But I’m dragging it with me, can see the smears of it left in my wake—wet and red and terrifying.
There’s a tiny part of my brain that’s still working, that’s telling me to breathe. To calm down. To think. It’s almost impossible to hear it over my strangled cries and the frantic beating of my heart. But I try to listen anyway, try to stop screaming long enough to take a deep breath as the room swims around me.
It’s not blood, I tell myself again and again. It’s not blood. It’s not blood. It’s not blood.
It can’t be.
But it’s in my nose now, in my mouth. Salty, coppery, thick and I know—I know—that it’s exactly what I’m afraid it is.
Oh my God. Oh. My. God. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
I don’t stop shuffling backward until my hand brushes against something sharp. The sudden prick of pain cuts through the hysteria and I lift my hand into my lap and stare at the new, jagged cut running across my palm. It’s bleeding now, my own blood mingling with the rest of the mess. Bright red mingling with dark.
I glance around wildly, trying to figure out what cut me. Trying to figure out where I am.
The last thing I remember is my mother helping me to bed. That’s it. There’s nothing after that. Nothing to account for what’s happening now. Nothing to account for all of this.
I can’t stop screaming any more than I can stop the blood pouring from my hand.
There’s a small part of me that knows I should get to the bathroom, that knows I should wrap a towel around my cut. But I can’t move. I can’t think. I can’t do anything but sit here and scream.
Suddenly, I hear footsteps thundering down the hall, fast and hard. The door to my bedroom crashes open and Ian is standing there, eyes wide and wild as he takes in the state of the room…and of me.
It only takes a second, and then he’s next to me.
Crouching in the blood.
Hands gripping my shoulders.
Face next to mine.
He’s saying something—I can see his mouth moving, can hear the words falling into the sudden silence between us. But I can’t make sense of them. Can’t get them to compute in my jumbled brain. All I can think is that Ian is here. Ian, my love.
No, no. Not my love, I remember abruptly. Ian, the liar. Ian, the user. Ian, the traitor.
There’s a tiny part of me—the one bent on self-preservation—that tells me he can’t be here. He can’t see this. He can’t write about this.
Go, I try to tell him, but my mouth isn’t working right. Nothing is. I want to shove Ian away, but my arms are so heavy I can barely lift them. My whole body feels like it’s slogging through quicksand. Like I’m drowning in plasma and can’t work my way out of it. Whatever strength I had, I used up just getting here.
Ian grabs my hand, holds it up so he can look at it. Then he’s shrugging out of his T-shirt and wrapping it around the wound.
He’s glancing around now, eyes dark with horror, even as he elevates my arm and holds pressure on the cut. He’s talking again—I can see his mouth moving—but the words still sound tinny and distorted. Like they’re coming through water.
I look back at the doorway as my mother comes skittering through it. She freezes much like Ian did, then screams, her hand pressed to her mouth.
“Damn it, Veronica. Focus! I need you to answer me. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
The words he’s saying finally arrange themselves in the right order and instinctively, I do what he commands. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
He grabs my nightgown in the center of the bodice, then rips it away with his bare hands. Thank God. I don’t think I could handle him trying to pull the bloody thing over my head.
Then his hands are on me, running over my shoulders, my back, my ass. Doing the same to my chest and stomach and sex. “Let me see your legs,” he orders, and I stick them out obediently. I’m so confused, so lost, that it seems smart to let him have control, at least for a little while. He seems to know what he’s doing.
“It’s not yours,” he says after a minute, relief ripe in his voice.
“What?” I finally manage to force a word past my dry lips.
“The blood. It’s not yours. I don’t see any other injuries.”
“But where’s it from then?” I clutch at him, still too groggy and panic-stricken to think clearly.
“I don’t know,” he answers grimly. And then he’s sitting down next to me, right in the middle of the mess.
“Be careful,” I warn him, my words sounding garbled to my own ears. “I cut myself on something back there—”
“This,” he says, his voice dark and foreboding. “You cut yourself on this.”
He holds up a black and orange bow saw.
“Oh my God.” I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. “Oh my God.”
It’s the same saw that Belladonna used to dismember that poor girl. The same one I used in the bloodiest scene in my entire career.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” I look around at all the blood. “What’s happening to me? What did I do? What did I do?”
“Nothing!” Ian snaps. “You did nothing!”
“You don’t know that. You don’t—”
“Get away from my daughter!” My mother shouts suddenly and when I look up, she has one of my father’s handguns aimed straight at Ian’s chest. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do to her, but get away from her right now. Right now,” she screams, when he makes no move to leave me.
“Your daughter needs help, Melanie,” he says soothingly, even as he puts his hands up. “She’s cut herself.”
“Like I would trust you to help her? You’re using her just like everybody else, seducing her to get information for that filthy book you’re writing.” She waves the gun around threateningly. “Now get the fuck away from her or I promise yours will be the next blood splattering this floor.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.”
“You’ve already hurt her more than enough. If you think I’m going to stand by and let you hurt her more, you’re crazy. My daughter has been through enough. Now go.” Her finger trembles on the trigger, her face filled with resolve.
