Page 45

MARISELA

YESTERDAY

T he sun had just crested over the hill, the sky a rosy pink that reflected onto the little plot of white crosses then flicked back up towards the window, when four men in matching blue scrubs had burst through the hospital room door.

I’d barely turned around before one of them was pinching my jaw open while the other shoved a handful of drugs down my throat, strapping me to a gurney and shooting something else into my veins when I’d spit most of the pills back up the way they came.

Couldn’t do much about that one. Though if you were to put a razorblade within arm’s reach, I might have found a way to cut the liquid out of me.

Then again, whatever it was made it so I didn’t care.

So that the colors were both brighter and duller in some fashion.

My skin heating up while also cool to the touch.

And I smiled, without making any expression at all.

My lips just pulled taut, like someone else was tugging on an invisible puppet string that kept my legs perfectly crossed and my hands resting neatly on my lap.

In a matter of a few hours, I’d been discharged, washed down and dressed up, and then deposited on another doorstep.

A whirlwind of activity that had me feeling like I was standing still while everything and everyone else darted around me.

Except I wasn’t standing at all. I was sitting.

In some sort of parlor that smelled like the inside of the boys’ lavatory.

Musty with more testosterone than oxygen, and a stale odor that hinted at the fact that several types of bodily fluids had been left to dry where they’d landed.

The gray hospital room had faded away. Replaced by darker, richer hues and coordinating wallpaper. The cold floors morphing into warm hardwoods and plush area rugs. The blue scrubs traded in for starched dresses and pleated pants. The faint screams growing more melodic…

I blinked at the sound of an old grandfather clock chiming from somewhere down the hall, announcing the fact that it was nearly time for dinner and I’d yet to move from the spot where the woman in the black-and-white maid uniform had left me, while the ornate fireplace crackled in the background.

The orange glow bouncing off the crystal accents and vaulted ceilings, dusty bookshelves and decorative vases, occasionally lighting up the taxidermized animal carcasses and ancestral portraits that each bared little resemblance to whatever creature they were trying to emulate.

Just wall upon wall of deadened eyes and similarly forced smiles. Some stitched in place and others bogged down by lead paint and an artist’s quick brushstroke.

I couldn’t help but feel as though they were all staring down at me while at the same time wondering if they were inviting me to stay or warning me I might be the next stuffed head to join them…

Until a thunderous bang had me sinking deeper into the sofa cushion that was more stiff than forgiving as I bit back a yelp.

A storm was brewing outside, thrashing against the rooftop so that all I could hear past my own morbid thoughts were the low grunts and mumbled words of the two men in front of me.

Talking in hushed whispers meant for their ears only and certainly not for mine.

I watched them anyway. Studying how the flames cast an eerie shadow over my father’s unfurled arm, obscuring his face entirely, while making the appendage somehow appear more cephalopod than human in the dreariness of the smoked-filled air that seemed to curl around them like a python ready to strike.

A few curt nods and then he was clasping a tentacled hand around an equally slimy palm. Squeezing until his knuckles were as white as the generational wealth seeping out of every crevice of this room.

It was a gentleman’s agreement, made over cigars and whiskey-laden tumblers, while neither of the shadowy figures was forthright when it came to what the other was really getting out of this deal.

Because it sure as hell wasn’t whatever it appeared to be.

A daughter for some political backing didn’t make much sense.

Not when there was no such thing as a one-for-one trade between men like Mr. Prescott and my father, which meant someone thought they were coming out on top. I just had yet to figure out who that someone was. Or what it was they thought they were getting.

I had plenty of time for that, though. Seeing as Papa didn’t so much as glance at me over a shoulder as he slid into the back seat of his town car and pulled off down the driveway a few minutes later, disappearing past the gates of Prescott Estates.

My new home. Where I’d be groomed to take on my role as lady of the house.

A title that was just one step up from being my soon-to-be husband’s fuck doll—though it was probably just as mind-numbingly dull.

And then I watched from a slightly more gilded window than the one I used to stare out at Briarwood as the clouds blanketed the night sky, the occasional bolt of lightning shattering the silence of the tomb-like room in the mausoleum-like house I was told would be mine in a world where I was made to remember I didn’t own anything.

Certainly not this estate or the last name that would replace my father’s in a few months’ time.

Being the wife of Tate Prescott meant more than slipping out from under one thumb, only to be oppressed by another. It meant giving up the girl I was to wear the mask of the woman they wanted me to be…