I didn’t trust him. Never would again, but I nodded at him that I understood and as soon as he left, closing the door behind him, I went to the dresser and began to shuffle through it.
I knew, or at least some part of me did, what I was looking for. I don’t think I really believed it would be there, but it was a thought somewhere in my mind.
Still, when I found the small, white velvet case I staggered a bit where I stood.
And, as I opened it, I had to sit down at what I found.
How? Why?
He must not have known what was in this dresser, I told myself. He couldn’t have.
And, while I could be a spiteful bitch, I was not a thief, so the first thing I did was track him down to give it back.
I heard his voice before I saw him, but no one else’s, and so I stumbled into them without any time to brace myself.
Blindly I reached one hand out, holding myself up with the wall, the other gripping the small, white box hard enough to imbed an imprint into my palm.
She was facing Dante, her back to me.
He saw me right away, and whatever he was saying trailed away, his attention properly caught at my presence.
At least I had that. No matter what he’d done, how he’d betrayed me, at least when I was there, he couldn’t look away from me.
Not even for her.
She caught on quickly that they were no longer alone, but I had enough time to recover before she turned and saw me.
I hated her like every creature since the dawn of time has hated its natural enemy.
Blind, fear-induced, debilitating hatred that never let me see past the moment to the big picture.
She was a threat, my gut told me now.
My gut had been telling me this since I was fourteen.
She needed to be eliminated—was all my mind could ever seem to process when it came to her, because one undeniable truth had always resonated through me—her existence meant the end of mine.
The end of everything I cared about. The end of the only thing I used to care about.
Still, I’d been so shocked when I’d been proven right.
A part of me, some pathetic thing deep down in my soul, still couldn’t believe it.
I gave her a lie of a smile. “Tiffany,” I said in greeting, my voice fake friendly.
“Scarlett,” she returned; her soft voice even and unaffected. She must have known I was at the house. She’d had warning.
I hadn’t been given the same courtesy. It was an effort not to glare at Dante for that.
“How’ve you been?” she asked, sounding like she actually cared.
Perhaps she did. If I was doing terribly, I knew she’d love to hear about it.
I studied her for a time, not answering. I hadn’t seen her in years, but she hadn’t changed much. She was still beautiful. It was an icy blonde, wintry blue-eyed beauty that appealed to men with a taste for the unattainable.
She was slight, rail thin, and petite, but somehow all the more intimidating for it, a delicate princess of a woman.
She, like Dante, was raised with money, and it had always been apparent in the way she dressed, wearing designer clothes even as a teenager. It was no different now. Her elegant black dress undoubtedly cost a small fortune, and her lavender stilettos were on point.
I hated her for it. And I hated that I was still wearing the comfortable, torn-up, old jeans, plain white tank, and worn to death gray Toms I’d traveled in.
I hated that her hair and makeup were done so heavily and precisely that I knew she’d had a stylist do it for the occasion.
I hated that my hair was a messy mane down my back, and my makeup was minimal and what there was likely smeared from travel.
Basically when it came to Tiffany, there was no end to things I found to hate. About her and myself.
The most toxic relationships in life are defined by the way they make us feel about ourselves. She and I were the worst of that. Whatever I was, always felt diminished by what she was.
“Just peachy,” I finally answered. “You?”
She smiled wistfully, like the question brought her joy, and turned to glance up, up, up at a much taller Dante.
Seeing them next to each other, especially standing so close, made me want to wretch.
It brought out the worst in me, seeing him with the woman he’d thrown me away for.
It made me feel, yet again—story of my life—like trash.
“I can’t complain, can I, Dante?” she asked him.
My eyes shot to him. I didn’t bother to hide the hate in them from him.
He was still staring at me. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t so much as twitched since he saw me enter the room.
I almost smiled, not a happy smile, more of a you made your bed now die in it, you fucker smile, because this had to be even more uncomfortable for him than it was for us, and that didn’t make me sad for him.
I almost felt a twinge of pity for him though.
Imagine the burden of being the only person that hateful little me had ever trusted.
Now imagine betraying that trust in all the ways that would hurt me the most.
Hell hath no fury.
Every hard thing inside of me turned harder still against him. Went from steel to diamond hard.
“I need a word,” I told him coldly, turned on my heel, and walked away.
He could follow me or not, but I couldn’t take even one more second in a room with the two of them. I’d do something violent if I had to endure any more.
He chose to follow, though I didn’t acknowledge him until I was back in my room, door closed behind us.
I held up the little white box. “This was in the dresser,” I spoke quietly. God only knew who was eavesdropping.
Not a muscle moved in his face. “Yes, I know. I’d put it somewhere safe before my mother shows up here if I were you.”
I just stared at him.
He shrugged. “It’s yours. Gram wanted you to have it. That much she made clear to me. It was hers to give. So take it. Like I said, keep it safe if you don’t want my mother to take it from you.”