That’s when I know she’s serious. She will shoot him if he doesn’t back away from me.
“Ian, go,” I tell him as I reach out and try to shove him away. “Now.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “You don’t actually think I’m going to leave you here like this, do you? With her? You don’t even know how any of this happened.” He gestures to the blood on the floor, on the bed, on me.
“And you do?”
“No, of course not. I’m trying to figure it out, just like you.” He pushes to his feet, and turns so that his back is to me, his gaze focused on my mother who still has the gun aimed directly at his chest. He’s moving now, angling himself so his body is between my mother and me.
“Leave!” my mother screams. “Or I swear, I’ll shoot you!”
“Did you do this to me? Was it you all along?” I demand, my voice rising a little more with each word that tumbles from my mouth. “Were you trying to make me crazy so that I would tell you everything about my past? Everything about William Vargas?”
“Fuck. No.” He angles his body so that he’s standing in front of me, blocking my view of my mother. And blocking me, I realize slowly, from the bullets in her gun. I can’t see his face but I can hear the anguish in his voice as he pleads, “Baby, please. You have to listen to me. I didn’t—”
“I don’t have to do anything.” I stumble to my feet. Stumble toward my mother. I’m still not thinking clearly, but I’m aware enough to know that I have to get her out of this room. Have to get her away from Ian.
“Veronica, stop. I don’t want you anywhere near her right now.” He grabs on to my wrist. A second later my mother’s gun goes off, the bullet slamming into the wall a few inches above Ian’s head.
“Don’t touch her!” my mother screams. “Don’t you fucking t
ouch my daughter! She’s been used by enough men. I’m not going to let it happen again!”
He drops my arm, once again puts his hands up. “I swear I’m not going to hurt her, Melanie.”
“Yeah,” she sneers, the gun wobbling dangerously in her hands. “That’s what they all say when you’re young and beautiful. It’s when you get older that they break their promises.
“You can’t trust him, baby,” she tells me as she cocks the gun a second time. “He’ll betray you just like your father did me. Just like all men do in the end. It’s what I’ve been trying to protect you from.”
She takes aim at Ian again, this time right between his eyes.
And still he moves to get in front of me. Still he tries to put his body between me and the gun.
“I don’t understand what’s happening here.” I know the situation is urgent, know things can go from bad to devastating at any second. And still I can’t focus. My head is throbbing, my body aching. The room spinning. I reach a hand out to steady myself against the wall as I try to think through the cloudiness inside my brain. “Just put the gun down, Mom. Just put it down and we can talk.”
My words are still coming out slurred.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Veronica. He’s going to hurt you. He’s going to tell all your secrets. Tell all my secrets. And then where will we be? Who will love us then?”
“I won’t,” Ian says, even as he backs toward me a little more. “I already called my agent, told him I’m not writing the book.”
“Liar!” my mother screams. “You want to expose me. It’s why you did all this. Trying to make her think she’s crazy so she’ll tell everyone what happened. Tell everyone how my own husband locked me away in an insane asylum. Then everyone will hate me. I’ll be a joke, like Joan Crawford. A punchline to some late night comedic hack. And so will she. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to let you destroy everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
Her finger tenses on the trigger and suddenly everything happens at once. Ian throws an arm out and shoves me, hard. At the same time, he ducks low and makes a dive toward my mother who jerks backward just as the gun goes off.
Terror slams through me as I hit the ground and then I’m scrambling back to my feet. Running over to Ian, to my mother, as I try to figure out if either of them have been shot. Adrenaline is racing through me now, burning off the last of the sluggishness. My head hurts like a bitch and my muscle coordination is still a little wonky, but I’m thinking more clearly than I have since I woke up. And that’s when it hits me.
“You drugged me.” The words pour from me of their own accord as my mother struggles into a sitting position. There’s blood on her hands, and smeared across her face from where she rubbed her cheek. But that’s it. No bullet wounds and no bruises from her fall, at least that I can see. A quick look at Ian tells me that he isn’t harmed, either—just shaken up as he empties the gun and then climbs to his feet.
He’s looking at me like he thinks I’m going to shatter, but I won’t give him the satisfaction. Won’t give either of them the satisfaction. “You drugged me,” I repeat again. “In the coffee you insisted I drink. And then you brought me up here.”
I look around the room at all the blood, look down at my own body that’s still covered in the stuff. “You did this to me. You did all of this to me. The bath, the belladonna, the dress you made me wear, the brooch.” Anguish wells up inside of me. “Why? Why would you do this to me? Why would you hurt me like this?”
She moans, and it’s a low and eerie sound as she wraps her arms around herself and starts to rock. Her eyes are vacant, her skin pale beneath the bloody smear on her cheek. Panic wells up inside of me, blends with the rage and the sorrow. Because I’ve seen her like this before, right after everything happened with William. Right before my father had her sent away.
“I need my phone,” I tell Ian as I drop down to my knees beside her. She curls up into a little ball, puts her head on my lap. And I let her, even though there’s a part of me that wants to shake her and another part that wants to run far, far away from this mess.
