Page 71 of The Crimson Lily

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 curlsare 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 alilabalality?” 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.