AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The show?
Ice-cold, insidious terror skates down my spine like a cube of ice.
“Stay by me,” Dom murmurs. “Don’t leave my side.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
For the first time since we arrived here, I allow myself to study the area without the haze of terror distorting my surroundings.
We appear to be in a large ballroom, if I had to hazard a guess. Three-tiered chandeliers dangle from the ceiling, emitting pale swatches of yellow, gold, and even white. There are no windows that I can see and no artificial lighting. That fact only provides an air of mystery and eeriness that has the fine hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.
The one hundred or so POP members are mingling, as if this is just another party. Perhaps it is to them. They chat, sip from flutes of champagne using tiny straws, and laugh as if they don’t have a care in the world. Smartly dressed waiters and waitresses hurry in and out of another room—a kitchen, more than likely—holding trays of drinks and fancy appetizers. Everything seems so incredibly mundane and normal.
It instantly makes me uneasy.
Harvey grabs a flute off the tray of a passing waiter, then moves toward one of the paintings on the wall. Dom and I have no choice but to follow, though it feels as if I’m trudging through rapidly sinking quicksand. Each step forward is immensely difficult.
Harvey either doesn’t notice my reluctance or chooses to ignore it as he takes a sip of his champagne through the hole in his mouth, his eyes fixed on the painting before him.
“What does this painting mean to you, my son?”
I focus on the picture at the same time Dom does, my stomach muscles cramping painfully.
The painting depicts a woman holding two apples, one in each hand. However, it appears as though the artist drew an invisible line directly down the center. The woman on the left side is vibrant and beautiful, her skin a creamy shade of white and her hair falling around her shoulders in onyx waves. Her ruby-red lips are curved into a smile, and her one eye is glimmering with a multitude of untold secrets that the viewer can only begin to guess at. The apple in her manicured hand is a bright shade of red, almost the exact shade of her lips. There’s a single green leaf on the stem.
The left side of the painting…
Bile scorches my throat like claws tipped in fire.
Nothing but a skeleton remains—an empty eye socket and rows of decaying teeth. Only a few clumps of hair linger on her skull, the color more gray than black. The apple she holds is a husk of itself, rotted away and covered in maggots. The single leaf on the stem looks as if a slight breeze can whisk it away into obscurity, destroying it once and for all.
The picture is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.
Harvey doesn’t wait for Dominic to give his opinion on the art piece. Instead, he takes a careful sip of his drink and says, “I personally believe the painting depicts the two facets of the world—the part that lives and the part that dies. The have and have nots. The rich and the poor.” He pauses, allowing that declaration to sink in, before continuing, “If someone has the resources, power, and money to succeed, they become the woman on the left. But if they don’t, they waste away until they’re nothing but dust. There’s a reason why the poor and homeless aren’t ever remembered after death.”
My stomach twists into a dozen tight, intricate knots.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
Does he actually believe what he’s saying?
That people who are poor are inherently less than those who are wealthy?
I’m so disgusted, I’m terrified I’ll throw up the meager contents of my stomach.
But Dom shocks the shit out of me by saying, “Yes, I agree with you. I think the artist is clearly trying to depict the glaringly obvious difference between the two different groups of people.”
I open my mouth instinctively, a retort on my lips, but Dom’s hand in mine turns punishingly tight. I immediately clamp my lips together.
We have a part to play—Dom has a part to play—and we can’t ruin it.
So, if that means we have to be despicable human beings for a few hours, then so be it.
Harvey seems pleased by Dom’s answer, and when he speaks again, I can practically hear the smile in his voice. “I made the right decision bringing you here, boy, didn’t I?”
I want to scoff. Obviously, Harvey doesn’t know his son as well as he thinks he does.
Harvey continues to lead us from painting to painting, each one more disturbing than the last but all holding the same message, at least in Harvey’s mind.
