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“This is so you never forget your place. Stay away from me and mine, Alec, or I’ll cut your dick off.”
Antony takes my hand and leads me from the room. Alec’s sobs follow us as we move back through the garish house. I savor each one like it’s the finest square of Belgium chocolate.
On the front step, Antony leans in and kisses my cheek. “Any time you need me, little sister.”
And then he’s gone, disappearing into the night, back to the shadows where he belongs. He has other work to do tonight.
I think about the long walk back to Harrington Hills under the moonlight, with the sound of Alec’s scream echoing in my ears – the sweetest music I’d heard in a long time. But I’m not ready to go home yet.
I have one last visit to make.
Eli
I trudge up the stairs to my room, peeling off my sticky workout gear and tossing it in the vague direction of the laundry chute. Noah made me stay behind for three hours after track practice finished to train with him. My own damn fault for assuming he’d let up once he made the team – he’s freaking out more than usual because our first meet is coming up and he knows he’s the weakest link.
When Noah says “I’m going to train night and day,” he means that shit literally. We only quit tonight because the groundskeeper came out to turn off the lights on the field. The locker rooms were locked up for the night, so I had to drive home in my sweaty clothes and peel my ass off the leather seat of my Porsche.
Noah’s obsession with being a track star will kill me. Or him. Or I’d kill him. One way or another, someone will pay for the hell he’s put my body through.
I tiptoe past my mother’s suite. I can hear her simpering on the phone with one of her boyfriends, but I don’t want to risk an encounter. As I round the corner of the hallway, I notice the door to my room is shut. Weird. I never shut it. After my parents found out about me and Mackenzie all those years ago, they made sure I never kept any secrets from them again.
So why is it shut now?
There’s a chemical scent in the air that sets my teeth on edge. It reminds me of being at the funeral home in Tennessee, back when Dad had a more hands-on role in the business, back before we had the big house and TV cameras everywhere and the shitty defense lawyer to pay.
Mom must’ve shut the door. Probably Gizmo was annoying her.
I hope she hasn’t peed on my bed. I’m too tired for this shit. My shoulders ache in protest as I reach down and turn the handle.
The door flies open. Rough hands grab me and yank me inside, slamming my body against the wall.
What the fuck?
My muscles scream as I lash out at the intruder. But the guy holding me is a tank, and my fists glance off him. I try to get a grip on his ape-like neck, but he twists my arm behind me, leaning into it enough that I know he’ll snap it in two if he feels like it.
“This is a message from Mackenzie Malloy,” he rasps in my ears. “Don’t fuck with her again, or I’ll do my painting with your blood.”
Before I can react, the figure slams my head into the wall and drops me. Pain erupts across my skull. I sink to the floor, my vision blurring. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the blobby shape of him running for my open window.
I crawl across the floor toward him, but my head is made of cotton, leaking out my ears. He leaps over the side of the balcony. By the time I crawl to the balustrade and pull myself up, he’s escaped through the garden. But there is a figure down there, standing under the floodlights surrounding the pool. Strands of golden hair circle her face like a halo.
Mackenzie.
This is the first time she’s ever come to me, and I don’t understand. Is it about the party? I arrived late because Dad’s incompetent lawyer needed some papers copied. When I got there, Noah had already stormed off and Gabriel was wasted on some concoction of alcohol and pills, so I had to get him home. Then she hadn’t been to school and she wouldn’t answer my texts, and now she’s here, at my house, with some thug?
Mackenzie lifts her chin, her head tilted to the side, watching me. “Did you like your present?”
“You mean my new boyfriend?” My voice cracks as fresh pain blooms across my skull. “Oh, sure. He’s lovely. We had a tea party.”
“Tiberius wasn’t your present. You’d better turn on the light, Eli.”
Panic hits me. What’s she done?
I slam my fist against the light switch, bathing my room in light. The walls – usually a calming blue and covered in sports posters and college flags – are now decorated with red paint. It drips down the walls onto my bed and furniture, and over the decapitated head of Mr. Buttons, the stuffed bear I’ve kept on my nightstand ever since Mackenzie gave him to me for my eighth birthday. Under my bed, two wide saucer eyes stare at me from the darkness – my cat Gizmo trembling in terror.
Nausea gathers in my stomach as the red paint coalesces into words. The same sentence repeated over and over.
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME.
