that woke her up.
Sounds, to be precise. A loud noise, like the whirring of a machine and the chatter of two women.
She came to in the bed, her eyes blinking to adjust to the beautiful sunlight streaming in from the windows. The view, which had been majestic and dangerous yesterday, looked sublime and inviting today.
Jumping out of the bed, she walked to the deck, looking at the shimmering grayish-blue water of the bay and the magnificent rocky peaks, the sunlight on her skin warming her to the bones.
Taking in a full, deep breath, she turned on her heel and decided to begin her day by investigating what the noise was.
A deep red rose on the bedside table, one that hadn’t been there the previous night, caught her eye. Picking it up, mindful of the thorns, she examined it, realizing it was a fresh cut and not an eternal rose. A note sat on the side.
‘How do you like your home?’
Lyla blinked, reading the words again. Her home? No, he must’ve meant ‘my’ home and misspelled it.
Wondering what time it was and how long she’d been slumbering, how she hadn’t heard him enter and leave the rose and the note, she walked out of the room, only to come to a halt at two females—a young girl and an older woman—in the area.
Immediately, her guards went up, making her realize how low she’d actually let them go within a day of being there. She wanted to demand who they were and what they were doing there, but her throat locked up. She couldn’t talk to people anymore; strangers scared her. It was different when she was working—she knew what was expected of her then—but she didn’t know what was expected of her now, and she didn’t know how to react.
Without a word, she slowly started to retreat back into her room when the older woman glanced up at her, her face showing surprise.
“Good morning, Mrs. Blackthorne!”
She froze. What the fuck?
Startled at the address, she stared at the older lady in wonder. She didn’t know if he had told them she was his wife or they had simply assumed, but for some reason, she did not correct her.
“P… please call me Lyla,” she offered in return, stumbling but catching herself, the woman’s warm smile making her feel strange.
“Yes, Lyla,” the older woman accepted. “I’m Bessie, and this one here—” she pointed to the younger girl “—is Nikki.”
Not really sure what the polite response was to small talk, since this was probably the first conversation she was having like this, she just gave them a small smile. It felt odd on her face, the sides lifting slightly, the muscles unused for so long. An awkward silence filled the space, before Bessie, blessed woman that she was, looked at her rose, her smile splitting her cheeks.
“I see Mr. Blackthorne has been using the garden. Have you seen it yet?”
Lyla shook her head, and the older woman, maybe intuitive, maybe perceptive, didn’t make any comment on her lack of reactions. She beckoned her forward with one hand, leaving aside the vacuum cleaner that she had been holding—the source of the noise. Hesitantly, Lyla walked forward, glancing at Nikki who stared at her with slightly cool eyes like the girls in the complex had.
“We hadn’t even known he was married until a few days ago,” Bessie kept talking, drawing her attention back. “He was always here alone, and we all just thought he was one of them bachelors, you know?”
“Who all?” Lyla asked, following Bessie as she led her to the main double doors of the house.
“The villagers mainly. When he bought this land and started building the house, gave lots of us jobs. I take care of the house. My husband takes care of the green, and Nikki takes care of the kitchen.”
The calm, comforting way Bessie talked made Lyla relax a bit. “How many people…?”
“Work here?”
She nodded.
“About six,” the older woman opened the door. “We’re all day staff since the village is just a few minutes away. At night, there’s only security at the main gate and those were brought from the outside by Mr. Blackthorne.”
Fascinating.
The kind of man he’d always seemed, a lone wolf, she hadn’t ever imagined him as having people working under him. But it fit him. He was commanding.
“Does he stay here all the time?”
The odd look Bessie gave her made her realize she’d slipped. If she were his wife, she’d know this already. Biting her tongue when the urge to overcorrect herself came, she turned to look outside and stopped short. A long porch wrapped around the house, stairs leading down to a pathway. One side of the pathway, the side that dipped down into the cliff, was completely paved with cement, a large honest-to-god black helicopter sitting there. A helicopter.
Mouth agape, she looked to the other side of the pathway, green lush grass beginning to span the slope, her eyes coming to rest on a glass shed a little way down.
“That’s the greenhouse.”
Of course, he had a greenhouse. She wouldn’t be surprised if the next door she opened led to a throne room made of gold.
Surprised at her own sarcastic thought, she pulled up short, shaking her head. Sarcasm wasn’t familiar to her, but it felt nice.
‘Dr. Manson will be here tomorrow to see you.’
