Back in my room I study my face by the dim light in the bathroom mirror. The stencil is smeared but not completely gone. It matches his but is somehow more feminine.
In a grotesque way, it’s beautiful. Like his.
Like him.
I turn away, fingers tightening around the counter. I can't think that. I am his enemy even if he was never mine. He hates me.
But he also lied to The Tribunal to save me no matter his simple excuse of selfishness. It’s not for the reason of having me birth his babies or torturing me himself. I just don’t believe that’s true. Because just as ugly and beautiful are both too simple concepts for him, so is this. We are bound to one another. There is something here. And he’s human no matter how much he tries to prove himself a demon.
I turn my gaze back up to the mirror, brush the hair back from the stenciled side of my face and touch the single dot of black ink high on my cheekbone. I won’t be able to wash that off. And I’m glad.
But there are other, more pressing matters to consider now. I don’t have the luxury of time to ruminate. To romanticize. Maybe that’s a gift. A smack to the back of my head to remind me where I am. Who I am dealing with. And I don’t only mean my husband.
I scrub my face and return to my bedroom, to the window. The boards have been removed. Doctor’s orders. I need sunlight. I push the curtain back and look out into the distance, to the still dark night. I don’t have much time.
My bedroom door isn’t locked but I’ve been waiting until I’m sure Antonia and the others have gone to bed.
Mercedes is gone. I overheard Antonia telling Santiago that Mercedes would be spending the night with a friend. Santiago seemed less than pleased when he found out which friend even though Antonia made a point of the fact that it’s a female friend. I guess the same rules apply to Mercedes even considering her rank. She needs to remain a virgin until marriage.
Santiago has been gone since walking me back to my room hours ago. Whatever called him away seemed somewhat urgent or at least important enough to distract him. I wonder if it has to do with the calls he kept dismissing when we were talking in his bedroom.
But now that I’m sure I’m alone, I walk out into the hallway and down the stairs. I need to find a phone. I need to call Abel. Because when that doctor examines me tomorrow—today—if he were to take a blood test or look for any abnormality in my hormone levels, he will figure out why I’m not getting pregnant.
I can’t think about what Santiago will do then.
Could I tell him the truth? He wouldn’t be angry with me then. He couldn’t be. Well, he could. I knew even if it was after the fact. But what would he do to Abel?
I’m barefoot and dressed in a bikini with a plush robe on top. My closet has been unlocked. If anyone happens to come upon me, I will let them know I am going to use the pool. Again, doctor’s orders.
The first place I go to search is the kitchen hoping one of the housekeepers left their cell phone there. I’ve seen them use their phones around the house, both the ones who live on-site and the others.
The lamp over the stove is on and between that and the filtered light coming in through the large window from the garden I go through each of the drawers, check every possible place but find nothing. I go into the living room. Check there. I never searched for one before, so it’s possible there’s a landline I just haven’t come across. I look in the armoire, the drawers of the antique side tables, pause to take in the ornate gilded piano that I’ve never heard anyone play.
I leave that room behind, my gaze moving toward the corridor that leads to the library, to his study. I hadn’t seen a phone there and if he catches me in there again, he’ll kill me. I search the other downstairs rooms and the dining room, the smaller sitting room and the large one I had been in with the doctor but find nothing.
I walk back into the center of the large hall and turn a circle to see if there is any place I’ve missed. The bedrooms upstairs are locked and if any are open, they’re not in use. I went through every unlocked room when I first had permission to roam.
I walk into the dining room and remember the night we ate in here. I stand at the window in exactly the place he’d stood, where he’d looked so solemn, so lost in thought staring out into the garden. I wonder now if it was his own reflection he had been studying in the glass and not the garden at all.
Walking to the liquor cabinet, I open the doors and move bottles around, not even sure what I’m hoping to find anymore. When I see his brand of scotch, I open it, sniff the contents. This scent lingers in his office, too.
I put it back then bend to open the drawer.
“What are you doing?”
I jump hitting my head on the shelf above before straightening and spinning to face Santiago. How did I not hear him?
“I…nothing.” I close the drawer then the doors of the cabinet before hiding my hands behind my back as if to hide my guilt. I struggle to hold his gaze.
Tell him the truth. Tell him now.
His gaze moves to the cabinet. I notice the drops of rain on his hair, his shoulders. He must have just gotten home.
“Come with me, Ivy,” he says and, without waiting for me, he turns to walk toward the corridor that I know will lead to his study. He doesn’t look back to make sure I’m following. He knows I’ll come.
Using a key, he unlocks the door and opens it for me to enter. He follows me in, closes the door.
“Sit,” he commands, touching the back of the chair I’d sat on the last time I was here as he proceeds behind his desk to push some buttons on that keyboard.