I was shaking my head, but I said, “I can’t believe your mom didn’t already take it. It wasn’t even hidden.”
“Yes, I know. I put it in there right before you showed up. I’m well aware of how my mother operates. She no doubt ransacked the place before they’d even taken Gram’s body away.”
I took a few deep, bracing breaths and thrust the small object at him. “I don’t want it. You take it. I have no right to it now.”
He took a weighty step back, one so impactful I swayed where I stood. “You’re the only one with any right to it,” he said, tone dull, lifeless. “Whether you want it or not, I won’t take it. Either you keep it, or my mother will. I’ll let you decide.”
Without another word, he left.
I sat heavily on the bed, staring fixedly at the tiny thing.
I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, but one thing was for sure—I’d never be letting Dante’s mother have it, not if I got to have a say.
If for no other reason than pure spite, I’d keep it at least from her.
I began to unpack, hanging the few clothes I’d brought in the near empty closet.
I knew Dante had meant it literally about his mother ransacking the place, that even my luggage wasn’t safe from her grasping hands.
Luckily I’d packed a bit of jewelry for the trip. I found a small gold chain that ironically, but not surprisingly, Gram had given me, looped the object through it, and strung the thing around my neck, tucking it into my cleavage. The dress I was wearing would cover even the chain.
I hid the box in one of my shoes. If his mother found that much, it wouldn’t be good, but at least all she’d be getting was an empty box.
I began getting ready for the funeral almost right away. Nothing made a girl want to look her best more than facing a room full of her most despised enemies.
I spent nearly
an hour on makeup, going full out—smoky eyes, red lips, the works. I looked my best when polished to killing sharpness.
My hair was easier. I left it down. It was long and thick, a wavy, streaky brown mane down my back that needed only a bit of taming to look like I’d just come from a rather graceful tumble between the sheets, which suited me just fine.
I wore a form fitting black dress with a high collar. It was polyester made to look like silk, and it almost succeeded. What the dress did succeed in was accentuating every single one of my outrageous curves, the skirt hitting just above my knees.
I wore the red Louboutins Dante had given me (damn him) though it had been a struggle with myself to do so.
It was a testament to how much I hated the other people that would be attending the funeral that I’d let Dante see I hadn’t thrown them away, to let him see me wearing a gift he’d given me.
But desperate times called for desperate measures, and nothing made me feel more confident than a killer pair of shoes.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
“Jealousy is always born with love but it does not die with it.”
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld
PAST
When the teenage years hit, what Dante and I had just sort of turned, shifted a bit. It was an unspoken rule that we belonged to each other in a new and more possessive way.
We just made sense. Something naive inside of me couldn’t imagine anything else.
Neither of us could have tolerated someone soft.
I’d chew up and spit out a soft boy, a fact I’d since then proven many times.
Dante would eat a soft girl for breakfast.
We fit together, and it wasn’t until I was nearly fourteen that it even occurred to me that anyone or anything could come between us.
We were at Dante’s house, which was rare. His mother didn’t work, and she hardly ever went anywhere, so being at his house was pretty much a guarantee of running into her, not to mention the fact that my grandma worked there and she’d kill me if she knew how much time I spent with Dante and that we were close enough he’d bring me to his home.
Dante had forgotten his backpack, though, and he was just running upstairs real quick to grab it.
He wasn’t quick enough.
His mother terrified me, but she was the kind of woman where you knew you shouldn’t let her see it.
But some things you just couldn’t hide.
I tried my best, but she was a shark and I was perpetually bleeding. There was no way she didn’t notice.
Usually I had a tough skin. I liked to think I had a tough everything, but I did have one weakness.
One. In my entire child/woman body, and we both knew it.
Dante. He was the chink in my armor. My soft underbelly.
She didn’t single me out often, but every time she did, it was memorable.
And terrible.
I’d grown several inches over the summer and I was awkward with it. Most of my clothes were ill-fitting. Gram helped some with it, well, she helped what little Grandma would let her. She wasn’t allowed to buy me anything nice or even anything new, but Gram still took an interest, making sure I went shopping a few times a year for the basics on consignment, but even she couldn’t keep up with how my body was growing.
I’d always been rail thin, skinny looking to the point of unhealthy, but all of a sudden, I had sprouted, and as I’d gone up, parts of me had started to grow out.
My legs had grown longer than was proportionate with my body, and I did not own one pair of pants that made it to my ankles, or one set of shorts that weren’t embarrassingly high, exposing way more of my upper thighs and butt than I was comfortable with. And nothing in the world fit comfortably over my shapely hips.
My shirts were too tight, my dresses small to the point of obscene, and on top of all of that, I kept having growth spurts, so I felt less coordinated by the day.
And my breasts—which were the bane of my existence, had grown too large to hide.
I couldn’t talk to a boy and have him look me in the eye anymore.
Except for Dante. He was good at being my exception.
