The Shadow (The Florentine 2)

Raven’s heart skipped a beat.

“Cassita.” William crowded her. “You don’t have to see him. Say the word and he disappears forever.”

She lifted her chin. “I’m not a coward.”

“Indeed, you are not.” William’s ferocity softened into admiration. “You’ve demonstrated your bravery again and again. You don’t need to do so tonight.”

“Someone needs to hold him accountable. Someone needs to speak for the children. I owe them that.” Raven looked down at her injured leg, which was visible beneath the hem of her modest dress. “Cara should be here.”

“That can be arranged.”

“No.”

William put his hand on the doorknob. “Whatever injuries or revenge you wish visited on him will be done. You are judge and jury here. All the power is yours.”

“I don’t feel very powerful.” Raven bowed her head.

“Let me tell you what I see.” William stepped closer. “I see a woman who opposed evil when she was a child. Who fought a grown man to protect her sister. Who told the truth when the adults in her life lied. Who, when her mother betrayed her, protected her sister a second time by fleeing the house. Those actions cost you. And still, years later, you are opposing evil and defending the weak.”

His eyes grew haunted. “Unlike me, you never gave in to the darkness. Who is more powerful, you or I?”

“William, we—”

He placed a hand to her neck. “I know the answer to that question. It’s you. You aren’t the girl he knew. You aren’t Jane anymore. You are Raven.”

She leaned against him and he took her weight.

“Are you ready?” he whispered.

“Yes.” She squared her shoulders and heaved a deep breath.

William opened the door. It creaked on its hinges, opening inward to a small, windowless room. The room was dark, despite the lamp that burned on a table nearby. The space reminded Raven of a poet’s garret, nestled like a treasure under the sloping roof.

The only furniture in the room was a single chair. A man was sitting on it. His hands were manacled behind him and his feet were encased in irons, with a short chain running between them.

Raven noticed that he’d stretched his legs out in front of him and that one of them twisted to the side at an odd angle, as if it had been injured. She stared at the leg, recalling William’s words from the previous evening. He’d pushed the monster down the stairs.

It was poetic, perhaps, but not pretty. She felt a cool hand at her lower back and she jumped, muttering an expletive. William floated around her, into her sight. “He can’t speak. But he will listen.”

Raven looked at the man, whose gaze was moving rapidly from William to her and back again. His eyes were wide in his bruised and beaten face, his hair matted and dirty. But his clothes were clean, if torn.

He was gagged.

William approached the man and he began muttering excitedly behind his gag, his uninjured leg shaking and jerking.

“Silence,” William hissed.

The man quieted immediately, his eyes moving to Raven. He gave her a pleading look.

“She is the only reason you are still alive.” William gestured to Raven with a flourish. “I would have killed you the first night. You will treat her and her words with respect.”

The prisoner mumbled more loudly against his gag, shifting and twisting in his chair. Of course, there was no escape. Raven clutched her stomach, trying hard not to vomit.

“I can’t do this.” She turned her back on the prisoner and began limping toward the door.

William breezed past her and stood at the door. “Instruct me on what to do with him and it will be done.”

“It isn’t enough.”

“Then tell me what is.”

“I want my father back.” Her voice broke. “I want a sister who doesn’t hate me and who wasn’t hurt. I want my mother to love me again.”

“Cassita,” he whispered, “not even God himself can give you those things.”

“I know.”

“Then let me give you what I can.”

“You can kill him. But then I’m a murderer. And I still won’t have what he took from us.”

“This isn’t murder. This is justice.”

The prisoner erupted, his muffled cries rising to a terrified pitch. Raven turned and saw him struggling in his chair, trying to escape.

“You’re trapped,” she said, eyeing his injured leg. Her eyes focused on his. “You’re powerless to stop us from doing anything we want to you.”

The prisoner continued to strain against his bonds, but in vain. Emboldened, she took a few steps in his direction, leaning heavily on her cane. “You probably don’t remember me. I was Jane.”

