Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
“That’s rich,” he says. “Back on your knees, dandelion girl.”
My heart pounds but I ignore the voice inside my head telling me to do as he says and stand my ground. It’s dangerous, I know, but I’ve never been good at taking orders.
“No.”
One corner of his mouth curves upward as he exhales, shakes his head, and in the next instant, his hand is in my hair. Mine wraps around his forearm, and he’s pushing me down, crouching with me as my knees hit the floor. I think I should have saved my dagger for now. For this brother.
“I remember you. Hell, I can still hear the tune you were singing. Not a care in the fucking world,” he says.
“You’re making a mistake. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. Whatever happened to your sister, I’m sorry about it, but it has nothing to do with me or my family.”
“But you’re here now. Ours,” he says as if he hasn’t heard me at all. He brings his face closer and inhales like a predator might his prey. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my ear and down my neck when he speaks. “Ours to punish. To level the scales.”
His hand tightens in my hair, and a tear slips from the corner of my eye.
“When I say kneel, what do you do, dandelion girl?” He tugs my head backward painfully, and I make an involuntary sound as more tears come. I swear he’s going to break my neck.
“What. Do. You. Do?” he asks again.
“I kneel.”
He releases me and straightens. I stumble onto my hands and see the dirt on his shoes. I wonder if it’s from the cemetery. God. Did all of that happen just yesterday?
“Good girl,” he says condescendingly. “It’ll be in your best interest to remember that.” He looks around the room. “I think my brother was right to keep you.”
I don’t like the grin on his face.
He walks to the door, and I watch him go. “You get some reading in. There may be a pop quiz, and you won’t want to fuck that up.”
8
Vittoria
I shudder, exhaling as I watch the space he just stood. A hint of aftershave lingers as the minutes pass, and I remain sitting on my heels, unable to move.
Hannah Del Campo. Fourteen years old. Dead.
Nameless child to be buried separately.
The field of rich green grass dotted with the brightest yellow flowers flashes in my mind’s eye. The soldier who’d been left to watch me while my dad and brother ran an errand had gone off to piss against the wall of the tiny house. I don’t know how many children that age hold on to memories, but I remember giggling at that before slipping out of the car to pick a bouquet. I thought they were daffodils.
I glance at the dandelions on the table now. The book sits like a dark thing before the limp, dying flowers. I push myself to my feet. My knees feel raw, scratched by the carpet. I sit back down in that chair, and I remember his eyes. The almost unbearable pain I saw inside them when he opened it to that page. To the girl’s photo.
Does your brother still like to fuck little girls?
Nausea swells in my stomach, and the food I ate threatens to come up. I force it down and open the book to that page. I look at the girl’s face. She was pretty with big brown eyes and a dimple in her right cheek as she smiled at the photographer. Although the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Inside them is a shadow.
I force myself to read Hannah Del Campo’s obituary. She was at the top of her class at the school she attended, a large public school in a lower-middle class neighborhood of Philadelphia. We had a two-story penthouse just minutes from the neighborhood but a world apart. She loved to dance. Ballet was her favorite, but she’d recently fallen in love with modern dance. The cause of death isn’t stated, but the date is the same as the unnamed child who was stillborn. Did she die in childbirth?
I look at her photo again. She looks too young to have been pregnant. Fourteen is too young. I went to an all-girls catholic school where my every movement was monitored. I know circumstances are different for most people. I know I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth with a mother who loved me and a father who would dote on me. Who made me feel like the center of the universe. It caused trouble between Lucien and me. Lucien was jealous of our father’s attention, but he was thirteen years older than me. Our father had divorced his mother to marry mine, and I know Lucien resented her and probably me as a product of that love that took his father from his mother.