Page 43 of The Crimson Lily

I t’s in Maksim’s arms that I wake up this morning.

I could be dreaming, but I can hear his slow breathing.

Did he finally sleep next to me? I’m not sure, but here he is, stroking the nude skin of my back.

I don’t move for about five minutes, savoring the way his fingers caress me, wanting nothing more than for this moment to last forever.

“How bad is it?” I ask with a little voice when he ventures around the flaring places his belt touched last night.

He runs his finger along them. “It doesn’t look too bad,” he informs, nibbling on my ear as he ends his sentence in a whisper. “I could have done much worse.”

I turn around to give him a tender kiss.

As I move, I can feel my skin burn. I have to go to the nearest mirror and take a look.

I stagger to the bathroom, having difficulty walking from last night’s events.

The pain is not the issue; it’s more like my muscles want to fail me.

As if they want me to stay put so my body can recuperate.

All right, it doesn’t look bad at all. Four of the marks are more like scratches from a teddy bear rather than a mad beast. Two of them are flashing red but are rather superficial.

They itch a little, but it’s nothing to worry about.

The one Maksim struck last, right underneath my right shoulder blade, is the worst. It’ll definitely leave a bruise, like the mark on my leg that lingered for days after the last time I received the infamous belt.

Maksim appears behind me with the ointment. He squeezes the tube a little to get some out on two fingers and begins to rub my skin. I’m enjoying how Maksim is taking care of me right now, with the same tenderness he showed last night. This is my reward—him, with his soft hands, mending me.

Oh, darn it! I’m so lost in this moment of rapture that I’ve completely forgotten about my appointment with Doctor Rossi.

“What time is it?” I urge.

Maksim still coats my skin. “It’s almost nine,” he replies, his voice dark as he touches the reddest mark, like he’s enjoying exploring it. He massages it for a bit longer to help it heal.

I clench my jaw a little, pressing my buttocks against him. I can feel how hard he is. Seeing the aftermath of his deed must arouse him.

“I missed you,” I murmur, folding my head to the side to invite him down my neck.

He kisses it, nibbles on it, sinks his teeth in the flesh above my shoulder. I let a moan escape, but I need to keep my anchor. I can’t let him sway me now; I need to get to Doctor Rossi as soon as possible.

Maksim eventually lets me go. I tell him about Chiara’s therapist, who can potentially help me with the last of my missing memories.

I ask him to join me, and he immediately goes to fetch his jacket and mine.

I carefully slip into my black turtleneck, the one that makes my breasts pop, and notice the craving look he gives me as he hands me my coat.

He wants me. Tough luck, Maksim! I need to be somewhere.

I smirk, twitching my nose at him to tease him.

I think, under other circumstances, he would seek vengeance by tearing off my clothes and fucking me until I lose consciousness, but he chuckles instead and heads for the door.

Doctor Rossi has a big belly, a thick black beard, and green eyes that can see through one’s soul.

His entire office is made of wood. There are books on endless bookshelves, a little statue of a pagan goddess, and some trinkets scattered around his desk.

He also has a portrait photo of a woman who looks like a daughter.

Alberto Rossi fiddles a lot with his glasses as he addresses me and Maksim, who sits in the rounded seat by the window, while I’ve been placed on the big leather sofa.

“We can start from one memory,” Doctor Rossi says.

I look at him with rounded eyes, expecting him to say more.

“I am going to borrow a technique from trauma therapy,” he announces when he notices. “It’s a derivation of EMDR, using sound instead of a visual stimulus.”

Sure, whatever. I’ll go with that. I’ll go with anything Doctor Rossi will give me. I’m skeptical but still a little curious.

“What’s EMDR?” I wonder.

“Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, but in this case, we will be using bilateral sound.”

This all sounds so scientific. I just want him to start with the procedure and be done with it. I don’t particularly expect any results to come out of this. To be fair, being here in the office of yet another therapist mildly irritates me.

Doctor Rossi places a big headset with thick and foamy pads on my head, and instructs me to relax against the backrest. I do so, peering at Maksim to read what he must be thinking of the whole situation.

He just sits there, calm, watching me like a guard dog, his piercing blue eyes fixated on me.

He didn’t do his hair this morning, but he’s the most beautiful man I know in his gray shirt and black jeans.

“Before we start,” Doctor Rossi requests my attention, “I will ask you to focus on a memory connected to what you want to remember. We’ll move on from there.”