The prisoner rattled his chains, ignoring her.

“I was Jane, but I’m not anymore. I’m someone else. Someone you can’t touch. How does it feel to be powerless?” She lifted her cane to point at his leg. “How does it feel to be crippled?”

He made eye contact with her and anger rose in her chest. “Why don’t you ask me how it feels? How it felt to be a little girl trying to fight off a grown man. How it felt to be in the hospital with a broken leg. Why don’t you ask me?”

She slammed her cane on the floor, the sound echoing in the room. “Ask me!”

The man stopped his struggling and glanced at William, who was standing behind her.

“Why don’t you ask me what it felt like to walk in on you with my sister? She was only five!”

Raven lifted her cane and swung it with all her might, striking his injured leg.

The prisoner howled behind his gag.

Raven’s shoulders shook. “What about the other children? What about the girls in California? Why don’t you ask me about them? When you abuse a child, it can’t be undone. The child will never be the same. My sister will never be the same.

“There’s nothing I could do to you that would ever give us justice. Nothing will give us our lives back. Nothing will erase what happened.” She leaned closer. “I could kill you.” She gritted her teeth. “But I’m not a monster.”

The man began to struggle once again, his eyes avoiding hers. William moved as if to intervene, but Raven caught his sleeve. Her green eyes fixed on the eyes of her stepfather. “I’m not going to kill you.”

All at once, the man stilled and he returned her stare.

“This isn’t mercy. I don’t forgive you. I’d hope you rot in hell but I don’t believe there is such a place. I choose to live a life that will let me sleep at night. While you have to live whatever life you have left knowing the girl you threw down the stairs protected you so she wouldn’t become a monster like you. That’s how much I hate you, you sick fucker. That’s how monstrous you are.”

Her body shook with anger. “I hope you live a long, miserable life with the rest of the monsters before you get there. I hope you rot!”

Raven spat in his face before turning her back on him. She limped slowly toward the door, leaning on her cane.

“Send him to California so they can put him on trial. Make sure they know about all the children he abused. Make sure I never see him again.”

William took hold of her hand, halting her. His eyes searched hers.

“He should have to face the children he abused and their families,” she said. “They need their own closure. I’m not going to st

eal that from them.”

Raven opened the door and walked through it.

Chapter Fourteen

It was after midnight when Raven awoke in William’s bed. The room was dark save for a pale light that shone from the gardens. Through the doors that opened onto the balcony, she could see William, sitting outside. He was holding a book.

Raven pulled the sheet around her naked body and padded out to him, not bothering with her cane.

“What are you reading?”

He looked up at her and smiled. His reaction was so spontaneous, so happy, it took her breath away.

He showed her the book. “The Art of War by Sun Tzu.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Are things that bad in the principality?”

He tugged her hand, pulling her into his lap, and set the book aside. “Don’t worry about it.” His lips found hers in the semidarkness.

“It’s too dark to read.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

“Not for me.”

“Is that what you do while I’m asleep? You read?”

“Not usually.” His fingers sifted through her hair.

“What do you do all night?”

“The night is our day. Usually I’m concerned with affairs of state. The evenings are when we feed, socialize, fornicate.” His voice grew rough.

“That’s an awfully old-fashioned word for what we do.”

“What we do together is more than that, assuredly. If you were to witness how my kind usually engage in intercourse, you’d note the difference.”

Raven’s stomach soured. “No, thank you.”

“You are a puzzle I cannot solve.”

At the change in his tone, Raven lifted her head. William was watching her with eager, searching eyes. He pushed her hair back from her face, as if it were obscuring his vision.

“I was worried you’d react to your stepfather the same way you did the first night. I was mistaken.”

“I don’t have an explanation for that.”

“Perhaps even though you couldn’t remember the incident, part of your mind remembered it. Maybe that made it less shocking.”

“It was still shocking. I felt like I was twelve years old again.” She leaned forward. “But you were there. And I knew you would never let him hurt me.”