Lyla blinked. ‘Who’s Dr. Manson?’
Bessie gave her a warm smile as she led them to the greenhouse. ‘I’m sure Mr. Blackthorne must have told you.’
He hadn’t, but she bit her tongue not to give anything away.
And that was how her morning passed. Taking a tour of the greenhouse as Bessie introduced her to an older gentleman working there—her husband—and showed her where the property line was, quite far away from the house. The property was fenced with barbed wires, and she wondered for a moment if that’s where he got the barbed wire from when he strangled Two and Three.
The dark thought was a good reminder that no matter how much finesse he showed to the world, how convinced Bessie and the staff were that he was a wonderful man—oh, he had them fooled—he was still the devil, and this was still her prison.
***
Bessie showed her where the tea was and showed her how to operate the tablet to look up anything she wanted. ‘Mr. Blackthorne is so thoughtful.’
That he was. He thought of everything and that’s what made him so good. The staff was eating out of his hands, and Nikki wanted to fuck him. Had she fucked him? The thought unsettled her.
That was what she’d perceived in a day of being there.
Oh, and he had a helicopter on standby.
Still grappling with all the new information thrown her way, she shook herself.
Finally alone in the house after an insightful but exhausting day, she poured a cup of water in a pan and placed it on the fancy burner to boil. Bessie had showed her how to operate the dials, telling her that usually Nikki came during the day and prepared the meals.
The warring factions inside her were not quitting. One part of her wanted to escape and never see him again, the part that was angry and hurt and betrayed by him. The other part wanted to stay with him, be with him, actually find herself with him, the part of her that had fallen for the man over the years. But had she fallen for him or what he had represented—safety, power and control, all things she hadn’t had?
She didn’t know.
Looking at the tablet sitting on the kitchen counter, she opened it and typed into the search bar.
‘Blackthorne’.
She got thousands of results, but nothing she could really find relevant to him. She tried again.
‘Shadow Man.’
Same. Too inconclusive. She gave up.
Looking at the blinking cursor, she typed again.
‘How to stop suicidal thoughts?’
Articles upon articles popped up on the screen, along with a helpline number that she couldn’t call because she didn’t have a phone. She clicked on the first article and read through slowly, her comprehensive speed not as fast as normal people.
#1. Talk to your friends or family.
She put the tablet down, breathing in through her mouth, her eyes welling up. She wouldn’t be fucking suicidal if she had friends and family in the first place. All she had was him, and talking to him… she’d never really talked to him. Should she try? Forgetting the past, since this was her new reality, should she try for her own peace of mind?
Deciding she was going to do just that one day when she was ready, talk to the only person she could talk to freely, she turned to the now-boiling water. Blinking again, she turned the gas off and opened the search bar again.
‘How to make tea?’
Following the steps, in a few minutes, she had the drink steaming in a mug. Adding a spoonful of sugar, terrified for some reason, Lyla brought the rim of the mug to her lips, taking a tiny sip.
And she fell in love.
She had made herself good tea.
One thing at a time.
***
Dr. Manson was an old, wrinkled dark-skinned man with sharp but warm eyes. He came calling the next day and sat in the greenhouse, and Lyla froze because she didn’t know what to do.
‘Bessie,’ the older man smiled at the woman accompanying her. ‘Would you please bring us some tea while I get to know the lovely Mrs. Blackthorne?’
‘Lyla,’ she automatically corrected him, and the man gave her a gentle smile, asking her to sit on the chair in front of him. The greenhouse was sunlit and beautiful, and warm enough in the cold to sit comfortably in.
Lyla sat down gingerly, not knowing what to do or say as Bessie left.
‘I’m a retired psychologist,’ Dr. Manson broke the silence after a few minutes. ‘My wife and I moved to Bayfjord many years ago, and while I don’t see clients anymore, Mr. Blackthorne was very persuasive.’
Lyla stared at him for a second, biting her lip. ‘What… what do you do exactly?’
‘I help people deal with their mental issues.’
She had mental issues. She knew that. ‘What kind of issues?’
Dr. Manson tilted his head to the side. ‘Whatever kind you want help with. But only if you want my help. Do you want my help, Lyla?’
Hesitantly, she nodded.
The older man smiled. ‘Great. Then know, that going forward, whatever you tell me will remain between us. Even though Mr. Blackthorne employs me, he won’t know anything we discuss. Is that alright with you?’
It felt odd to be asked so many questions, like her choice in them mattered. She nodded again.
