I closed my eyes and saw her face.
Monika Mire.
She was going to be mine.
One way or another.
15
The Greenhouse
Gabriel
Iknew before I saw.
It was in the way my father looked at her at breakfast—the possessive hand on her lower back, the way his thumb traced circles against her spine while he pretended to read the newspaper. It was in the way she wouldn't meet my eyes, the way she kept her gaze fixed on her plate, the way her hands trembled slightly when she reached for her coffee.
Something had happened. Something had changed.
And I knew, with a certainty that sat in my chest like a stone, that it had happened in the dark hours between midnight and dawn, when the house was quiet and the rest of us were sleeping.
I excused myself before the meal was over. I couldn't sit there anymore—couldn't watch my father touch her, couldn'twatch her let him, couldn't pretend that everything was fine when everything was falling apart.
The greenhouse was cold.
The sun hadn't reached it yet—the glass walls were frosted, the plants huddled together for warmth, the orchids pale and trembling. I stood in the center of the room and tried to breathe. The air was thick with the smell of earth and decay, the particular sweetness of things that were dying slowly.
I heard the door open behind me.
"Gabriel."
Her voice was soft. Careful. The voice you use when you're approaching something that might bite.
"Don't," I said. I didn't turn around. "Don't come any closer."
"Gabriel—"
"Did he touch you?"
The question hung in the air between us. I heard her breath catch—a small, sharp sound, like glass breaking.
"Gabriel, please—"
"Did he touch you?" I turned. She was standing a few feet away, her arms wrapped around herself, her face pale. She was wearing my sweater—the one I'd left in her room, the dark green one she'd said she liked. I'd noticed it at breakfast. I'd noticed everything.
She didn't answer.
That was an answer.
"You let him." My voice cracked. I could hear how pathetic I sounded—jealous, possessive, everything I'd sworn I wouldn't become. But I couldn't stop. "You let him touch you. After everything. After the greenhouse. After—"
"Gabriel, it's not—it's not what you think."
"Then what is it? What is it, Monika? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you spread your legs for my father thesame way you spread them for me. The same way you'll probably spread them for Nathan, eventually. Is that the plan? Fuck your way through the whole family?"
She flinched like I'd hit her.
I regretted the words the moment they left my mouth. But I didn't take them back. I couldn't. The jealousy was too hot, too sharp, too alive in my chest.
