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“The entity blackmailing us has a very specific set of rules that are to be followed, or they take us down. And since we have no leads, and no idea who they are, they quite literally have us by the balls.” Papá cocks his head. “Besides, if we tell the Elders, they’ll have you killed anyway.”
Kal’s words from before ring in my mind. ‘I’m helping you.’
I swallow as tears prick behind my eyes, trying to will them away, even as my world spins completely on its axis.
“I thought picking you for this contract was the smart decision. Spent my whole life trying to keep you out of trouble, sure that if I could just get you married, everything else would work out on its own.” He sighs, giving me a once-over. “I thought I could count on you, Elena.”
Sadness curls around my spine like ivy, wrapping so tight it feels like it might snap in half. My hands lift of their own accord, reaching for him, to provide comfort or apologies—maybe both.
Anything to erase the despair from his gaze before it burrows so deep within my soul, I can’t ever clean it out.
“Papá, I’m—”
“Here.” Kal shoves a piece of paper in my hands, cutting me off. I glance down, my stomach knotting even more.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Certificate of Marriage.
Somehow, it didn’t really feel real until now.
My hands shake, the certificate slipping from them as anxiety floods my chest, clogging my arteries. “I can’t sign that.”
Heaving a low sigh, Kal catches the paper and drags me over to the bed, positioning the page on top of Mateo’s chest. He pushes a pen between my fingers, then curls his own around them, guiding my signature.
Resentment burns furiously inside me as I watch him effortlessly forge my name as if he’s done it a thousand times.
I avoid looking at Mateo’s lifeless form, my stomach on the verge of rejecting yesterday’s dinner as it is. When Kal lets go, I swing away from him, smothering a sob with my palm.
If I’d known sleeping with Kal was going to result in this, in the complete stripping away of any semblance of freedom I’ve ever had, I never would’ve done it.
Right?
When you spend your life resigned to a certain fate, making yourself comfortable with the inevitable, even an ounce of change can feel like the end of the world.
And while it’s true I didn’t want to marry Mateo any more than I want to be married to Kal, at least I knew what to expect with him. We’d been friends, after all, once upon a time. Back before he sought out power and violence, and decided to wield it against me when he didn’t get what he wanted.
But I could have handled that.
Spent the last several years navigating around it, using it to my advantage, meeting his fists with my own bruised knuckles. It was manageable.
This thing with Kal, though, hasn’t been charted out. I’ve never seen him with another woman, though presumably, there have been many in his thirty-two years.
I can’t even rectify why he was okay with any of this, considering the last time I saw him, he fucked me raw and left before the sun was up.
Only a poem, scribbled on a scrap piece of paper, and a black rose remained, making me wonder for a long time if I’d dreamed the entire encounter in the first place.
Touch has a memory.
O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free?
If anything, his parting words, though borrowed from Keats, indicated he wanted nothing more to do with me. Yet, here he is, having just forced my hand, acting as though there was no other choice in the matter.
As Papá leaves to go find my mother, I watch as Kal continues packing up, a sinking feeling weighing in my gut as I remember what else he said to me all those weeks ago.
‘I’m not like the boys from your little private schools. I’ll ruin you and not think twice about it.’
‘So ruin me,’ I’d said, so confident in my ability to withstand it.
Now, I can’t stop wondering what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.