Is he going to make me watch that footage again? The woman who looks like me but isn’t? I open my mouth to tell him I don’t want to see it when a stack of letters beneath a paperweight near the edge of the desk catches my eye. I lean closer because I recognize that handwriting.
“Don’t touch,” he says without even looking up from his work and I pull my arm back.
“Are they for me?” I ask, seeing Evangeline’s name in the top left corner. “They’re from my sister.”
We look up at each other at the same time.
“You opened them? How many are there? How long—”
“Did you have anything to do with poisoning your father?”
The rest of my sentence gets caught in my throat. “Did I...what?”
He studies me for a very long minute then shakes his head and returns his attention to the keyboard and a moment later, those same screens on which I watched Santiago kiss a woman who looked a lot like me come to life.
It’s not until then that I consciously realize that I was set up. Used as a weapon in an attempt on my husband’s life. The woman was dressed exactly like me. I knew it on some level before, but it’s like the reality hits home now, and I shudder. Because who else knew what I’d be wearing?
We watch the screens together and it’s not that night at all. What I see are various rooms of the house. The kitchen. Living room. Dining room. My bedroom.
And me in those rooms. Well, all except my bedroom. That one’s empty and it’s just as incriminating as the others where I’m looking through every drawer, every cabinet, every nook right up until I smash my head into the cupboard when Santiago surprised me in the dining room.
He switches the monitors off and faces me.
“Do you want to tell me what you’re looking for exactly?”
I stare up at him. God. What must he think of me? A thief in the night? A poisoner. Am I surprised he’s kept my sister’s letters from me? He thinks I tried to kill him. He truly believes it and can I blame him?
The weight of that hits me.
I shake my head and I study his face as intently as he did mine just a little while ago. And what I see isn’t pure hate like before. There’s a resignation there. An even deeper sadness.
He believes I tried to kill him yet he lied to save my life.
Can he save my life? What happens when they find out I’m not pregnant at all? Do they hang me?
God. I’m going to be sick.
Then there’s what happens to him because of me. What if he’s wrong about his standing? What about that reckoning he knows is coming?
“I have to tell you something, Santiago.”
He remains silent, arms folded, a hulking shadow in this room, this house. He’s ready for the worst. I wonder if he always expects the worst. After what happened to his family, to him, maybe it’s the only way he can be.
“I won’t be pregnant next month. Or possibly the month after, but I don’t know.”
His jaw tightens. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The day Abel took me to that doctor, they gave me a shot. He said it was vitamins,” I start as he sets his arms by his sides, hands fisting, knuckles going white. “But even if I knew, I don’t think I could have stopped it.”
I hear him swallow.
“He told me when he came to the house the day of the gala that it was a birth control shot.”
I grip the edges of my chair waiting for him, for his reaction, my heart racing inside my chest.
“A birth control shot,” he repeats robotically like he’s processing the meaning.
I swallow, nod. I leave out the part about not wanting to have that monster’s baby because I’m starting to wonder who the true monsters are in our world.
“I’m sorry.”
His expression doesn’t change, the line of his mouth stretched tight, jaw tense. His hands balled into tight, angry fists.
He’s not quite looking at me. Not at first anyway because when his eyes do finally zero in on me, the look inside them sends ice down my spine.
“It’s not you who will be sorry for this one.” He checks his watch. “Go to your room and do not come out until I tell you that you can come out.”
“Okay.” I get to my feet, relieved. “Can I have the letters? Please?”
He nods once and I reach out to take them but as I’m setting the paperweight aside, he puts his hand over mine to stop me from pulling away.
I look up at him.
He gestures to my robe. “You’re not to swim alone.”
“Why not? The doctor said—”
“You’re not to swim alone. Only when Mercedes or I can be with you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want you having one of your episodes in the pool.”
I bite the inside of my lip as I study him. Days ago, I would have made the comment that it wouldn’t serve him to find me drowned. It would take his fun away. But somehow it doesn’t fit anymore.
“And no guards either. I don’t want them looking at you. Just me or Mercedes. Do you understand?”
"Yes,” I say as I think back to my dress at the gala. To Mercedes.
He releases me and I take the stack of letters. “Santiago—”
“Go to your room, Ivy.” He is dialing a number on his cell phone.
“What are you going to do to Abel?”
He glances at me, cocks his head to the side and stands.
I step backward because even with the desk between us, right now, he looks terrifying.
He grins. “You have other things to worry about, don’t you? Like saving your neck. You’re not off the hook with me or with The Tribunal. You still owe us a name. For starters.”
“I just—”
“Go to your room.” He sounds almost calm but I know that tone. There’s a current underneath it. A rage. “Now.”
I drop my gaze, nod and hurry away.