Easy. It’ll be the vision of me walking behind William de Loit in the Musei Vaticani.

“Please tell me what you see,” Doctor Rossi requests.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and lay my hands flat on my lap. “I’m in the Vatican Museums with my boss, Professor de Loit,” I describe. “I’m walking behind him.” I can see William and his frizzy red hair in my memory.

“What do you feel as you walk behind your boss?” he inquires, his voice lower than what it’s been so far.

“Oh!” I exclaim and puff some clueless air out. “Hmm, maybe…?eagerness? Like…?I want to follow him.”

The ticks start—a clock’s pendulum swinging from my right ear to my left.

“Focus on that feeling, then go back,” Alberto directs. “Why are you in this place?”

I let the clicks rock me back to a few moments before that memory. There is darkness, an absolute void I can’t fill, yet there is the presence of a hunch, a buried sentiment inside my past.

“I’m…” I hesitate. “I’m not sure. It feels familiar.”

“Go forward. Where are you going next?”

My voice takes over. An idea finds its way out of my hushed neurons and pushes through my consciousness. “Back home.”

It’s as if the ticks have amplified, and I’m no longer in Doctor Rossi’s office.

“We’re going back home,” I declare, certain now.

“To America?” Alberto verifies.

“Yes,” I say, sure of it, but then my mind becomes cloudy with doubt. “No. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

I hear Doctor Rossi exhale. “Look at the man in front of you, your boss. How does seeing him make you feel?”

I can’t answer. As I walk to William in my thoughts, the decor changes, and I am back in a dark street in New York. William faces me with another man, a man I saw in Paris, a man who holds a gun to my head. My heartbeat rockets, and I grip my own thighs. I am afraid.

“I’m scared!” I shout more than say.

“Her subconscious is fighting against her efforts to remember,” Doctor Rossi explains, but not to me.

William orders the man to walk away and approaches me, a vile grin on his face, his hands ready to go for my neck.

“Doctor Rossi?” I summon.

“What do you see?” he asks.

“I see William! He’s about to kill me!” I yell in absolute panic.

I hear Maksim’s seat shoot back. He doesn’t say a thing, but I bet he’s making it clear that Doctor Rossi needs to stop whatever’s going on in my head.

“Go back to the Musei,” Alberto instructs with a faint stutter.

My thoughts merge and swirl in this blob of images that don’t make any sense.

I can’t go back to that memory of William and me in the Museums, but there’s a place that suddenly pops up, somewhere else I can go.

An exit in the tunnels of my mind that leads me to a house somewhere in… ?the Netherlands.

Wassenaar.

“What the hell…” I murmur, then calm down. Only shallow pants remain stuck in my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Doctor Rossi checks.

“I’m not in America,” I disclose. “But this feels like home. Or…?at least, it feels close to home.”

“Where is your boss?”

I turn my face to William, who’s right next to me, but I have to raise my head to look at him.

He wears long pants and one of those jean jackets that were popular in the 1990s.

His red curls are combed to the side and greased with that kind of wax that makes your fingers smell for hours after doing your hair.

“He’s not my boss…?yet,” I realize. “He’s a teenager.”

Doctor Rossi falls silent for a minute. I simply look at William, who holds my tiny hand with the worry-free attitude of a young man. I never realized how tiny my hands were when I was just four years old.

“I’m going to miss you, Lili,” William says with a pout.

I clench his hand a little harder. “Why can’t I stay with you?” I ask with a little voice.

“Mom doesn’t like you,” he replies and sucks on his teeth to think. “Dad thinks you’re a liability.”

“Why does Uncle Roger think I’m a lilabalality ?” I really can’t repeat that strange word William just said. I don’t even know what it means.

William shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe you talk too much. But you can still come here!” he assures, twirling on his heels, showing me the vast space around us wherever we walk. “From time to time, when the Springfields let you.”

I pull my hand away. “I don’t like the Springfields!” I whine.

“Well, tough luck, Lili!” he mocks. “They’re the only ones who are willing to care for you.”

Asshole . That’s the word I would have used to describe my big cousin William if I only knew of its existence.

My eyes snap wide open. I discard Doctor Rossi’s headset exactly like I was discarded all those years ago.

I, Liliana Springfield, was scratched off the de Loit family tree.

Discarded.

I hate that word.