She turns to me with a sadness in her beautiful brown eyes. The past tense of my words clearly rattles an emotion in her. An emotion that I know, sadly, she tries to work past daily, though the pain remains. No amount of time or vices or anything could ever take away the pain that grief plagues us with.
Maybe now she will see that we have more in common than the ink that covers our skin and the chemistry that we cannot deny. We are two motherless beings, whose mothers were stolen from us too soon. Both from an island that would be the perfect escape from the forever hostile environment that is our reality.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, reaching for my forearm. The sincerity in her touch pings at my heart, flooding me with the first moment in a long time that I have allowed myself to feel something other than calculated rage and scheming.
“I’m sorry for your loss as well.” I want to tell her how truly sorry I am. How I know the answers to the questions that have haunted her all these years. That I am the descendent of a real-life boogeyman, a fat, soulless corpse who walks around killing because he is afraid the more people know of his weak character, the less powerful he will be. But I don’t offer that information to her yet, I don’t want to scare her off.
“Thank you,” she says. She looks as if she is going to say more, but she hesitates, leaving her mouth open as she physically contemplates what to say next. “Sadly, I am no stranger to loss.”
“Is that so?” I press, wanting to know what other losses have scarred her heart.
It’s then that she moves her hand to her hair, bringing the fallen piece that covers her face in place behind her ear, where I see the beautiful stitching tattoos that decorate her clavicle are also found on her inner elbow. How I missed that before, I don’t know. Then again, she might have me beat in the tattoo department. She is arguably just as covered as I am, if not more.
I don’t know why I am pressing her, when I already know all there is to know about Sienna Ricci. I know of the deaths and disappearances that haunt her. I already know who she is about to speak of. Though in my quest to know every mundane and intimate detail of what makes the woman before me so beautiful, even in her brokenness, I want to hear it anyway.
“That guy you were prying about before. He is just another tragic loss in the life of Sienna Ricci,” she says, throwing up her hands with a not-so-convincing chuckle. Her sarcasm isn’t lost on me. I know that pains her just as much as losing her parents. But I want to know if losing him is something she can get over. I don’t want that standing in the way of what is mine to take.
She stops, scanning the shelves between our words and, as if she is bracing herself for a conversation she clearly does not want to have, she seats herself on the emerald loveseat in front of the fireplace. She crosses her leg over the other and the slit in her dress shifts, revealing a sliver of her thigh, immediately stealing my attention.
Trying to break myself from the pull my eyes feel toward her flesh, I adjust my stance and try to see what she is willing to tell me. “How did you lose him?”
“Kind of how most losses happen. One day here, the next day gone,” she scoffs again, trying to hide herself in sarcasm. I find this defense mechanism to be more adorable than I know she is trying to make it come off.
“What do you mean, gone?” I again press her. I’m playing a dangerous game right now. I know I’m pushing her buttons, because she clearly is not amused with the topic of conversation, but I can’t help myself. She just looks so fucking exquisite when she is flustered.
She stares at me as if in disbelief of my prying. What can I say? She should realize by now that I am a boundary-pusher, nothing about me or the life I lead is conventional. However, it is not lost on me that in any other context, especially with me being her boss, it would be inappropriate. But when it comes to the plans I have for her, it’s important I know where her loyalties lie, and more importantly, where her heart is.
“Gone, as in, no longer here.” I can tell she wants to end the conversation, but I’m starting to get what I want out of her, so I continue to press her.
“So, he is dead then, I’m assuming?”
“Whether he still roams this Earth is an irrelevant detail. He is dead to me,” the bitterness is evident in her voice. Legs still crossed, she begins bouncing her leg, fidgeting just slightly.
Her anger and hurt make me want to comfort her, but I don’t. This is the emotional response I was hoping to drum up in her, to see if she would even be willing to do what I need her to.
“Well, if he is alive, he is a cowardly fool for leaving a woman like you,” I say, buttering her up, though I mean every word. “And if he is in fact dead, well then, he must be rotting in a perpetual Hell that is existing without you by his side.”
“Is that so?” she says, with her interest piqued.
“Anyone who has had the privilege of being inside of you who then leaves, whether by self-will or forced by God, will experience the most torturous pain one could ever fathom.”
“Ha, well, I don’t believe in God.”
“Good, because if you did, he wouldn’t be able to save you from what I have planned for you, Ms. Ricci.”
“Is that so?” I can tell by the way she smirks that she thinks I’m kidding. She wishes.
“What’s so funny? Don’t be rude, do share,” I say as I meet her grin with a more devious one of my own.
“Nothing, it’s just that something tells me, if it were you back then and not him, I might have been the one who didn’t survive.”
Probably.Little does she know that her survival was solely based on the death that happened the night her little lover boy vanished.
“Is that so?” I ask, wanting to know more of why she thinks she can’t survive at my hands.
She continues, as if she is lost in her own thought process, aside from our conversation, “I’ll tell you what, though. Death, as inevitably wicked a concept as it is, has made me stronger. It has made me realize that I can walk through fire and come out still intact. Different, sure, but intact, nonetheless. It has taught me that life is more fleeting than it is precious. In those fleeting moments is when we decide what we want to do with the time we are given.”
“And what do you want?” I pry, wanting to get at whatever has been boiling beneath her surface, begging to be let out.
