I Thee Take (To Have And To Hold Duet 2)

Antonio is already working the phone. “Any idea what his password would be?”

“Call Charlie.” I walk toward the room my brother entered. I find Dante rifling through papers and clothes he’s dumped out of David’s single suitcase. It’s nothing more than an overnight bag. He rushed.

“He has another phone,” Dante says without looking at me. “He’s been fooling us all these years. Me longer than you.”

“Hey.”

“Ten years I spent with the man who killed my family.”

“Dante.”

He swipes papers off the bed with an angry sweep of his arm.

“Hey.” I touch his shoulder, but he shrugs me off.

“What?”

“He’s a liar. We know that. What he said—”

“Mom was raped,” he spits the words but at least he’s finally looking at me. “You knew it and you never told me.”

“You didn’t need to know.”

“Well, it seems I kinda did, considering the bit of news Uncle David just shared.”

“I told you he’s a liar.”

“He’s not lying about this,” he says, shifting his gaze to the mess on the bed. He pulls his hand through his hair, tugging hard, taking a deep breath in. “We need to find Scarlett now. I let him take her. I need to get her back.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my fault. You know it as well as I do so let’s move on.”

Something in the jumble of papers on the floor catches my eye. I bend to pick it up. It’s a black business card with three letters embossed in gold across the front.

I V I

“What is it?” Dante asks as I straighten.

I turn it over to look for more details but there’s nothing. “I don’t know.”

He takes it from me. “I V I.”

“Do you know it?”

He shakes his head but looks thoughtful. “Maybe.” The phone in Dante’s hand vibrates with a text message. It’s from a contact with the initial X.

Petrov’s entourage arrived. The address is at the fucking end of the world. Eindhoven. Willemstraat 13.

Antonio walks in then. “Charlie’s working on the password. He’s got—”

I take the phone out of my brother’s hand and turn to Antonio. “Willemstraat 13. Eindhoven. What’s there? And who’s Petrov?” I ask as the screen goes dark. When I hit the button to bring it back up, it’s black, the phone password protected.

“Charlie?” Antonio asks, putting Charlie on speaker.

“Private residence on several acres of land surrounded by forest.” I can hear him typing.

“Sounds like it’s private enough to hold a human auction.”

“That it is. No one actually lives at the estate apart from a caretaker and his wife. No neighbors for miles. It’s perfect.”

“I’m guessing we’ll need more soldiers,” I say, but Antonio’s already on his phone.

“On it.”

“Let’s go.”

38

Scarlett

Helga stumbles backward, the sound she makes, the low keening, strange, almost inhuman. She catches herself on the vanity as Mara scrambles out of the way.

My towel has fallen. I stand over the woman naked and raise the lamp again. I bring it down harder on her forehead. Blood splatters across the mirror and she drops to her knees, eyes unfocused, mouth open but no sound coming.

Mara, who has backed away a few steps drops to her knees to stare at the woman.

“Again,” she says.

I glance at her but she’s staring at Helga. Helga turns her head to look at Mara.

“Again,” Mara repeats. “Harder.”

I bring the stand down one last time and this time, she falls backward, her bulk shoving the vanity, dropping a perfume bottle onto the carpet.

Mara crawls toward her, peers at her face. She sits back on her heels and looks up at me. She smiles and begins to rock.

“He’ll hurt you,” she says to me.

I drop down to my knees too, cover myself with the towel then take her hands. “Mara?”

She blinks, looks up at me. I see how her eyes glisten with unspent tears. A decade’s worth of tears. Her mouth opens and for a second, I think I see a flash of something, someone else in her eyes. But then it’s gone, and she shakes her head.

“I’m Elizabeth,” she says.

“No. Elizabeth is dead. You’re Mara. I know your grandmother, Lenore.”

She shakes her head again and shifts her gaze to the dead woman. “I’m Elizabeth,” she says again while she undoes the strap that Helga had tied to her belt. “Elizabeth. Sometimes Lizzie. Never Mara.”

She takes the strap, curls it up and tucks it into the pocket of her dress. A dress for a much younger girl. She then moves to Helga’s pockets and from inside she takes a candy bar and what looks to be a small army knife. She flips the tiny blade open, tests the tip more deftly than I’d think she’d know how and tucks those away too.

“The windows are locked but you should go. You’ll have to use the door,” she says to me as she gets to her feet. “He can’t punish me. I don’t belong to him anymore.”