feathers.

My steps falter at the bottom of the stairs. The glass panels on my front door are gone. Although it’s painted the same shade of black as before, it looks heavier, sturdier, and without the usual wood grain.

I rub the back of my head and frown. Did Xero mention replacing my front door?

It’s too late to ask, so I continue forward, where there’s now a digital lock with a touchpad and fingerprint sensor.

“Hold on a second.” I press my index finger to the scanner, but nothing happens.

A deeper voice I don’t recognize murmurs something to Mom, but she replies in a tone so soft that I wonder if she’s brought Uncle Clive. All her compassion these days seems to go toward him.

It takes a few tries to realize the reader needs my thumbprint, and the mechanism unlocks with several noisy whirrs. I pull down the handle and open the door.

“Finally!” She strides past me into the living room, leaving behind a cloud of perfume.

I glance into the street to see who she was talking to, but it’s empty, save for a few figures sitting in their cars. They’re probably Xero’s people.

Closing the door, I turn toward where she’s disappeared and ask, “Mom?”

“Come here,” she says from the living room’s interior, her voice stiff.

My heart races, and I run through everything that happened since she turfed me out of her house. Then my heart sinks when I remember my altercation with Dr. Saint. If this is an intervention, then she should have brought Dad. And Myra.

I step into the living room, my pulse pounding so hard, every nerve ending throbs with anxiety. “What’s wrong?”

Mom perches on the edge of my armchair, balancing a diamond-encrusted Birkin bag on her knees .

“Of all the heinous things I’ve tolerated from you, this crosses the line,” she says, her voice trembling.

“What did I do now?” I ask.

“Pornography,” she hisses through clenched teeth.

My brows rise. I know she pays my phone bill, but I didn’t think she was keeping tabs on my digital footprint. “If it’s about that website I visited, it was just a link I clicked?—”

“Don’t play ignorant with me, Amethyst Crowley,” she says, every word etched with disgust. “I tolerated the killing because you said it was self-defense. I even tolerated the way you humiliated me all over social media. But this…”

She bows her head, her shoulders trembling with silent sobs.

Alarm punches me in the chest. This reminds me so much of my first semester at college, when Mom and Dad turned up at my dorm to drive me home. There was no talk, no explanation, just the crushing weight of their disappointment.

“What did I do?” I whisper.

“Public nudity?” she asks, her voice breaking. “Rough sex on a convicted murder’s grave? How could you?”

On instinct, my lips form a denial, but realization seeps through my skull before I can utter the words. Then my jaw falls loose from its hinges, and I gasp.

Nights ago, Xero tore off my clothes and fucked me on his grave. But I didn’t see a single soul while we were having sex.

“How?” I whisper. “Who?”

She raises her head, her eyes venomous and sharp. “An anonymous note came in through the mail, telling me the precious daughter I spent over a million dollars trying to protect had finally found a profession.”

My breath quickens, and I shake my head.

“I knew writing fiction would lead you to ruin, but I never thought it was a slippery slope to humiliating yourself on social media and doing porn.”

Bristling, I bite back, “Will you stop being so judgmental? There’s nothing wrong with adult content as long as it’s consensual.”

She flinches, her nostrils flaring. “What are you saying?”

“I didn’t make a movie. Besides, how do you know it was me? ”

“Don’t you think I’d recognize my own daughter, even if she was being… taken by a masked man dressed as the Grim Reaper?”

“Mom,” I snap my fingers. “Focus. What if someone impersonated me with artificial intelligence?”

“Nonsense.”

“Isn’t that what you said about the photo I showed you of me as a child? You’d be surprised at what they can do with AI.”

When she clamps her mouth shut, my eyes narrow. If she doesn’t believe in AI, then that photo of a younger version of me has to be real.

I advance on her, my fists curling. My memory of that night may be spotty, but I won’t let her come into my home hurling accusations and then clamming up when I need answers.

“Show me the video,” I say.

Her head snaps up. “Why?”

“I want to see if it’s even real.”

With a huff, she burrows into her purse and extracts her phone. After tapping a few icons, she fires up a video. There’s a montage from Xero’s official funeral, which I realize was the morning after the book fair. I couldn’t attend because he had locked me in the house.

Hundreds of mourners in black gather around the grave as the coffin is lowered into the earth. Shivers run down my spine at the thought of who could be inside.

My breath shallows during a time lapse, showing the graveyard going dark, and then a large figure stepping out from behind the Grim Reaper statue. His face is in shadows, obscured by the hood of a black leather coat, but there’s no mistaking the pale eyes glowing in the moonlight.

It’s Xero.

Or at least his ghost version.

Betrayal punches me in the gut, and I try not to double over. Out of the corner of my eye, Mom watches me with the diligence of a predator. This is the woman who never looks me in full in the face because something within my soul is too rotten for her to withstand.

My eyes burn as the movie cuts to a woman with my hair, my build, and the clothes I wore the night those men broke into my room. She’s running for her life, fleeing, pursued by the dark figure striding forward with unwavering confidence.

“I can’t watch this.”

“So, it’s you, then?” she asks.

I shake my head.“It can’t be.”

In the next scene, she’s being tackled to the ground. The phone slips from my fingers and lands on the wooden floorboard.

Mom sets down her bag, picks up the handset, and leaves it on the sofa beside her to play. “I thought it was a rape scene at first,” she says, her voice hoarse. “Because no woman in her right mind would consent to this filth.”

I breathe hard, my ears ringing, but not loud enough to muffle the soundtrack or her vengeful words.

“Dr. Saint said some women are just unlucky and fall into patterns of abuse. She said if it happens when they’re young enough, they sometimes gravitate to predators.”

A tight fist squeezes my heart, sending pain radiating through my chest. “What the hell are you saying?”

She shakes her head. “Your past is etched into your DNA. I thought you were fighting against it, but nothing can erase the taint.”

My pulse thuds harder, faster, more frantically, as I puzzle out her cryptic words. There’s so much to unpack. “Are you blaming me for Mr. Lawson? Or did something else happen earlier?”

“You crave degradation, pain, and humiliation.”

“What are you talking about?” I shriek.

“I should have listened to my instincts.”

“Mom!”

She shoots out of her seat, finally looking me in the eyes. “Consider yourself disowned. No more bail outs. No more cover-ups. No more financial support, no more pretending you’re a broken little innocent. As of today, I’m childless.”

My stomach plummets to the floorboards. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I give up. I’m done. The house goes on the market tomorrow.”

Panicked thoughts race through my mind as I try to make sense of her rant. There’s more to what she’s saying than the incident when I was thirteen, and it’s probably related to something I did before I was ten. Before I can even process her words, Mom is already heading toward the door.

“Don’t leave without giving me answers.” I grab her wrist, but she twists me into an armlock and presses me against the wall.

“I’m relieved this happened because I finally have proof I need to stop treating you like a victim,” she snarls. “This is the last time you see me, girl. Come to my house, and I won’t just call the police. I’ll have you committed.”

“Let go of me.” I struggle against her, but she shoves back.

“That’s enough,” Xero’s voice booms from the stairs.

Mom jumps back with a gasp. “You!”

I freeze. What will Xero do to her if she calls the police?