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“Yes,” I lie, hoping time may be all they need to accept that this ungodly arrangement they fantasize over would leave me in hell. The reality that I’m not sure either care makes me feel like I’m standing on the edge of the abyss.
I practically hear the room breathe as I say the word, with Vitaly and my father glancing at each other as my mother brings a drink to her lips, the ice cubes rattling as she downs what’s left of it.
“So, are we done?” I ask.
Vitaly watches me a while longer. “Seeing as you’re clearly thinking with your dick right now, we’ll give you some time to get this…womanout of your system. I hope you manage it fast. Foreveryone’ssake.”
I absorb the undercurrent of menace, not addressing him as he says goodbye to my parents and leaves, taking some of the blackness with him.
As the front door slams shut, my father takes his place on the chair to my right. He doesn’t talk for a while, his body a livewire of unstable current, luckily one matched by the instability of mine.
When he does finally speak, his booming voice resounds through my chest.
“Indigo must be proud of herself,” Landon seethes. “Went to work as a ten-a-penny fucking temp, grabbed herself the wealthy boss. Not bad for three days' work.”
“That’s not what this is,” I snarl. “She’s been running from me since the first day we met.”
“I guess she knows the game. Some women are conniving. They know how to drive men insane, and then get a shock when we lose our fucking minds and make them pay for it.”
My ability to remain seated and unspeaking despite the unspoken horror of an event from long ago that we share astounds even me.
It's Sandra’s shrill slur that snakes through the silence as her tall, lithe frame stumbles in my direction. “Your father has told me about her. She’s short.” She spits the word out as if it were some heinous insult. “Pink hair? A fucking yoga teacher who lives in a shithole? Her friends all trash?” She squares her unsteady body at me. “AndIndigo? What a fucking stupid name. Do you know how embarrassing it would be to introduce someone like that at family functions? Do you know how fuckingridiculousyou’d look together? You’re one of the most eligible bachelors in the city. Not a day goes by when people don’t ask us about you, and you’d walk in with some cheap castoff instead of marrying a decent woman like Gabriella. Our friends would think you’ve lost your fucking mind. You’d be degrading the entire family with her presence.”
“Is that all you care about, mother? What the neighbors think? You know full well what we do for a living. Which means you know full well that most of the people whose opinions are so important to you are criminals and hypocrites.”
She shakes her head, reaching for the half-empty bottle of whiskey that she’d placed on the side table, messily pouring some more of the amber liquor into her glass before downing half the glass.
“So much contempt for the people who’ve allowed us all of our wealth… Are we supposed to sit by and let you humiliate this family? Or bring someone into it who weakens it?”
“Weakensit? This girl is one of the warmest, most caring, most amusing humans I’ve ever been privileged enough to meet,mother.”
I don’t want to call her that, but after years of punishment when I tried to call her by her first name, Sandra, I gave up that fight. The same with my father. When I would call him Landon, I would pay for it, often unable to sit down without pain for days.
Sandra’s make-up-laden face twists in outrage as I dare evoke a creature so anathema to the kind of humans these vampires frequent. “How exactly do you think a woman so loving would weaken the family?”
She places the glass on the side table, dropping to her knees in front of me, her expression wild and desperate. The woman looks so distressed you’d have thought someone had just told her whole family is dying.
My eyes slip to her tapered red acrylic nails as she winds her hand around my wrist, her touch nothing but poison.
“Isn’t it because of her that you have these awful ugly scars on your hand?” The brush of her fingers across the thin, faded scars left behind from the day on the island seers into me, making me pull my hand slowly back.
“No,” I respond. “It most certainly wasn’t her fault.” My gaze slides to my father. “And they’re certainly not the worst scars I have.”
My father’s face twists into a heinous grimace as I throw the accusation his way—one that even his wife will not fully understand.
“She’s no good for you,” continues Sandra. “Gabriella and you… you look perfect together. She’s tall, beautiful, elegant, from a respected family. That union will make our familystronger. This joke of a so-called relationship with this cheap fucking hippy will make us a laughing stock. I already know you’ll look ridiculous walking into any room with her. She’s ruining everything!”
She shudders before me, glowering at me as if she wished to erase me.
“I know we sound harsh, Greyson,” she continues, “but it’s only because weloveyou. We do. We want the best for you. And you’re too blind to see what that is. I’ve never met her but from everything I’ve been told, this girl and you don’t fit.”
“We don’t fit? And yet I’ve never felt so good standing next to another soul.”
The slap across my face comes before I can stop it, messy and weak but one that neatly sums up my relationship with this woman. My eyes lock onto hers as she shakes before getting to her feet and beginning to pace, tears streaming down her face, leaving small rivers of kohl make-up in their wake.
“How have we ended up with a son this ungrateful for everything we’ve done for him?!” she exclaims.
“Get out,” snarls my father in her direction. “Go upstairs and wait for me in bed. And don’t you dare pick up the phone to anyone.”
