Only once growing up did my parents lay a hand on me, but this pain, it’s different. Eight strokes in addition to the one and I’m sobbing by the second, sobbing and begging her to stop, hating her, hating myself, wondering how something can hurt so badly, wondering if she’s ripping through skin. Wondering if Sebastian ordered this too.
When she’s finished, she’s out of breath. Ethan releases my legs. I don’t turn to look at them. I bury my face in my arm instead.
“She should take care of this,” I hear Ethan say to her.
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but then his mother answers, and I think I do, I’m sickened.
“Soon enough. Get one of the girls from the kitchen for now,” Lucinda says.
I hear him leave. The bed depresses, and sharp fingernails scratch along my buttock, touching every line she just whipped into me, before combing into my hair, pushing it from my face.
I don’t want to look at her. I can see her victorious grin in the periphery of my blurry vision.
But she takes my hair in one hand and pulls my head back, turns it painfully, so I have to look at her.
“You’re pretty, but so was your predecessor when she came here.”
I know she means my Aunt Libby, but I didn’t realize Lucinda was here during her turn as the Willow Girl.
The Willow Whipping Girl.
“She was pretty too, in the beginning. Tell me, did you see her back when she returned to you?”
“Her back?”
She grins. “My husband gave me the chore of punishing that whore.”
Her husband? Sebastian’s father? He was married to Lucinda when he took my aunt?
“I look forward to the same with you.”
With that, she gets up. I watch her walk out the door, leaving me bound, lying on my bed.
Did I think she’d be different than the sons? Because she is a woman? I saw her cruelty from the first I saw her, and her hatred of me, of my family, is almost palpable.
Again, I wish I knew more of our history. Wish my mother had told us more. Wish I’d read more.
I roll to my back but quickly turn back onto my stomach. At least the pain gets me out of my head. My heart’s frantic beating is finally slowing, but the pain of my punishment only seems to intensify, making my skin throb, and all I can think about is what Sebastian said to me. That he is my master, and he decides my rewards and my punishments.
And then the other thing he said.
“I am your only ally in this house. Remember that.”
My ally.
My ally ordered this? Then I’m finished.6SebastianI return to the house under an almost pink glow. The sunsets this time of year are spectacular. I needed to be in Venice proper for a meeting, and the timing was good. I had to walk away from her before I did something rash.
But being away didn’t keep that one word, her accusation, from repeating in my head again and again and again.
Rape.
Although is it so extraordinary for her to use that word? I know what the Scafoni family is capable of. Is culpable of.
What is it you intend to do? asks the voice inside my head yet again.
I don’t answer that. Instead, I divert to what my brother would already have done if he stood in my place. I know it’s a cop-out, a diversion. I’m only fooling myself.
He’ll still have his chance. They both will.
I shove that thought roughly away. There’s time before that. Before handing her over to them.
I feel older than my twenty-eight years. I’ve been head of this family for ten years. I came of age years after my father’s death, and I know my obligations. I know the cost if I fail to continue the tradition. As archaic as it is, there is truth to the curse. The shadow of the family mausoleum in the far distance of the property stands as a constant reminder.
Remy, the caretaker of the house and a man I trust, meets me at the dock as I step out of the boat. He’s older, in his late sixties, and has been working for my family longer than I’ve been alive. He takes the ropes and a moment later, the boat is secured.
“How are things here?”
I can see from his face that something is wrong.
“The doctor came and went.”
Remy knows about the business of the Willow Girl. Helena will be his second.
“What is it?” I push.
“The girl is still in her room. No food has been sent up. No water. Not since lunchtime.”
“And she hasn’t come downstairs?”
“Mrs. Scafoni forbade anyone entering, and, I assume, leaving.”
I narrow my eyes, take in a slow breath. “Thank you, Remy.”
He nods, ever elegant, and I head to the house.
The lights are lit in most of the downstairs rooms, but I don’t see any of my family as I make my way directly up the stairs and to Helena’s room.