Taken (Dark Legacy Duet 1)

Sometimes, the women of our family can be as fierce as the men because twice, a Willow Girl wasn’t claimed. Two generations that let the past lie, that allowed conscience to rule over family tradition and obligation.

That’s when the Scafoni family began to lose their firstborn sons, the loss leading to infighting among us because it changed the rules of inheritance.

Breaking with the tradition and displeasing our ancestors cost us.

After that, whether a Willow Girl was claimed or not, each generation lost one boy—some during pregnancy, some within days of birth. Always the first, so rather than having four sons, each family had only three.

The soft light of a lamp burns inside the mausoleum day and night, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, like the sanctuary lamp on every altar in every Christian church.

I push the creaky gate back and step inside. I don’t use my phone to shine more light on the space. I don’t need it, and I’m not afraid of these ghosts. They are here, yes, but they don’t mean harm. Not to me.

It’s big, the family’s final resting place, and will need to be expanded soon. The walls are already filled up.

I go to the freshest one, that of my father. I trace the dates. He died young, in his early fifties. He was not an unkind man, not to us at least, but he was weak.

The canings didn’t start until Lucinda was in the picture. She declared herself the disciplinarian—at least my disciplinarian. I swear, as sick as it is, she got a kick out of it.

I endured her wrath through my seventeenth year. I was a man, yet I endured her punishments until I couldn’t stand another minute of her hate.

I remember the last time she ordered me to strip. I remember my rage. I broke her damned cane in two that night and dragged her to the whipping post.

Never again did she raise a finger to me, raise her voice to me, or dare disobey me.

Not until now.

I think about my mother. I was two years old when she died, but I remember her being kind and gentle. I remember loving her.

How Lucinda could be so different from my mother, I don’t understand. They share blood and yet, they’re like night and day.

The memory of the marks on Helena make me remember the times we were made to watch Lucinda punish the last Willow Girl, Libby. What she endured at Lucinda’s hands makes me sick. But what makes me sicker is that my father was too weak to stop her, even though I know in his own way, he loved Libby Willow.

Maybe that’s why Lucinda hated her so much and punished her so harshly.

I have to take care with Helena. I can’t allow Lucinda to do to her what she did to Libby. I don’t have any interest in being her savior, but I will be the one to break her, not Lucinda.

I step to the right, to the next name carved in the black marble. To the dates there.

Timothy Scafoni. Older than me by thirteen minutes. He lived three days. My mother had thought the curse had been broken, and in a way, it had. She had twins—there were no other twins in the Scafoni line—and I survived.

Beside my brother’s marker is that of my mother, Samantha. I brush dust off the stone and rub the engraving of her name. It’s been a long time since she died.

I take three of the candles lying nearby, light them, and set them in front of each of the markers. Then, without a word of prayer, I walk back out of the mausoleum and to the house.7HelenaWhen I wake in the morning, I’m surprised to find the curtains drawn closed. I hadn’t gotten up after Sebastian left. Every time I woke up, I just closed my eyes again, still hoping, like a coward, that this was a dream. Still hoping the next time I opened my eyes, I’d be in my own house, in my own bed.

I slowly sit up, pushing through the pain because I have to use the bathroom. I make myself sit on the edge of the bed, in fact. Make myself feel the sting of my first beating at the hands of a Scafoni because I don’t ever want to forget the cruelty, the brutality of this family.

Lucinda Scafoni dished out my punishment with pleasure. It was no chore to cane me.

I think about Aunt Libby, wonder at what she went through. I think about what Lucinda asked me, if I’d seen my aunt’s back.

I was five when she came back home from her ‘trip,’ and my memories are clouded, but the image of her back I’ve never forgotten. The day I saw them, she was coming out of the shower when I’d burst into her room, surprising her. I remember asking her about the patterns on her back, asking if they were a tattoo because I’d never seen anything like it.