Chapter Fourteen
Candace
I gaze out the window, and I have that weird sensation again, just like the other night.
Like I’m being watched.
How, though?
It's pitch-black outside, and what I’m looking at through my window is a mass of buildings over sixty feet away from me.This side of the apartment is also more private.
The sensation I get though makes me wary and I almost reach for my clothes to put them back on.The thing about it though is I’m not scared.
There’s a sexually charged vibe working its way through the air that actually makes me want to linger in my nakedness.Which is completely ridiculous.If somebody is watching me, then it can’t be anybody good.
No one is watching you, Candace.
I’m being paranoid. Paranoia is setting in again because I’m seeing Jacques tomorrow, the auction is two days away, and I can’t get Dominic out of my head.That damn kiss shouldn’t have happened.Now it has it’s screwing with my mind.
I slip into the shower for a quick wash, then slip into my bed.I switch the lights off and try to sleep but sleep doesn’t come for me the way I thought it would have given my exhaustion.
First, I was thinking about Dominic and what I’d do when I next see him, then I found myself thinking about the past and my parents.From time to time the past sneaks up on me and I get stuck on a loop in my mind.
The parents I remember loved me so much.They were kind and loving to everyone too.
People will remember my mom for her baking.Those cookies of hers were my favorite thing.They weren’t just cookies. She always had some meaning behind them that would mean something to a person.Then there was my father. He was the kind of man to do anything for you.
I just wish he didn't take that job and wish even more that Uncle Lucas hadn't been in our lives.I got that wish a little too late because he disappeared the same week my parents were murdered.
No one has seen, nor heard of him since.
He and my father couldn't have been more different.They looked similar, but that was as far as their similarities went.Papa was good and Lucas was evil.The worse thing about it though was nobody we knew saw that side of him.He was lying in wait like the snake he was to take the most precious thing my father had, my mother.
I saw the way he looked at her and knew from an early age that he was in love with her and jealous of her love for my father.
When Papa landed himself in debt, Lucas seized the opportunity to send him away.
Both my parents worked for the D’Agostinos and the Manellos.Mom was a maid and Papa a gardener.It was when the Manellos went bankrupt that things went south for us.My parents didn’t earn enough working for the D’Agostinos like in the days prior to Stormy Creek, and Papa liked to gamble.He didn’t have a gambling addiction, he just got dealt the losing hand by the wrong person and things spiraled out of control.I heard my parents arguing about it.That was how I found out that things were bad, and also how I found out Uncle Lucas was going to help.
Mom begged Papa not to take any help from him.I remember how she begged. It was the kind of begging where you just know there’s more than what meets the eye.There was.
Uncle Lucas got Papa a job that meant he’d be away for weeks on end.While he was away working at a job he thought would pay the debts off, my uncle had other things in mind for my mother.
Unknown to Papa, Lucas turned her into a prostitute.
Lucas told Mom if she slept with him and others the payment would help my father pay his debt and his life would be spared.So, she did.
And when I made the mistake of running into the truth, Uncle Lucas punished me in the vilest of ways, over and over again.
No...
I mustn't think about that.
I mustn't remember.
Bringing my hand to my head I furrow my brows and squeeze my eyes shut as I push those thoughts away.
It's been years since any kind of thought like that entered my mind.Sometimes I can almost, almost forget what he did to me.