AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Madelena
I watch the bastards walk out of the study. Odin told me to stay in my room, but it’s not like that would have changed anything. I knew what my father had agreed to in order to save his neck. I’m pretty good at being invisible, lurking in shadows and listening. It’s easy with my father because he wishes I was invisible. Wishes I’d never been born.
He’s another bastard just like them. Worse, if he can sell his own flesh and blood and on this day of all days. We buried my uncle, Jax Donovan, today. He was my mom’s brother and the last link to her.
Santos Augustine stops on his way out. As if what we just did—that shared spilling of blood—somehow bound us, creating an invisible tether between us. He turns and looks up at where I am lurking in the shadows of the second-floor landing. His eyes meet mine. Even at this distance, they send a shiver along my spine.
I narrow mine and send all the hate I can muster his way because maybe he can see what’s inside of me too.
“You belong to me now… Don’t forget it.”
What the fuck does that even mean? I’m fifteen. He’s ten years older than me. What can he do to me? Nothing. That’s what.
We stare at each other for a long minute before he gives me an almost imperceptible nod and what I swear is a smirk before he and his family walk out of my sight. Out of our house.
My brother appears at the bottom of the stairs. He pauses to look up at me, and I see his face contort with pain as he begins to climb. My father glances at us, then disappears back into his study. He can rot there for all I care.
“I told you to stay upstairs,” Odin says, taking my hand. The handkerchief is sticky with blood, but he peels it away. I suck in a breath. “He didn’t have to be so fucking brutal about it.”
“I’ll be fine,” I tell him.
“Let’s go get this bandaged up.” He looks at me with that pitying expression. Why, I don’t know. He’s the one with the fucking limp.
My eyes fill up. It’s bad this time. He’s never limped before.
“Are you okay?” I ask him as we walk through my bedroom into the bathroom we share. It’s a jack-and-jill. The second bedroom wasn’t supposed to be Odin’s, but he’s been there for as long as I can remember.
“I’m not the one with a cut in my hand. Sit.”
I perch on the edge of the tub while he rummages beneath the sink for the first-aid kit. Once he has it, he sits on the closed toilet seat and drops the handkerchief into the trash can. He proceeds to clean the cut. It stings, but I hold my breath and don’t make a sound, watching him work as he carefully bandages it.
Once he’s finished, he throws away the cotton swabs and washes his hands. “It’ll probably scar. I’ll see if I can get you a cream.”
“I don’t care about a scar,” I tell him, watching blood stain the bandage. It hurts. But weirdly, it gives me something to focus on.
Something to time my breath to.
You can feel your heart beat to the throbbing of pain like this. It’s a strange sensation. Grounding in a way.
“Here,” Odin says, taking two aspirin from a bottle in the cabinet and holding them out to me.
I take them and watch him swallow two himself.
“The limp isn’t better,” I tell him, as if he didn’t know.
“It’ll be fine. Just needs some time.”
I follow him into his bedroom, where he drops onto the edge of his bed like he’s exhausted.
I sit beside him and lay my head on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t let him do it.”
“I’d rather he beat me than you,” he says and guilt washes over me even though that’s not his intention. Our father is an asshole and a drunk. And Odin has stood between him and me too many times.
“I wouldn’t.” I look up at him.
“Well, sis, you’re safe now,” he says with a dark smile on his face. “You belong to Santos Augustine. I don’t think he’ll take it well if our father lays a hand on you.”
“Is that like the silver lining or something? Because it’s a crappy silver lining.”
