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She won’t look at us, but I can see from her profile that she’s biting her lip to stop from speaking or maybe crying.
“All right. If you’ll kneel on the stool, please,” Joseph says.
She turns to me. “Kneel?”
I hold out a hand to help her. “Kneel,” I say.
She swallows but rises and doesn’t take my hand as she kneels on the wooden stool and turns to the camera. Just as he snaps the photograph, she gives him the finger.
I can’t help the smile that creeps along my lips.
Joseph, however, is not amused. His ears go red, and it may be the first time I’ve seen him ruffled.
“We’ll need to take another.”
But it’s an old-fashioned camera. Not a digital one.
“No need, Joseph,” I say, looking at my pretty, defiant Willow Girl. “That’ll do just fine.”10HelenaWe both signed the book in the space where my photo will be forever preserved as this generation’s Willow Girl. We’re now sitting at a table for two waiting for our lunch to arrive.
Our eyes are locked, but the difference in our expressions is night and day. I’m glaring, and he looks like he’s smiling, calm as can be, like this is normal.
“What’s your problem?” I ask finally, shifting in my seat, his cum sticky in my underwear.
“No problem. Just enjoying my day with my Willow Girl.”
“You know he heard everything.”
He nods. “He’s probably jerking off to the video as we speak.”
“Video?”
Sebastian shrugs a shoulder.
A waiter comes with a bottle of wine, pours for both of us, and sets the bottle in a bucket of ice before leaving.
“Don’t worry. You shouldn’t have to see him again for three more years.” He picks up his glass. “Cheers.”
I fold my arms across my chest. I don’t pick up my glass.
“How did it start? Taking a Willow Girl?”
“You don’t know your history?”
“No, I don’t. Why don’t you educate me, like you so graciously did on the meaning of inbred.” Prick, I add internally.
“Happy to oblige.” He takes another sip of his wine. “The Willows were a prominent family—at least in the Midwest—way back when. The Scafoni were immigrants to America, but wealthy ones. We needed status, and you needed money, and so a marriage was arranged.
“There was a difference then, and that was that the Willows only had sons and the Scafonis only daughters, and so a Willow boy, Marius Willow, married a Scafoni girl, Anabelle Scafoni, for her fortune. There was no love between them. It was a business transaction, one arranged by Anabelle’s father and Marius Willow. He was more than twice her age and a brute, according to history.”
“According to your history,” I interrupt.
He ignores me.
“She didn’t survive long in his hands. Not a full year, even. In fact, only a handful of Scafoni survived that marriage. Marius Willow made sure of that, having no pity, killing off as many as he could, starting with Anabelle’s father. Although I guess he did have some pity. He didn’t kill Anabelle or her mother but cast them out, left them for dead, after securing Anabelle’s fortune. If he’d killed her, none of this would be happening.”
“Why?” I’m engrossed.
“There was one thing he didn’t know when he sent her out of his house. Anabelle was pregnant.”
“Pregnant?”
He nods. “Anabelle’s mother, who was a midwife, cared for her, and delivered the baby in secret. This was a rare male birth for the Scafoni family. Just two months after the baby’s birth, Anabelle died. She was too broken by her grief. It’s a wonder the baby didn’t die with her.”
“What happened to the baby?”
“After burying her daughter, Anabelle’s mother, took the child and fled back to Italy, but not before laying a curse on the Willow family, one that would weaken their line. From that point, the Willow family only had girls and the Scafoni family only boys.”
“A curse? You can’t believe in that.”
His expression and his non-comment give me pause. I don’t expect Sebastian Scafoni of all people to be superstitious.
“Anabelle’s son, Giuseppe, was raised to hate the Willow family, and when he came of age, he vowed vengeance for his mother and set upon rebuilding our fortune, passing down his hate from generation to generation until we were ready to return to America. To avenge Anabelle.”
“But how? Even back then, what you’re doing couldn’t have been legal. I mean, it’s kidnapping.”
“You’re naive, Helena.”
“No, I’m—”
“If you have enough money, you can do anything you want. Have anything you want. Money is power. Money makes us kings. Gods even.”
I shake my head. “What do you hold over the Willows that they don’t put a stop to it?”
“I just told you.”
“You told me money makes you a god.”
“Money got me you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s actually much simpler than you think. You sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“It may change your view of your family.”
“It won’t.”
“The Willow property, have you ever seen the deed?”