‘Good. Then tell me anything about yourself.’
Taking a deep breath, she began to stutter her way through some of her trauma.
***
It took her a few days to recover from the after-effects of the drugs. She slept a lot, day and night, and mostly stayed in her room, or sat on the deck watching the view unless Dr. Manson called her to the greenhouse every afternoon. While she hadn’t talked to him about everything, even talking a little was slowly making her feel better. She told him about the tea incident, and he told her it was most probably an anxiety attack, that she would probably have more of them randomly until she gradually healed. He told her to talk to Mr. Blackthorne too, to try and find some middle ground between them, since she clearly cared for him.
Except Mr. Blackthorne was giving her apace. He came to her with trays of food, made sure she ate, and let her be. And for some reason, she both appreciated and abhorred that.
She took that time to come to terms with the fact that she had actually done something to end her life, and in the hole she had been, she didn’t blame herself. But as the days passed, and she spent time alone in this beautiful place, somehow never feeling alone because she knew he was somewhere in the house, she also admitted that she didn’t want to stay in that hole. She wanted to come out of it and she wanted to live. She wanted to experience beauty and feel like she belonged. She wanted to have him hold her and promise that she would never be hurt again. And knowing him, despite the last six months, she would believe him because she had the evidence of the last few years.
For the first time in a few days, she ventured outside the bedroom to find him on the couch watching TV. Hesitating on the landing, she tentatively walked over to where he sat with one muscular arm on the back of the couch, the other holding the remote.
At the sight of her, he muted the sound, but a couple kept kissing on the screen.
Fascinated, her eyes glued to the visual as she took a seat in the corner of the couch, she watched the man hold the woman’s face in his hands, gently teasing her lips with his as airplanes flew in the background.
Throat dry, she asked. “What are you watching?”
“A romantic movie.”
The answer, coming from him of all people, felt so ridiculous a bubble of laughter left her throat, the sound strangled halfway as she recognized it.
Her hand went to her neck, her eyes flying to him, only for her body to freeze as she saw the intensity of his gaze on her.
“I… laughed,” she murmured, still stunned.
“Do it again.”
“What?”
“I want to hear it again.”
It was ridiculous. “I can’t do it again.”
Before she could blink, she was flat on her back on the couch and he was looming over her, one of his hands pinning her wrists above her head, the other on her ribs. Heart pounding, she gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Making you laugh again.” With that, he began to prod the side of her ribs in quick motions that made her squeal and struggle to get away from him, sensations buzzing on her skin.
He was tickling her. The feared Shadow Man was tickling her.
The thought itself was so ridiculous, added to the motion of his fingers, that she began to laugh. “Stop, stop, stop, please!” She begged in between bouts of laughter, trying to move away from his hand but unable to in his hold, tears running down her cheeks with the intensity of her release, a high like never before buzzing in her head.
After long moments, he stopped, his hand stilling, both his hands coming to the side of her head, caging her in between as she caught her breath. His hypnotic eyes swirled with something hot, his face inches from hers as she stared up at him, her eyes flickering to his lips.
She remembered once thinking about her kiss, thinking about how intimate she wanted it to be. Her heart was still wounded.
The reminder sobered her.
“You hurt me,” she whispered between them, her eyes welling up.
He leaned his weight on one arm, moving her short hair back from her wet cheeks with the other.
“I know.”
An exhale left her at the acknowledgement from him, at knowing she was valid in feeling how she felt and he accepted that. He simply traced her tears with his thumb for a long moment while she took him in, his eyes on her eyes, his weight on her body, and felt something opening tentatively inside her.
“They broke me.”
The words left her, and his thumb came to her quivering lower lip, steadying it, his intense eyes on hers.
“And they will pay.”
The words, the exact words, he’d said to her before setting the man who’d drugged her on fire. The promise of vengeance and retribution she knew he would carry through, because he always had. Though he had left her for the last few months, he had been there through the years, and factions within her warred remembering both. It felt so long ago and it felt like yesterday.
Taking his dark promise to heart, she wrapped her arms around his solid weight on her, and pressed her face into his neck, breathing him in. It had been so long since she’d been held, so long since she’d held anyone, her body, her mind, her soul aching with the hunger of simply touching another and feeling safe. She was still not fully put together but slightly more than she had been in the morning. Maybe she would never be whole. But maybe, one day she wouldn’t be as broken either. And that alone gave her some hope.
One thing at a time.
