The silk of my robe settled onto my shoulders as I ran my hands through my hair in frustration and stared around the closet. The varying fabrics around the room were all new—all unfamiliar.
I gritted my teeth as I tried to think of what I could possibly do to get dressed without looking like a fool. I would not ask Christian for help where he waited downstairs, but the constant reminders of the fact that I couldn’t even dress myself without memorizing what matched and went well together during Lydia’s lessons made me sink down onto the tufted ottoman in the center of the room.
Christian knocked on the doorway to the closet as he peered in, his gaze not even hesitant. He’d known damn well I wouldn’t be able to dress myself in this situation, so had little fear that he might discover me naked. He’d seen it all anyway when they’d forced him to supervise my more severe punishments, so I doubted my privacy mattered much to him.
“You won’t find any color in your wardrobe aside from jeans, Monster,” he said, stepping into the space. He grabbed one of the dresses off the rack, draping it over his arm delicately so the fabric didn’t wrinkle. Carrying it over to me, he peeled back the neckline to reveal the silk tag sewn into the inside of the dress.
Light gray.
I reached out, running my fingers over the tag. “No color whatsoever?” I asked, bringing a smirk to his face as he took the dress back to the rack and hung it carefully while I asked, “How could Calix want his wife to exist in black and white and shades of gray? That’s not exactly feminine.”
“How could Calix want his wife to wear something she wouldn’t choose for herself?” he returned, raising a brow as he retreated from the closet. He pulled the door closed behind him, giving me the illusion of privacy for a few moments. Moving to the drawers beneath the shirt racks, I pulled one out to find a variety of bras staring back at me. The next drawer was filled with underwear.
Going to grab a white pair from each, Lydia’s words that I should ‘wear white for as long as possible after the wedding to remind Damianos of the innocence he’d taken’ rang through my head.
I grabbed the darkest black I could find, the small rebellion filling me with the need to see it through as I stripped off the robe and hurried into the set. I walked to the pant section of the closet, grabbing a pair of jean shorts off the shelf.
The tag read dark gray denim. I knew enough from the fashion magazines I’d had shoved down my throat all my life that people wore just about everything with jeans, but I’d never been allowed to wear them. I couldn’t even remember the last time Lydia had let me wear pants.
I tugged them up my legs, letting the heavyweight fabric settle against my skin as I shimmied from side to side and buttoned them at my waist. They fit me perfectly, and I tried not to think about the implications of that as it all added up. Grabbing a black tank top off the rack, I shrugged it on over my head. Trying to adjust to all the skin that showed on my arms and bare legs, I padded to the closet door and pushed it open. Shoving through the doorway and ignoring where Christian lingered in the bedroom in wait, I hurried down the stairs to the main living space.
“Would you like a tour?” he asked.
“I don’t want a fucking thing from either of you,” I snapped, spinning to glare at him before I took myself into the kitchen to find something to eat. I tugged open the fridge, finding it fully stocked and ignoring the tomatoes and mushrooms Calix had been slicing on the counter.
“You could have been eating an omelet if you hadn’t pissed him off,” Christian said, pulling out one of the stools on the other side of the island. He sat in it, leaning his elbows onto the countertop and placing his chin in his palms as he stared at me with amusement. “Do you even know how to cook?”
I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge, popping the lid off and licking it clean. “I am fairly certain this day will be slightly less miserable if you stop speaking to me. Otherwise, you may find out what it feels like to have someone shove a spoon down your throat until you choke on it,” I said, giving him a saccharine smile as I pulled open one of the drawers to look for said spoon.
Christian chuckled, tilting his face down until his palm rubbed over his cheek. “You can spew whatever bullshit you want to make yourself feel better, Monster, but I’ve been in your father’s house for years.”
“I’m aware, thank you,” I said, closing the drawer harshly. The soft-close feature caught it before the drawer could slam, and the feature enraged me further when I couldn’t take joy in the resulting noise.
He lowered his arms to rest flatly against the countertop, leaning forward with his eyes gleaming playfully. “So I have seen the way you looked cowed out of fear. You never would have dared to act this way in your father’s home, because you knew just what would happen if you did. Say whatever you want about Calix, call him your enemy all you need to, but you would never act this way if you thought he would hurt you.”
I tore open another drawer, hating the truth to his words. I wouldn’t have dared to speak out against the comforts my father gave me or storm around the house in a fury. I’d stayed tucked away in my bedroom and feared the consequences of wandering.
What would I have done if I’d woken up in Damianos’s house this morning?
I’d have been grateful for him leaving me for the day, because it would’ve meant he wouldn’t touch me and I’d have some peace and quiet to come to terms with my thoughts on what had happened the night before.
I might not have even woken up this morning if I’d wed Damianos and he had realized I wasn’t a virgin. I swallowed, shoving the spoon I’d found into the plastic container of yogurt and forcing myself to scoop a bite into my mouth.
I sighed, placing the container on the counter as my hunger fled. Tears burned the back of my throat as I considered just how close to death I’d really come for my foolish attempt at a moment of freedom.
And it hadn’t even fucking mattered in the end. I’d still ended up in bed with the man who would become my husband. I just hadn’t known it.