“I’ll call 911,” he says, already pulling his own phone out of his pocket.
“No! Not 911. I need to call her doctor.”
“Her doctor?” He looks at me incredulously. “She drugged you and covered you in blood—blood that we don’t know the origin of, by the way. And then she nearly shot both of us. You need to call the police.”
“That’s not—” My voice gives out and I clear my throat, start again. “That’s not how we do things. Please, just get me my phone. I think it’s on the bed.”
Ian doesn’t look happy, but he does what I ask, yanking at the bloody covers until he finds my phone. But instead of giving it to me, he carries it into the bathroom. I hear water running and seconds later he’s back, holding a damp washcloth in one hand and my phone in the other.
“Here,” he says, holding out the washcloth. “Do you want to wipe your hands first?”
I follow his gaze to my hands which are still covered in blood. “Oh, right. Thanks.” I take the rag in my injured hand and spend a few seconds cleaning my good hand before I reach for the phone.
“Can you call your doctor, too?” he asks as he hands it to me.
“My doctor?”
“You don’t even know what she drugged you with—or how much she gave you.” Disapproval is rolling off of him in waves. “Plus that cut on your hand is probably going to need stitches.”
“I need to take care of my mother first.”
His jaw clenches, and I can tell it’s taking every ounce of restraint he has not to just take over and order me to do things his way. He doesn’t though. He just crouches down next to me while I search through my contacts for my mother’s psychiatrist.
“You don’t have to stay, you know,” I tell him as I finally find Dr. Reece’s number. “The drugs are wearing off. I can handle this from here.”
“Don’t push me, Veronica. This is your world and she’s your mom, so I’m trying to let you do this your way. But don’t push it.”
“Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t push it. Considering you’ve been lying to me since we met.”
I don’t look at him again as I swipe across Dr. Reece’s number.
It’s his personal cellphone and he answers right away—he is the psychiatrist to the stars for a reason, after all—and I start to give him the bare bones of the situation. I’m barely a minute in before he tells me that he’s on his way.
“Are you alone with her?” he asks, and I can tell from the strained note in his voice that he’s moving fast.
“No.”
“Good. Keep it that way. And keep her calm. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Call me back if anything else happens.”
He clicks off and I’m left sitting there, with my mother curled up on my lap and Ian crouched down beside me. There are so many emotions rioting around inside of me right now that I don’t know how to feel, which one to concentrate on. So I lock them all down, barricading all of my feelings deep inside of myself so I can deal. So I can hold it together until Dr. Reece comes.
It’s a precarious state to be in and I can’t help feeling that one wrong move will shatter everything. Will shatter me—beyond recognition this time.
Ian must realize how close I am to the edge, because he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t try to explain himself, doesn’t try to convince me again to call the police or hear his side of the story or call my doctor. Instead, he just sits there with me, a silent presence as my mother mumbles nonsense to herself.
God. I can’t believe this is my life. Can’t believe that in the space of a week my carefully constructed house of cards has collapsed so completely.
“Don’t let them take me away,” my mother says suddenly, and I realize she’s been tracking better than I thought she was. “Don’t let them put me in that place again. I’ll be good. I swear, I’ll be good.”
I don’t k
now what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. Just continue to sit there and let her use me as a pillow. I should probably stroke her hair to calm her down like I usually do, but I can’t bring myself to touch her. Not now. Not yet.
“I just wanted to matter,” she whispers, her voice haunting in the quiet room. “I just wanted them to pay attention to me, too.”
“Who?” I ask, but I already know the answer. When it comes to this question, I always know the answer.
“Everyone came back around when your father died. I was on all the magazine covers, in all the newspapers. Everyone was talking about me. Salvatore Romero’s grieving widow. I got three film roles from it, remember? They were good roles.” She looks up at me, a wistful smile on her face that makes me shudder. “I had fun. Remember?”
“I do remember,” I answer, using every ounce of acting ability I have to keep my voice steady. She’s talking about my father’s death like it was nothing more than a way to boost her faltering career. I’ve always known she used it as such, but to hear her talk about it so calmly, so rationally even while I’m sitting in the middle of this…it’s chilling.
“But then time passed and everyone went away to other stories and other stars. I needed something big,” she tells me as she pushes herself off my lap, her eyes wide and pleading. “You understand that, right? I needed something huge to bring the attention back.”
“So you choose a crazy daughter.”
“Just think of the headlines,” she tells me dreamily. “You’re so famous, so sought-after, so perfect. Just imagine how the press would explode if you lost it. If you ended up having to be locked up for a while…I would be there at your side, of course. Making sure you were okay. Being the best mother I could to you. You’d win that Oscar, baby—Hollywood wouldn’t be able to deny it to you when the role made you literally go crazy. You wouldn’t be there, of course, but I would put on a brave face and accept in your honor. And then—”
“That’s enough.” Ian’s voice cuts through hers like a scalpel, and then he’s standing up and reaching for my mother. Pulling her to her feet. Pulling her away from me.