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My stepbrother looked down at me, an expression of bemusement on his face. Tenderly, he stroked my long, platinum hair away from my face. He smelled good, I thought distractedly—a warm, comforting scent like cedar wood and fur and sunlight and under it a deep musk that was undeniably male.
“It’s going to be all right, Zoe—really it will,” he murmured. “I’d rather get hurt than see you or your mom be punished. If Gabe and I let him take it out on us, he won’t go after you two.”
Gently, he dislodged my arms from around his waist. Then he cupped my cheek and brushed my tears away with his thumb.
“Everything is going to be okay, sweetheart,” he told me. “You just hide up here and you’ll be safe.”
But as it turned out, I wasn’t able to hide from my stepfather—no one was. Because Esteban ordered us all to come down to dinner and there was no getting out of it.
EIGHT
I wore a hoodie to the dinner table. It wasn’t what my stepfather considered “proper attire”—he liked to harp on all of us and make sure we were dressed nicely at all times—but I hoped it would hide my hair. Plus it was baggy enough to cover my full breasts—well, mostly.
My stepfather was seated at the head of the long, ornately carved table and my mom was at his right hand. Christopher and Gabriel were seated across from us, to my stepfather’s left.
We were all silent as the kitchen staff served the meal—plates of extremely rare roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas and brown gravy. I normally hated the nearly raw meat that was served in the mansion on a regular basis but this time I could feel myself salivating as I looked down at my plate. However, any appetite I might have had left me the minute the staff exited the dining room and my stepfather spoke.
“Take that damn thing off,” he growled, glaring at me from his high-backed chair at the head of the table. It looked more like a throne than a dining room chair—no doubt that was its intended effect.
“I…I’m cold,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice and failing. I hated him with everything that was in me, but I feared him too—he’d made it clear that I had no value and he didn’t mind knocking me around to prove his point.
“I said take that fucking thing off!” He shouted at me, his voice rising to a roar at the end. “We dress properly at the dinner table!”
My stepfather’s insistence on polite manners was a constant source of confusion to me. I never understood why he was so careful about little things like placing your napkin on your lap and not putting your elbows on the table…and yet he had no problem shooting a man in the head or punching someone in the face. It was like he was some savage form of Miss Manners—or maybe he thought that going through the motions of having good breeding would somehow excuse his brutality.
“Honey, please—do as your father says.” My mother put a hand on my arm. There was pleading in her golden eyes…and dark circles beneath them. She still looked beautiful but she was pale too—and thinner than she had been. She looked like a woman who hadn’t gotten enough sleep for a long time.
I knew that taking off my hoodie was going to open a whole new can of worms, but what could I do? In a minute, Esteban was going to explode into rage, as he always did when he didn’t get his way immediately. Across the table from me, I saw Gabriel and Christopher watching. Gabriel caught my eyes and gave me a warning look that wasn’t hard to read—if I didn’t do as my stepfather said—and quickly—there was going to be hell to pay.
Slowly, I unzipped the thick gray hoodie and shrugged out of it. I let it drop to the seat of my chair and sat there exposed. I had on a white t-shirt and my hair was long and loose, like a river of pale blonde fire around my shoulders. There was no mistaking what I had become.
For a moment, no one said anything. Then my mother sucked in a breath, her eyes going wide.
“Oh, Zoe!” she exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“She dyed her hair to look like yours—that’s all,” Christopher said quickly—and unexpectedly. For a moment, I thought about running with his story. Maybe my stepfather would buy it.
For a long moment Esteban stared at me and though I didn’t meet his eyes, I could feel his hateful gaze on my body like a brand. Finally he shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so. This is more than just a dye job. Stand up, girl—let me look at you,” he said to me.