“The honey is in the pantry,” Christian said, nodding his head toward the two cabinet doors that extended from the ceiling to the floor. I retreated to them, taking the moment to put a little distance between us. Christian’s betrayal and involvement in my deception hurt almost as much as the loss of the boy I’d loved when I’d been a girl. I couldn’t let him know that there was even a part of me that was grateful to be alive—to be in Calix’s home and not Damianos’s, suffering the ramifications of however he’d seen fit to punish me for my indiscretion.
I tugged open the cabinet doors, my eyes widening when they parted to reveal a walk-in pantry. Foods of every type lined the shelves, perfectly organized like in a model home. I had to wonder if it was Calix who required such order or if there was a housekeeper with a penchant for it.
I found the honey in a prominent place, snagging it off one of the smaller shelves at eye level. It would seem I wasn’t the only one in the house who liked to enjoy straggisto in the more traditional way.
Taking a deep breath before I walked back out, I tried not to even glance at the chocolate treats organized in clear bins on the shelf below the honey. The rebellious part of me wanted to eat every last one, to enjoy the sweets in a way I hadn’t been allowed since my father had destroyed the ones Calix had given me as a girl.
I turned my back on them, the haunting memory of a cane cracking against my hands making my fingers ache when I even considered it.
I stepped back into the kitchen, closing the cabinets behind me to hide the pantry once more. Christian’s eyes were heavy on the side of my face as I moved through the space, turning the honey over and squirting a small dollop into my yogurt. “You good?” he asked, sliding off the counter stool. He didn’t move to step around the island between us, staying on his side as if he feared I may strike him if he wandered too close.
Thanks to him, I could probably make a single hit count—at least a little bit.
“I’m fine. I don’t have much choice, do I?” I asked, scoffing at him.
“Why are you so angry with me? Calix I can understand. He deceived you that night in the hotel…”
“Why am I so angry with you?” I asked, my voice rising in disbelief as I dropped the spoon into my yogurt. “I trusted you!”
“How have I broken that trust? Because I work for your husband instead of your father? My job was always to keep you as safe as I could. That was true regardless of which man signed my paycheck at the end of the day, Thalia,” Christian said, keeping his voice gentle. But I could hear the note of irritation.
The fucker thought I was being unreasonable.
“You knew when you made the arrangements for me to go to that hotel. You and Calix set me up,” I protested, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at him.
“I told him you would be there. I didn’t make you fall into bed with him, Monster. Did you really think I’d allow you to skip out on Damianos if you were going to be his wife? Fuck’s sake, you might as well have asked me to just kill you myself,” he argued.
I threw my spoon at him, narrowly missing his forehead when he twisted to the side. The metal clanged against the floor in the dining room behind him. “Fuck you,” I growled.
“You went there to get laid. You got what you wanted, and because of Calix you are still alive in spite of it. Everyone who has ever hurt you lies dead and rotting now, and you complain about broken trust? What kind of trust could you have had in me, if I’d allowed you to continue to suffer?”
“The kind where I would at least know exactly where you stand. I would know you were loyal to the man you vowed to serve, even if I hated him with a passion that rivals the wrath of Ares himself!” I snapped, watching him warily as he stepped around the island and approached. All the fight drained slowly out of me slowly, the next words tearing free from the deepest parts of me I wanted to hide. “I thought you were my friend in a world where I couldn’t have them.”
Christian’s face gentled, and he cautiously reached out with a single hand to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I still am. I know all about your interest in the flowers and the way you cry when you look at the fields behind the house and think of the narcissus that grew there when your mother was alive. I know about all the nights you draw in your room when everyone else is sleeping. I know you have a fucking mean left hook that I wouldn’t want you to land,” he said, his words trailing off into a chuckle as he dropped his forehead to mine and stared at me meaningfully. “I’ve learned everything I could about you, all the little things that make you who you are. I just didn’t learn them for me—not really. They were for Calix, the man who waited for you to be his.”
“Why did he wait so long?” I asked, hating the way the statement betrayed the real reason for my upset. I wouldn’t have been nearly as sad if Calix had come for me years ago, if he’d rescued me from my life of abuse sooner.
“He couldn’t, Monster. I swear to you; he came as soon as he possibly could. When they banished him, they stripped him of all his family money and every bit of influence he could have hoped to wield to save you. He had to work his way up from the bottom all over again, but believe me when I tell you there wasn’t a moment that passed where he wasn’t worried for you. Where he wasn’t dreaming of the day that he could give you your vengeance and free you from them,” he said.
“Some freedom this is,” I argued, huffing as I stepped back and glared down at the yogurt I no longer wanted. My hunger had indeed fled, the stress threatening to consume me as I wondered what my new future would look like. More years of living for Malva’s sake, certainly.
“Give it time. Philadelphia is a dangerous place for you right now until Calix can finish taking control of the council and the city, and he has to protect you,” Christian said.
“He has to protect his interest in using me to gain access to the Karras seat, you mean,” I said, grabbing the yogurt and tossing it into the garbage can.
“Now you’re just being deliberately obtuse. I can’t wait to watch you eat your words,” he said, laughing as he walked toward the sliding glass doors to the back patio and the pool.
He always had needed to get the last word.
The shit.