Even when he pissed me off, he rarely disappointed me.
I knew he noticed my changing figure, but he never mentioned it, never teased me for it when we usually teased each other about everything. He seemed to sense it was a sensitive subject for me.
I was waiting for Dante in the intimidating entryway of their mansion when she approached me wearing her usual unpleasant smile.
“Scarlett,” she said, eyeing me with cold eyes. “Just look at you. Growing up so fast.” Each word was dripping in disdain.
I swallowed hard, my throat so dry the motion stung like sandpaper going down, and greeted her, keeping my most stoic mask firmly over my face.
“Come this way,” she ordered, turning her back on me to stride down the hallway to her wing of the house.
She just expected me to obey. She was a bitch like that.
I wished more than anything that I had the nerve to call her one to her face.
I hated that I followed her without a word.
As much as I rebelled against the very idea, she intimidated me, and some insecure part of me always ached for her approval.
She led me to her study, and my entire body clenched tightly in dread when she locked the door behind us.
I stayed where I was by the exit not moving a muscle as she glided with her smooth stride to her antique desk and retrieved something.
A picture, I realized as she brought it close.
It was of a girl, maybe my age or a bit older. She was beautiful, with pale blonde hair and wintry blue eyes. She was slender and elegant, and even in the picture I could tell she’d never had an awkward moment in her life.
She was dressed in the kind of clothes you never saw real teenagers wearing. The latest expensive trends, head to toe.
“Do you know who this is?” Dante’s mother asked me.
“A model?” I guessed. She fit the bill.
“She should be one, but no. This is Tiffany Vanderkamp. Have you heard the name?”
I shook my head. I knew this was headed somewhere bad, somewhere that would be disastrous to me, but I wasn’t quite sure which direction the disaster would come from.
“Dante hasn’t told you about her?”
I shook my head again.
She tutted, her face placing itself into something resembling sympathy. I knew it was a lie, but she still had me half convinced with her perfectly arranged expression. She was evil like that.
“Tiffany, or Fanny as we affectionately call her, is the young woman that Dante is going to marry when he graduates from college.”
Ah. There it was.
She was a dirty fighter, so of course she’d gone straight for my soft spot.
I felt my stoic mask slipping off, being replaced by something akin to dismay. I recovered it, but not quite quickly enough.
“Oh dear, I can see that he hasn’t been upfront with you about this, the boor.”
"I-i-i-i—" Oh God, the stutter was here. I’d known it wasn’t gone forever; it still came out to play at the most dreaded moments.
She smiled at me, looking delighted. “You’re upset, aren’t you? Did he lie to you? Did he say you were special to him? Naughty, naughty boy, just like his father. Are you two having sex yet?”
I was shocked. Completely. We hadn’t even kissed yet. "N-n-n-n—"
She threw back her head and laughed, the first time I’d ever seen her actually look happy. Apparently all it took was making someone else miserable.
“You are,” she incorrectly guessed. “Of course you are, you little slut. No wonder he thinks he’s in love with you, but that will all wear off soon enough. And of course you’re in love with him. He’s a beautiful boy, but he’s not for you, do you understand?
I did not. I set my jaw and shook my head at her, done with attempting to speak.
She was so wro
ng about so many things I wished I could have voiced it.
We had not done any of the things she seemed to assume, but she was right about one thing.
I was in love with her son.
But she was so wrong about the rest. I owned him. He was mine, and I was his. She was underestimating us both if she thought she could change that.
Mutely I tried to hand the picture back to her but she waved it away.
“You keep that. It’s yours. And go ahead, continue doing what you’re doing. Have your fun. Enjoy it all while you can. Be my son’s little plaything while he’s young and stupid. Just never forget that you aren’t his future. If he ever tries to put a ring on your finger, I’m cutting him off.”
Just then Dante began to pound on the door.
“Put that away,” she snarled at me.
I stuffed the picture in my bag. It was embarrassing how relieved I was that Dante was rescuing me from his malevolent mother.
It’s not like she was beating me. Her only weapons were words.
But they were lethal.
I didn’t bring up the incident or that girl to him for a long time. I was embarrassed to.
And what if he told me it was none of my business?
I’d be crushed.
So I sat on it for a long time, letting it simmer inside of me like an infected wound.
“Never back down from her, okay?” Dante told me when we were free of his house. “If she ever senses she can intimidate you, she’ll make your life hell.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
~William Shakespeare
PRESENT
I was just stepping into my shoes when someone knocked on my door.
It was Dante. He’d changed into a dark, dark suit that set off his golden hair and skin to an unfair degree.
This was the look that suited him best; he was born to be a villain in black.
My shallow, superficial self was devastated by the sight of him.
It should have been against the law for him to go out in public like that. It did indecent things to me.
“Are you ready?” he asked me, eyes on my feet, though he didn’t comment on the shoes. “It’s almost time to go.”