Page 61 of Tainted Blood
She hovers in the doorway again, as if staked in place by a burning question. “I’ll never forget the day they came to take you away to Il Labirinto. The look on your face… I don’t think I’d ever have been that strong.”
You are already, Lola. You just don’t know it yet.
Chapter Seventeen
Thalia
The hot water feels like sin.
The way it trickles down my body is like a long-held confession that’s finally being spoken out loud.
I stay in the shower for hours, scrubbing every inch of my skin; attempting to wash the last of a green maze and a black cellar away.
If only it were that easy.
At least my leg has healed. After Lola left earlier, a blonde woman showed a doctor into my room to remove the bandages and stitches. When I asked where Svetlana was, she gave me a look as if to say that name was as dirty around here as my father’s used to be.
The rest of me is still a fretwork of discolored bruises and welts, but the only real ache I have is in my heart. Everything feels like an off beat, and I don’t know how to get myself back in rhythm.
Opening up the closet door, I discover a rail of old clothes from an old life. I choose out a couple of items, but nothing looks right.
I move to the next closet, stepping into Santi’s extravagant haven of thousand-dollar dress suits and shirts. Shrugging into a black Brioni, I wander back over to the window, curling up the cuffs to my forearms. It’s sundown, and there’s still no sign of him.
In the end, I get sick of waiting and take the showdown to him.
My legs feel like cotton candy as I navigate the hallway toward the kitchen. After ten days in bed, each footstep feels like a mile. His black apartment is a scary place to be when you’re all alone and haunted, too. I keep seeing yaupon holly hedges instead of walls. I tell myself beautiful lies to keep me calm.
You’re safe now, Thalia. He can’t find you here.
But I know that’s bullshit.
The Black King can find me anywhere. His ghost town was just one of his many estates… He told me so himself.
The kitchen is empty, so I try the spare bedrooms. He’s not in his office either, but our history invites me in anyway. I can smell spice and sandalwood, and the restrained violence in his embrace.
I run my finger along the desk surface where the first glass layer of my innocence was shattered. I curl my fingers around a crystal decanter, knowing exactly what it contains, because that’s the flavor of his lust.
Everything in here looks and feels exactly like it did before. Except for me. And the opposite wall, which is now covered in photographs of people and places and old newspaper cuttings, with red string connecting them like a spider web of unsolved mysteries.
As I step closer, I start to recognize things, like the discarded shipping container that was our first cage, and Franco—the guard in Italy who beat me—now lying dead on the ground with his throat slit. I see a hilltop medieval town in flames. I see a fancy estate ablaze in the South of France. I see Aiden Knight, my father’s business associate in Monaco and the owner of the Black Skies Casino, the place where I first discovered I could count cards at seventeen. Underneath, is a picture of the man I stabbed in the eye and then in the chest twenty-three times without a shred of mercy.
All the red string seems to lead to one black and white photograph in the center. It’s a blurry image of a tall man disembarking from a private jet, but I know who it is right away.
My stomach lurches.
Il Re Nero.
I reach out to touch it, to prove to myself he’s not real—that here, in this room, he’s just a 2D image with as much bite as a papercut. One finger turns into two, and before I know it, I’m pointing them at his dark head like I’m aiming the barrel of a gun.
“When his end comes, muñequita, he’ll face more than imaginary bullets.”
I spin around to find Santi standing in the doorway.
I’ve never seen him dressed in anything other than a suit before, but tonight, he’s wearing black jeans slung low at his hips and a white T-shirt that defines every hard muscle in his chest and abdomen. There’s a guarded expression on his handsome face, and more…so much more. But they’re codes I can’t crack and locks I don’t have the key to. I used to think my father was the most unreadable man on Earth, but now I’m not so sure.
We stare at each other, the air fizzing with electricity. I don’t know much of anything anymore, but I know I still want him.
Despite the lies.