Moving through to my walk-in closet, I flick on the light and scan over my clothes.
He said to get changed.
He didn’t say into what.
I was allowed to shop online, and I loved to shop. I love fashion. I think being able to dress your feelings, to hide or expose them, is an art. Fashion is an art.
I reach for my mid-top white and gray Van sneakers, a pair of high-waisted ripped ankle-biter jeans, and a white camisole that is cropped just above my belly button. I find most of my inspiration on Pinterest, and then I shop from there. Money has never been something that I’ve thought a lot about. Brantley gave me a black card when I was thirteen, and since then, it hasn’t run out. Obviously, over time I’ve come to realize that this black card, by its limit, holds a lot of money. The name Saint Dea Vitiosis is embedded into the plastic.
After I’m dressed, I brush my hair until it falls in natural white waves before sliding lip balm over my lips. Peach. Subtle enough not to taste, yet sweet enough to smell.
Kore nudges the backs of my legs with her nose and I reach down to rub the back of her ears. “I won’t be long. You have Hades here.”
Brantley clears his throat at my door, and I look up at him from where I’m leaning. “She gets lonely when she can’t see me.”
“It’s mainly because they’re so used to you being home.” He leans backward and rolls his fingers into his mouth, whistling. Hades comes strolling into my bedroom with ease, flopping down onto the fluffy rug at the foot of my bed.
Brantley glances at my vanity mirror, where my makeup, beauty products, and jewelry are all laid out. “Wear your necklace.”
“I thought you said I didn’t have to start wearing it until I was older?”
He ambles into my room, the sheer size of him taking up the space greedily as his fingers graze over the white gold Cuban chain. Like his, only with smaller links, right down to the pendant that sits on the bottom. A simple pendant. White gold crown with diamonds shaped like ice, melting over the tips.
He hooks it off the stand and comes closer until his body is towering over mine like a giant versus a lesser human. David and Goliath. His six-foot-six against my five-foot. He’s a whole foot, and then some, taller than me. We look ridiculous beside each other in any room, and he could wrap his fingers around the circumference of my head and pick me up with one movement.
Leaning forward, his cologne wafts through my nostrils when he clasps the necklace around my neck. I close my eyes when the fabric of his simple white shirt grazes the tip of my nose. “You’re seventeen, but you need to start wearing this from now on.”
“Why?” I ask through a tight throat. “All I do is stay home. It’s too pretty to just wear.”
He steps back, and once I’m finished being distracted by the weight of the necklace around me, I tilt my head up until I’m eye-to-eye with him.
“Not anymore.”
“Okay,” I say, clutching the crown in the palm of my hand. “I won’t take it off.”
I follow him out of my room and down the staircase, toward his blacked-out sports car.
I Googled it when he drove the shiny new car down our driveway a couple of months ago. The Bugatti La Voiture Noire. Eighteen. Million. Dollars. There was a woman, I guessed was the car dealer, who shook his hand and gave him the keys before leaving. I couldn’t see much from the window in the kitchen, but I did catch her name tag as she left. Nikki. I slide into the leather seat, shutting the door behind me as he fires the car up and pulls out of the driveway.
I don’t ask him what’s going on.
I don’t ask him why we’re leaving the house.
The slightly scarier looking one of the two stood first, and when he did, I almost—almost—regretted enticing them both. They couldn’t be that bad. No one was. Well, that was a lie. One person was that bad, but he wasn’t here, and neither were his henchmen. “Twisted Transistor” was playing now, and at the back of my very intoxicated brain, I thought maybe the DJ didn’t have anything else to play but Korn.
I cowered slightly, but not enough for the big scary one to catch it.
His eye twitched. Or maybe he did.
His eyes. They were dark. So very dark. I felt myself trapped in a messy haze of sin, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to find the exit. Diverting my gaze, I found the disinterested boy on the sofa, who was watching both of us.
He smirked, leaned up until he was standing, and suddenly I was between both of them. Sandwiched between a snowstorm and a tropical cyclone.