‘I‘m sorry about the inconvenience, officer,’ my brother tries to reason with the men who’d arrested me, probably bribing them in exchange for letting me go.
I turn my gaze to the floor, digging the heel of my shoe into the dirty road and watching how a few ants surge out of the earth and scramble around my foot. I hum a quiet melody as I keep my eyes on them, ignoring my brother and the soon departing police cars.
‘You really went and did it this time, Noelle,’ he says, exasperated, as he reaches my side. ‘For God’s sake, you could have killed yourself. You don’t even know how to drive!’
I raise my head to look at him, blinking. Once. Twice.
Then I resume my ant watching.
‘Noelle!’ He snaps, grabbing my hand and urging me to pay attention to him. ‘Goddamn it, this is not what I signed up for,’ he mumbles under his breath.
My fists clench by my side, my lips curling in annoyance.
Of course it’s not what he signed up for. It never is.
‘What do you want?’ I finally ask, narrowing my eyes at him. My throat is sore as I say the words, my voice that harsh sound that I’ll never get used to.
And it’s all his fault.
‘You promised mother you’d behave.’
I shrug.
‘Noelle, I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.’
‘Who asked you?’ I ask, my words bitter. ‘Go back to your wife and leave me alone. It’s the least you can do.’ I grit my teeth, stopping myself from hurling all the insults crossing my mind.
‘That’s exactly the issue. I can’t leave you alone,’ he sighs, leaning back and placing his hands in his pockets. ‘Mother can’t deal with you anymore, and you can’t be left to your own devices. Clearly,’ he mutters drily as his gaze moves past me to the car currently stuck in a ditch.
‘I’m twenty-two. I’m an adult.’ My eyes flash at him in protest.
‘You might be an adult, but your medical file says you need supervision.’
It takes everything in me not to start screaming at him at the mention of the medical file. Of course he’d hold that over my head, as if he weren’t the main culprit behind my condition.
‘Whatever,’ I keep my tone in check. ‘Take me home.’
I turn on my heel, going to the car he’d parked on the other side of the road.
‘Noelle,’ he calls out, but I don’t listen. I just continue walking, sliding into the passenger seat and waiting for him to take me home.
After all, there’s nothing to be said between the two of us. Not that there ever was.
‘Damn it,’ he curses as he settles into the driver’s seat, buckling his seatbelt and resting his hands on top of the wheel.
‘Some things need to change, Noelle. I can’t gallivant around the city to get you out of every trouble you get yourself into.’
‘No one asked you,” I simply reply, my gaze distant.
‘So that’s it. You want to go to jail?’
‘At least in jail I’ll be my own person,’ I shrug.
‘Fucking hell,’ he groans. ‘You know you’re not well. You know that, and you still pull stunts like this?’ He shakes his head at me, his features filled with disappointment.
Once upon a time, I might have cared.
Not now.
Not after everything that’s happened.
I shrug.
‘And whose fault is that?’ I throw the jibe at him, reveling on the inside at the way he blanches, his lips pursed, his entire countenance changed.
I know he feels guilty. And that’s even worse. Because he’d known what he was doing to me, but he’d done it anyway. For his fucking selfish reasons.
Since I’d returned, he’d never even asked me what happened to me, because if he knew—if he really knew—then he wouldn’t be able to still look me in the eye, or demand anything of me.
But that’s just the thing. No one asked me. Everyone circles around the issue, knowing that something’s wrong, but not wanting to know exactly what.
He doesn’t reply as he clenches his hands over the wheel, steering the car on the road and doing his best not to explode on me. His body language tells me he’s barely holding himself together and an instinctual sliver of fear goes through me at the thought he might snap—truly snap.
‘I talked to our mother,’ he says as we enter the city. ‘We’ve decided that it’s no longer a viable option for you to stay with her.’
‘What?’ I whip my head around, surprised at his words.
‘You can’t blame her, can you? She’s nearing her sixties, Noelle, and since you’ve come back you’ve given her heart attack after heart attack. She can’t go on like this, wondering if the next time you act out you’re going to turn up into a body bag—or worse, not at all.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I frown.
‘You’re coming to live with us in the city. You’ll go to your therapy appointments and you will learn how to act like a fucking human being again.’
‘Why, so you can sell me again?’ I ask drily.
He doesn’t answer my taunt, although I note the way his body is teeming with unreleased tension.
‘Why can’t you just let me live? Why can’t I have my own life?’
‘Because you can’t. Not only are you not mentally fit for that, but you know that someone of your standing can never have a normal life.’ He gives a dry laugh. ‘This might be the twenty-first century, and you might have more freedoms than a lot of women before you, but you’re still a DeVille, Noelle. And that comes with dangers.’
My lips stretch into a thin line as I turn to look at his profile. I know that he’s right, and that hurts even more. Because every little thing I do to rebel—to feel I’m still my own person—does nothing more than prove to me that I wouldn’t be able to survive even one second in the real world on my own.
‘Then what am I supposed to do for the rest of my life? Wither away in loneliness?’
‘Who said anything about loneliness? You’ll have your family. And I can even arrange for you to meet with eligible bachelors…’
‘Oh,’ I laugh ironically. ‘You do plan to sell me again.’
‘I didn’t sell you,’ he answers through gritted teeth. ‘And I’m not going to sell you.’
‘Sure,’ I snort. ‘You just exchanged me.’
‘Noelle, this is for your own good. I’m sure you’ll want a family of your own at some point, and I’m willing to work with you to achieve that.’
‘After I’m not crazy anymore, right? Because that’s all I am now. Crazy, deranged. A lunatic.’
‘Don’t call yourself that,’ he chides. ‘It’s normal to be affected in a certain way after what you went through. And you’ll move past it.’
