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It wasn’t every day you inherited a rich, spoiled stepbrother with a king’s attitude. Might as well see what dirt I could dig up.
It took me far too long to find a light switch, and as the pool house came to life, I realized I stood in a small kitchenette area. And I meant small as in smaller than the kitchen in the main house; it wasn’t small to me, not after living in an apartment with my mom for so long. It had an island with a sink, which looked to be where Gareth rinsed out his brushes when he painted, along with an oven, a microwave, and even a refrigerator.
Geez. Gareth could live in here, never come to the main house, and he’d survive just fine.
My feet took me to the fridge, curiosity getting the better of me. I couldn’t say why I wanted to check it; let’s just call it instinct. It was one of those newer fridges, with the flat screen on the front. I tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge.
Odd.
As my brows came together, the screen came to life as a keypad and buttons, asking for the code.
This refrigerator had acode? What… I’d never heard of something so strange before. What on earth was this? Did refrigerators come with the capability of locking themselves or was this some kind of fancy, one-of-a-kind fridge that the Montgomerys had installed?
And why would they need it to lock?
Hmm. That didn’t sit right with me. It didn’t sit right with me at all.
I turned around, walking away from the fridge and the confusion and suspicion it brought me, entering a large room with a fireplace. If I had to guess, this room was supposed to be a little hangout room, a living room, basically, but most of the furniture had been removed or pushed aside.
Curtains drawn over the large windows, it was anything but an empty room. On one side of the room, you had various blank canvases of all sizes, ready to be painted on, and on the other, dozens of older canvases sat, leaning against the wall.
I wandered over to the finished pieces, looking through them. They were all done in the same medium: paint. And they were all done in the same style, too. Gareth, it seemed, really had a thing for reds. Most everything I saw was done in red, which made the finished results a bit hazy and unclear. Nothing was sketched out or done realistically.
I pushed deeper into the room, turning to view the main easel that sat smack dab in the center. I didn’t know if it’d be a half-done piece or a blank canvas, but the moment I laid eyes on it, something in me twisted.
It was done, all right. Or close to it, at the very least. It was big, too—three feet by three feet, maybe. Done in reds and oranges, but mostly reds. The orange was painted in the outline of a person in the center of the canvas, deeper reds coming from the head area in multiple strokes; my guess to signify hair.
It was very abstract, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that filled me when I stared at it. This one… it was still quite conceptual, but less so than the others. This one looked like a person, a girl, based on the length of the deep maroon hair.
It wasn’t me, was it?
No. No, that was just ridiculous. The world didn’t revolve around me. Gareth hated me, and I pretty much hated him. He wouldn’t paint me.
I took a step toward the canvas, lifting an arm to it. I ran my fingers along the shape of the person, finding it was dry, and then my fingers danced along the red hair. The hair was still wet, and some of it smeared on my fingers.
My heart hammered for a whole different then, as I took my hand away from the painting and turned it around to see the smear of red on my fingers. Whatever paint he used for it wasn’t thick. If it was any kind of acrylic, he’d watered it down a lot.
But the hue was so deep… almost garish, and as I gazed down at my fingertips, I ran my thumb over them. What little that had smeared on my fingers didn’t smear anymore, almost like they’d been stained.
I couldn’t say what made me do it, but I brought my fingers to my mouth. Sticking them in, I ran my tongue over the fingertips. Just once. It was enough. I yanked my fingers out of my mouth after that, holding back a gasp.
What I tasted… it wasn’t paint. It was something else, something I had caught myself thinking about a lot, especially when I was younger, when I didn’t really understand what living meant.
That paint tasted like blood.
But that was just silly, wasn’t it? I dropped my hand to my side, staring at the painting once again. The locked fridge, the drawn curtains so no one outside could see in, the way that so-called paint had felt on my fingers, how it’d tasted…
No. It was impossible. There was no way. This was my imagination getting the better of me. This was me trying to come up with the most outlandish thing ever, grasping at straws. It had to be. There was just no way—and yet, I couldn’t move away from the painting. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, staring at the red, but it was a while. It was almost as if the painting itself entranced me, put a spell on me and made me oblivious to the rest of the world. How else could I explain the fact that I didn’t hear the door to the pool house open and shut? How else could I overlook the sounds of footsteps heading right toward me, while I was too busy staring at the painting to move and hide?
A low, deep, dangerous voice came from behind me, “I told you not to come in here.”
I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Gareth, of course, and he stood less than a foot behind me, so close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. It gave me goosebumps, a bone-deep chill sweeping over me and causing me to shiver.
I didn’t turn away from the painting. I couldn’t. I wanted to ask what was in the fridge, where he got his paint, but a dark, sinister part of me already knew, and I feared if I turned around and faced him, he’d catch me in his web.
His hands curled around my arms as he inched closer, an iron grip on me. His head leaned down beside mine, his voice whispering directly into my ear, “You don’t do as you’re told. You’ll find that’s a mistake here.” His grip on me tightened, fingers digging into my arms so hard it hurt. “What am I going to do with you, Brianna?”
