Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Perhaps I wasn’t Medusa, but Persephone. Royce was Hades, the king of the underworld. He’d come to carry me down into his dark world, make me his unwilling bride and his queen.
She didn’t stay unwilling, did she?
The myth said once Persephone had been granted her freedom by Zeus, lovesick Hades tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds. This meant she had to return to her husband in the underworld.
In some versions, Persephone ate the seeds knowingly. She wanted the excuse to return to him.
The women in the room were thankfully oblivious. They both rushed toward me.
“You’ll wear your hair up,” Alice said. She gathered my hair in her hands and held it against the crown of my head.
Donna’s cold fingers slipped into the back of the dress and tugged it tight. “It’ll have to be taken in.”
“Earrings?” Alice asked the designer. “Or necklace? I don’t want to ruin the neckline.”
There was no discussion if this was the right one, and Royce hadn’t given his approval. I turned and looked at him over my shoulder while the women continued to fuss at me. “Do you like it?”
“I do.” His voice was thick like honey. “Very much.”
God, that stare. My mouth went dry.
For the first time ever, I wanted the initiation to get here quicker. All the sooner we’d both be able to satisfy our cravings.
I stood in the kitchen and lay my hands flat on the countertop to prevent myself from hurling the stack of envelopes at my mother. I was livid. So angry, it solidified my muscles and made my back ache from the weight of it.
It had been a month since Macalister had shattered my world. And in that time, miraculously, no bills had arrived.
Last week I’d started going through the mail as soon as I was home from my appointments with Alice or the event coordinator. But there’d been nothing. Not even an electric bill.
Something wasn’t right. Macalister had said the house was in default, so there would be notices. Foreclosing wasn’t something that just happened overnight. It was a long, tedious process with a paper trail. Even if he’d stopped his bank’s foreclosure, it’d take days before the system processed it.
This morning I’d told my family I’d be gone all day, but I’d lied. At one o’clock, I’d lurked in the guest bedroom upstairs that had the best view of the driveway, and I waited. The mail truck rumbled up twenty minutes later and deposited a thick stack of envelopes into our mailbox. It had only just pulled away when my mother walked down the drive.
My suspicions rose exponentially as she stood at the mailbox, sorting the letters into two piles. Maybe she was weeding out the junk mail, but in my gut, I knew it was wishful thinking. As she disappeared from view and back into the house, I closed my eyes and said a little prayer.
Downstairs, there were footsteps as my mother moved around in the kitchen. A cabinet door creaked open and then thumped shut. More sounds as the water ran in the sink.
I’d seen my mother do dishes before, but up until recently, it had been a rare occurrence. Delphine had been let go, and we were all feeling the loss, but my mother had been hit the hardest. Not just in housework and meals, either. Delphine had been part of our family.
I forced myself to sound light and casual. “Hey. Did the mail come yet?”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were home.” She bobbed her head in a nod. “It’s there on the counter.” She used one wet hand to point to the stack, and a sickening, sour taste filled my mouth.
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“What?” she asked over the running water.
My voice was loud and pointed. “The rest of the mail, Mom.”
She stilled. Slowly, she turned off the water and turned to face me, her panic barely disguised. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Shit, she was a terrible liar. I strode over to the cabinets that weren’t used often, throwing open the doors, one after another, searching.
“Marist, stop,” she cried.
It only fueled me to keep going. When I reached for the next one, she sucked in a deep breath. It was because when I jerked the door open, I was meet with several shelves of mail. The cabinet was fucking full.
Weeks’ worth of bills had been hidden here.
I scooped out a stack of letters in disbelief, some of them spilling onto the counter below. There were red ‘past due’ and ‘urgent’ stamps on a few. Not a single one had been opened. I set my hands on the counter, infuriated and crushed with disappointment.
She whispered, “I know you’re upset, but—”
“Yes.” The voice that spoke didn’t sound like it belonged to me, but it couldn’t have come from anyone else.
Her bottom lip trembled. “It’s just . . . you have so much on your plate right now, and your father and I didn’t want you to worry.”