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She spent a year after his funeral in an institution with a fancy name, which is just another term for an asylum. For that year, she was nursed back to health from her alternating disorders of bulimia and anorexia. Doesn’t look like they’ve achieved much. She can do with another few kilos.
The worst is in her eyes. It’s in her silence as she stands there, letting me weigh her and find her too light. Too damn much. The coldness and craziness appeal to me. I’m a man intimately acquainted with broken things, enough to know what stands in front of me is ruined, not broken. I still want her, as much as—no, more—than when she was eighteen and sweet and a princess. A memory of Dalton bringing her into the dining room, dressed in that white frock that showed the cleavage of her small breasts and tight buttocks, flashes through my mind. I knew what he was doing. He was parading her, showing off his bargaining chip.
She waits patiently. Maybe locking yourself up does that to you. It ruins your mind but teaches you virtues.
“It’s been a year,” I say.
She doesn’t ask.
It makes me want to shake a reaction from her, but instead I lash out with my words. I lash out with my eyes, filling them with disapproval. “Do you still have to wear black?”
Her voice is collected, indifferent. “I’m mourning.”
“He’s been dead for a year.”
“I didn’t say who I’m mourning.”
Gripping my hands behind my back, I walk around her. Her head turns as her gaze follows me, but she stops at three o’clock, allowing me to look at places she can’t see, like her sculptured back. It’s too bony, the way her vertebrae show through her top, and somehow there’s perfection in even that. Frailty. Vulnerability. Femininity. I’ve never found skinny women attractive, but Lina is a first for me in everything. It’s a fact that no longer surprises me.
I stop in front of her, drawing her gaze back to me. “Is it true?”
She waits.
I caress the lines of her face with my gaze. “Are you crazy?”
“Aren’t we all to a greater or lesser degree?”
That damn, musical voice. There’s no judgment there, just a factual statement. Clever. It wins her this round. There’s nothing to argue.
“I suppose you’d like to know the reason for my visit.”
She looks straight into my black, soiled soul. “I know why you’re here.”
“Is that so?” I give her a smile that’s meant to be intimidating. “Tell me.”
“For the same reason they all are.”
They all are. I fucking hate the sound of that. “What reason is that?”
“To marry me for my money.”
My vision goes blurry. My anger ignites and unjustly escalates. She makes me see things I don’t want to, images of many rivals on one knee, asking for her hand. That’s where they went wrong. I won’t be asking.
“Yet,” I drop my gaze to her naked ring finger, “you rejected everyone.”
“For the same reason I’ll be rejecting you.”
I smother a laugh. On second thought, I let it out, cold and soft. I round her again, like a buyer evaluating livestock. I lean into her, like an owner staking a claim. She smells of an exotic perfume, something musky and oriental, alluring and deadly, like a pretty, poisonous flower. She’s toxic to me. God knows I’ve suffered every classifiable, slow-killing symptom, but I can’t resist.
“If you think I only want you for your money,” I whisper against the shell of her ear, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
A shiver runs over her body. It starts at her nape and ends at the base of her spine. I feel it where our bodies are touching, separated by two layers of black clothes. This time, my laugh is silent, unnoticed at the back of her head. I don’t need to win a round over her with a mocking smile. This round is mine.
She steps away, putting space between us. Her head is turned to the side, but she’s not looking at me. “You can’t make me.”
“Think again.”
She twirls around, eyes a bit wider and nostrils barely flaring. There’s the tiniest crack in her veneer, and there she is, the crazy woman behind the curtain of ice. The jugular vein in her neck flutters like a trapped butterfly. There’s fire in her, yet.
She places soft emphasis on every word. “I said no.”
“You’re making the mistake of assuming it was a request.”
The frost is back in her eyes, her chin tilted haughtily. “Leave before I call a guard.”
“You don’t want Daddy Dearest to die, do you?”
The little color left in her cheeks vanishes. She’s a wax doll, unnatural and startling beautiful.
“Bribery. Tsk-tsk. A High Court judge, no less.” Taking a photocopy of the signed affidavit from my pocket, I hold it up for her to see. “When this goes public, your daddy ends up in prison. He won’t make it out alive. I’ve made enough friends in six years to make sure of it. A phone call, a message via a guard is all it’ll take.”