‘By locking me up,’ I mutter.
‘Noelle,’ he takes a deep breath. ‘You totaled the car. You were lucky you didn’t get hurt. What about next time? Aren’t you tired of these tantrums?’
‘Tantrums?’ I lean back, scandalized.
‘I know you’re doing this for attention, and maybe I should have intervened before. But I’m doing it now.’
I scoff at him, anger simmering inside of me and threatening to rise to the surface the more he talks.
Attention?
He thinks I’m doing this for attention?
‘You know nothing,’ I hiss at him. ‘You’re just a sick control freak, trying to keep everyone around you on a tight leash.’
‘Maybe,’ he chuckles. ‘I might be a control freak. But you’re moving in with me and Yuyu. That’s already been decided. I’ve sent Alfredo to pick up your luggage from mother’s house.’
And so I realize that no matter what I say to him, he won’t change his mind.
Everyone thinks I need constant supervision, but they don’t realize that they are only stifling me, making me feel even more trapped. And after everything that happened…
We ride in silence until we reach his house. Stepping inside the brownstone, I’m suddenly struck by my childhood memories—admittedly the only certain and relatively pleasant memories in my life.
I look around the hallway, the pristine staircase in the middle, surrounded by a combination of black and white furniture and walls.
My brother had had everything redone after our father had died, and he’d transformed the entire place to suit his personality—clinical and detached. Laughter bubbles inside of me at that thought. Since when has he ever been anything but?
Everything is familiar yet foreign, just like the people residing here.
‘Cisco?’ A feminine voice asks before her figure emerges down the stairs.
She’s small and dainty, wearing a sheer nightgown covered by a satin robe. Her hand rests atop her belly as she’s cradling her bump.
‘Yuyu,’ he calls out her name, his voice suddenly shifting to a gentler tone, his eyes softening as he looks at his wife.
Of course.
After all, isn’t she the reason he’d given me up?
‘And Noelle,’ her eyes widen when she sees me. ‘What a surprise to see you here.’
‘Yeah, she had a narrow encounter with the police today,’ my brother mentions, going to Yuyu’s side to help her.
His hand immediately settles on the small of her back in an affectionate gesture that I’ve never seen directed towards anyone else—not even me, his own blood.
I school my features, not wanting to give away just how out of place I feel here.
‘Really? Are you ok?’ She turns her gaze towards me, her features drawn up in worry.
It would be so easy to hate her. But I can’t. Not when I know that she’s not a bad person at all. She’d been a victim of circumstances just like me.
My brother on the other hand… He’s the one who orchestrated everything. He knew what he was doing and he just did not care.
‘Where’s my room?’ I ask flippantly, not wanting to stay around for small talk. Yuyu might be a nice person, but I’m not about to sit here and pretend everything is ok when it’s not.
‘Do you want some hot chocolate? I was just about to make myself some and…’
‘No, thank you.’ I answer curtly, earning myself a scowl from Cisco. ‘The room. I want to sleep,’ I tap my foot restlessly. At the moment, the only thing I want is to be alone, without any pitying glances or condescending voices.
Without having anyone tell me what I have to do.
‘Greta,’ my brother yells for his housekeeper, his eyes watching me intently. ‘Please show my sister to her room,’ he instructs her when she appears from the back of the house. ‘The usual room,’ he nods at her.
As Greta leads me up the stairs, I can’t help but glance back at Cisco and Yuyu, witnessing a rare tender moment for my brother as he leans in to brush his lips against her forehead, murmuring something against her skin. He places his hand on her bump, rubbing it and smiling at something Yuyu says.
That sight of happiness on my brother’s face is foreign to me. Growing up, I’d barely seen him so much as crack a smile. He’d certainly never bothered with me, mostly keeping aloof and to his own business.
Later, when he’d taken the leadership mantle, our relationship had just become more and more strained, until he’d done the unforgivable—he’d sold his own family for a stranger.
I’d never thought him capable of doing anything to go against the interests of the family, but for Yuyu… He’d done the impossible. Sometimes I wish I could hate her as much as I hate him. After all, if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have suffered so much.
There’s a light pressure in my chest as Greta unlocks the door to my room, inviting me inside and quickly getting me clean linens and towels.
When she finally leaves, I find myself enclosed between four walls, the darkness of the night providing a modicum of comfort.
Stripping my clothes, I take a tentative step inside the bathroom, heading for the shower. But as I tiptoe across the tiled floor, I can’t help but turn my head, my gaze colliding with the wall-sized mirror at the other end of the bathroom.
A shiver of revulsion goes down my spine at the sight of my body—at the many scars that no one knows exist.
That no one wants to acknowledge exist.
From head to toe, my entire back is covered in scars, some white, some red, and all the shades in between.
I gulp down, pushing the feeling of déjà vu away. I remember how I’d gotten some of them. Others…not so much.
Shaking myself, I step inside the shower, finally letting out a relieved breath as the hot water touches my skin, the steam infiltrating my pores and offering long awaited relaxation.
If my mother is done with me, then maybe I have finally gone off the rails. God knows, I’ve certainly done everything that had crossed my mind in order to get a rise out of them. From shoplifting, to getting drunk, to stealing a car and driving without a license… But that’s just the issue.
They don’t understand.
They don’t get it that I don’t even know who I am anymore, or that I feel like a fucking prisoner in my own body and in my own home. They don’t understand anything of what I had to endure all that time I was away.
They know what the doctors told them—a quick medical exam that identified everything that was wrong with me. But they don’t know the root of it. They don’t know that they sent me to the wolves and they chewed me up alive, spitting me out broken and damaged.
They don’t know, and they don’t want to know.
And that hurts the most.
