41

Portia
Fuck you for doing this to me.
Right.
Because I made him threaten to break my cousin’s neck. I made him into this crazy man who has a personality disorder.
Who’s scary as fuck.
I suck in a shaky breath. He wants me to look pretty tonight? That’s not happening. My eyes are puffy and red, skin blotchy from crying all day long and over what?
Him? God. Something is seriously wrong with me. Maybe it’s me with the mental disorder.
“I need a friend, Portia. Just one friend.”
I pick at my cuticle and try to forget how he looked when he said that. How he sounded.
How much more screwed up can things get?
Someone knocks on the door and I expect Lenore with another tray of food. She’s tried twice now but it’s not that I don’t want to eat. It’s that I can’t.
It’s close to five so I guess it’s a soldier making sure I’m getting ready. I’ll be ready. I won’t look pretty but I’ll put on a dress and show up and say those two words.
Period.
“Come in.”
But when the door opens, Nathan’s standing there looking fresh from the shower, wearing clean clothes and smiling at me.
“Nathan!” I hop off the bed and run to him, jump into his arms. I swear he’s grown taller just in the last few days.
He hugs me back. “Ow. You’re going to crush my ribs,” he says.
“Oh, God it’s so good to see you.” An onslaught of tears springs from my eyes.
Alec clears his throat. “Chopper leaves in half an hour. Your cousin will bring you to the roof.” He looks at Nathan who nods.
“What’s this? Are you working for him already?” I ask my brother.
Nathan doesn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Callahan wants to know if you need anything,” Alec says.
“I just need him to go to hell. Can you tell him that for me?”
He clears his throat. “Thirty minutes.”
Once the door is closed, Nathan walks in a circle, taking in the room.
“Have you been living in this lap of luxury while I’ve been in that cell?” He picks up a plastic toy and cocks his head to the side. “How old does he think you are, like five?”
“It’s his sister’s room. And he moved the lock to the outside. That’s why I’m in here. You agreed to work for him?”
“What choice did I have? And besides, he hasn’t been horrible to me. Better than my own blood relations. My cousins who should love and defend me at least.”
“Well, shit. Isn’t he wonderful then?” I grin sarcastically, probably looking like some maniac. “Because my brothers set the bar pretty damn low, Nathan.”
“This is our world, Portia. It’s been our world. You need to stop fighting it and figure out a way you can fit inside it. That’s our only chance of surviving.”
“I’ll never stop fighting him.”
“Our family murdered his family. Tried to kill him.”
“No, not our family. Vincent and Gregory. Not us. Not our parents.”
“Well, I can see where he’s coming from.”
I snort.
He sits on the bed, tests it. “Nice. I got a room down the hall but it’s pretty bare bones.”
“Lucky you. Is your lock on the outside?”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re alive. We’re alive. He’s going to marry you. You’ll be his wife.”
“For the cartel. He is using me to get to the cartel.”
“Doesn’t matter. It means something to him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s different than it was when it was Fernando. I know how Fernando was to you.”
I feel my face burn. Does he know what they did too? Did our uncle enlighten my kid brother to my humiliations? I scrub my hands over my face but when I open my eyes, I’m still here, in this little girl’s room. Still trapped in this nightmare.
“Callahan, even the way he talks about you is different,” Nathan goes on and it’s like we’re living in two different worlds.
“What do you mean when he talks about me?”
“Nothing.” He shrugs a shoulder. “When he told me about the wedding and all.”
My right hand moves to turn the engagement ring on my finger and my brother looks at it. He comes toward me, takes my hand.
“He gave you that?”
I look at it too and shrug a shoulder. “Please don’t tell me you’re impressed. A big diamond means nothing.”
“It’s not that,” he says, studying it.
“What is it then?”
“I was just downstairs. You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“It’s his mother’s ring.”
“What?”
“In the portrait in the living room. The one that looks like she’s staring right at you.”
“I know the portrait but I never noticed a ring.”
“I had some time to study it while Callahan was in a meeting with his uncle. That guy is a real dick by the way.
“Well, that’s one thing we can agree on.”
I look down at the ring anew and remember how he looked panicked when I had taken it off this morning. Why would he give me his mother’s engagement ring?
“See. He’s different than that douche, Fernando.”
I shake my head. “Don’t do that. He’s not better than Fernando or Vincent and Gregory.” But even as I say it, I know it’s not true and his words ring in my ears and I want to shut them out. Shut him out.
“I need a friend, Portia. Just one friend.”
Crap.
I understand that need. Why did I push him? I know he’s hurt. I know he’s alone. I think Cerberus is truly his only friend and how sad is that?
“Are you wearing that to your wedding?” Nathan asks.
I have to swipe the back of my hand over my eyes to clear away any stray tears before I look down at myself in this oversized robe. “I should. It’d serve him right.”
“He hasn’t hurt us, Sis. He probably has more right to than anyone else had but he hasn’t.”
I study my little cousin who’s more like a younger brother to me, see him for the fifteen-year-old kid he is. Vincent and Gregory were the worst to him. Found him weak because he’s gentle. Because somehow, in our world, he manages not to be filled with hate.
“I’ll get dressed,” I say, going into the closet which can swallow up the various rooms I’ve been locked in whole.
The dress he chose is simple. Just a straight satin floor-length white silk gown that fits like a second skin. I actually like it. But I’m not wearing it. Right beside it is the one that’s more fitting.
Once I’m dressed, I walk out and stand in front of the full-length mirror.
“That’s the dress?” Nathan asks, looking confused. He’s holding something in his hand. A toy or something. “I guess it’s prettier than what Fernando had you wearing.”
“Anything would be prettier than that disaster.” I finger comb my hair. I already decided to leave it down and I don’t plan on much makeup. Just a little mascara and lipstick.
“One day, when this is all over, you’ll actually fall in love.”
“No, I won’t. Love just isn’t in the cards for me.” I say, my throat closing up again. How am I ever going to make it through this ceremony?
“No veil?” Nathan asks.
I glance at my mother’s veil. “I don’t want to get blood on it if things go wrong.” It’s a joke but in such poor taste even I wince.
“Well, you look really pretty,” he says. “Different than you did when it was Fernando.”
“Thanks, Kiddo. Hey, you’re walking me down the aisle, right?”
“What?” he asks, putting the toy down and picking up a framed photograph.
“You’ll walk me down the aisle?”
“Someone has to or you’re going to trip over your own feet in those shoes,” he says, pointing to the pair of four-inch pumps that look like Cinderella’s glass slippers. He glances at the photo again. “Port, do you know whose room this was?”
I come to glance at the photo of the little girl standing with some friends around a swimming pool, hair soaked, all with happy smiles on their faces. “Elizabeth. Callahan’s sister.”
“Elizabeth?”
“Yeah. She was killed, too.”
“Do you know this one’s name?” he asks, pointing to the little blonde-haired girl next to Elizabeth.
I shake my head.
He turns the photo over and takes it out of the frame.
“Mara,” he says before turning it over to study her again.
“She was here too, apparently. She’s Lenore’s granddaughter. She disappeared. I don’t want to think about what they might have done to her.”
He nods, puts the photo down but seems preoccupied as he walks me out of the bedroom and down the stairs.