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So was I.
“Do you know what she told me before she killed him?”
He didn’t answer… He just waited patiently as the clean-up crew took care of the bodies around us.
“Donatella,” I said my name, just as gently and tenderly as she had said it, only this time in English, “you know no moderation, you hunger for everything, you are like chaos in a bottle, your love is like a Golden Fleece, and your rage Pandora’s Box. You are like I was. I do not want you to change that. I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath and think first. Have high expectations, do not doubt yourself and do not compromise. Be smarter and have more patience than everyone else. See the big picture and you will thrive.”
“If anyone had a way with words…” Wyatt said, his eyebrows furrowed together and he still avoided looking at me.
“It was our mother,” I finished for him. “I was so upset about Doval, I lashed out. I convinced myself that everyone was against me. That mom was always trying to break me. Teach me some stupid lesson. That she didn’t want me to be happy because she wasn’t happy when she was a kid. Doval was my breaking point. I had it all planned out. How I’d make her pay. Really pay. I think that’s why dad finally me took me to the veterinarian,”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, clenching my jaw, “Did you know that some wolf-dogs become deranged in their final moments? The dog part of them goes away and the wolf takes over, fight-or-flight kicks in, and even if you’d taken care of them for years, even if you were the only person who’d ever loved them, out of fear and pain, they attack.”
“He took you to see another wolf-dog?” Wyatt looked as if he’d figured out some great mystery.
“Usually the vets put down the sick wolf-dogs, but good old dad had arranged for them to hold off. He had them bring in a bench and sit it in front of the metal cage. He gave me half of his double sausages, double bacon, butter, white pudding, and brown sauce breakfast roll,” I shook my head. My father, Liam, had a flare for the dramatic…and a good lunch. “He made a big show of it. He wanted the moment I realized how stupid I was to be forever etched into my mind. And so, I watched; this animal that looked so much like Doval, who had whined and whimpered in pain one moment and then bared its teeth to attack the next, and I realized my stupidity. The wolf-dog lunged at the cage, biting at the at the fence so hard that it was cutting its own gums. It didn’t care; it just wanted to break through. It barked and howled, trying to claw at us. Dad made me sit there and watch it unravel for an hour; he’d eaten his sandwich and mine, before he got up and killed it.”
He didn’t need to tell me that my mother had killed Doval not because she was monster, but because she was a mother. She wasn’t going to let my feelings for a dog stop her from doing what she needed to do to protect her family…me, her daughter. That was the big picture.
“I’ve been called a lot of things, spoiled little rich girl, high-maintenance Barbie doll, shrill drama queen, immature, cynical bitch, over-the-top psychopath—”
“By who?!” Wyatt snapped, his eyes directly on me.
Ignoring his question, I bent down to Toby’s body, now in a black plastic body bag, the zipper stopping right at his Adam’s apple.
“I am all of those things and much more, but what I am not is an idiot and nor am I blind. I couldn’t betray my family,” I said, speaking directly to Toby as I zipped it over his face and closed the bag.
“I didn’t doubt you for a second,” Wyatt said quickly.
Standing up back up straight and turning back to look at him earnestly, I told him the truth, “Wyatt, if I could do it, I would.”
“Careful, Dona,” Wyatt said, the corner of his lip turned up. “The longer you wear the mask, the more it merges with your face.”
He thought I was joking. No. He knew me better than that. He just didn’t want to take me seriously. He didn’t want to think there could ever be a time where I would betray them. I could see it in his eyes, he was pleading with me to stop here. To walk back from the edge of the cliff.
So I swallowed, hoping that would stop the ache in my chest; I forced myself to smile, tilting my heading, and teased him instead. “Careful little brother, the monster isn’t the mask; it’s just you.”
“For the hundredth millionth time, I am only one minute and ten seconds younger than you, Dona.” He grinned, trying to reach over and lock my head in his arms. I gracefully ducked and walked forward, replying, “And for the hundredth millionth time, younger is still younger, Wyatt.”
“Dona—”
I sighed loudly, whipping my head around to look back at him, “Can’t you see I’m trying to make a dramatic exit here?”
“Then let me cue it up perfectly,” Wyatt said in a brief moment of seriousness. “What happens now?”
“You say that as if I’ve done something. This part is just prologue.”
The door shut once I sat inside of the car. And as Greyson, Ethan’s former and my present bodyguard and chauffeur, drove away from them all, I wondered… What was going to happen to that part of me, that chaos in a bottle, that hunger in me, now that I have everything…
“You can’t be everything you want to be!” Toby’s voice came to mind once more.
I drowned him out with the memory of my mother.
“Have high expectations, do not doubt yourself and do not compromise,” she said…and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t compromise my family for power.
“Greyson.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
