By the time the elevator arrives downstairs, Caius is waiting for me. Four soldiers enter the building. They’re dressed in dark suits to blend in, but they still stand out. It’s the look in their eyes, or maybe it’s the energy they give off.
“What’s going on?” Caius asks me as I direct the men to enter the ballroom.
“Marnix De Léon. He still in there?”
“Oh yeah. Guzzling down whiskey like a fucking champ. Remind me again, it’s not on our tab, right?”
I’m barely able to see straight through my rage. My fury at her father. Fury at myself. Because how many times can I let this happen? How many fathers will beat their daughters while I stand by like an impotent fool? How many will do worse?
And the cuts. That I don’t understand. I file that fact away for now.
“Santos?” Caius puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me just outside the entrance of the ballroom.
I blink hard. I need to stay here, in the present moment. I’m in time. She’s not dead. Just fucking covered in welts.
“Brother,” Caius says again, getting in my face this time to make me look at him. My brother’s eyes are sky blue, like our mom’s, and they can look so very different from mine. The darkness inside him—because there is darkness inside him—he’s better at keeping hidden.
“He beat her.” The words are raw and taut with fury.
Caius’s forehead creases.
“Her thighs are covered in welts. Fresh welts.” I don’t mention what I saw beneath those welts. If I’d looked closer, if I’d stripped her bare and scrutinized every inch of skin, what would I have found? More scars? More cuts? And the welts, how far did he go? I only saw her thighs.
“Her father?” he asks.
I nod once.
He knows what I’m thinking about. He understands my reaction. Caius knows me well, better than anyone in the world.
“Let’s go get the son of a bitch,” he says.
Again, I nod, because I’m too furious to speak. My brother and I enter the ballroom together, and heads turn. Just like the soldiers, I’m sure we’re giving off a particular energy.
One of aggression.
Of violence walking.
It takes all I have to unclench my hands, and I have to keep my arms stiff at my sides as if a marching soldier as I scan the room and find him. Marnix De Léon. He’s in the same place he was earlier—holding fucking court, laughing. Drunk.
His boy, Odin, sees us first. He doesn’t make a move to warn his father, or maybe he just doesn’t have time. When we get to their circle, our soldiers close in enough to make an impression but not so tight that we draw too much attention.
“Excuse us,” I say. My eyes are locked on Marnix, but I’m speaking to the people gathered around him.
“He needs a word with his future father-in-law. Just hammering out some wedding details. Bridezilla and all,” Caius says in that way of his like he’s relaxed and so casual. So charming.
“What’s this about?” Odin asks as Marnix swallows the whiskey in his glass.
The group dissipates.
I don’t look at Odin. I don’t take my eyes off Marnix. “You and me have something to discuss.”
“I don’t think we have anything to discuss—”
“Let’s go.” I gesture to the soldiers, one of whom knocks into Marnix from behind to nudge him.
“I’m guessing we’ll need some privacy,” Caius says to me. “I know where we can go.”
His coming here as often as he has been is paying off. Caius leads the way, with Marnix, Odin, me, and the soldiers trailing him. We use a door I hadn’t noticed before to leave the ballroom. It’s one servants might have used to come and go unseen.
Caius really has taken to getting to know the layout of the place. We are in a deserted corridor, where we pass half a dozen closed doors, but Caius heads to the one at the far end. He produces a key and unlocks it, then steps aside. “After you,” he says to Marnix.
Marnix glances at the stairs leading down, then back at Caius. “What the hell is this about?”
I walk around to face him. I’ve managed to get myself at least a little bit under control. I glance down to his belt, then back up. “Is this the belt you used?”
Marnix De Léon, my soon to be father-in-law, goes white as a ghost before my eyes.
I see Odin’s face in my periphery, see his confusion, then a too-quick understanding that leads me to believe this isn’t the first time this has happened.
“Where is my sister?” he asks me, suddenly panicked. He turns to walk back into the ballroom. I gesture to a soldier, who stops him. “Where is my sister?”
“She’s safe. No thanks to you.” I turn back to Marnix. “Down. Now.”
No one waits for him to move on his own. The soldier closest to him grips him by the shoulder and marches him down the stairs.
“It’s not the fanciest space, but I am thinking the way you look, you’re more concerned with privacy and good sound proofing,” Caius says as we follow him down. One soldier stays upstairs to guard the door. We’re in a cave-like space, a wine cellar. It seems to span the length of the building based on the lights that go on one after the other, probably on sensors. The floor is dirt, while the walls are carved stone, and shelf after shelf is stocked full with bottles collecting dust. The building itself is built on a cliff so I guess this was carved out of that rock. “Had a tour,” Caius says to me. “There’s about fourteen thousand bottles down here. Can you believe it?”
“I can, actually.”
“Good stuff, too. I sampled.”
I would chuckle if I wasn’t so preoccupied.
“No one will hear a sound,” he adds to Marnix De Léon’s discomfort. “And although it’s a little chilly, getting blood out of carpet is hard work. Housekeeping will thank you.”
I let out a short exhale. I appreciate my brother’s ability to hold onto his sense of humor no matter what. I’m too fucking serious for that.
“What did you do?” Odin asks his father, who brings his nearly empty whiskey glass to his lips to drain the last drops then sets it on the stone table slab in the center of the room. It has a four-inch wooden chopping block cut to fit on top. He’s right-handed. I make a mental note.
“Yeah, old man. Tell your boy what you did.”
Marnix looks at me with hate-filled eyes. He’s terrified, I can see that. He may have hired crooks to do his dirty work for him before, like he unknowingly hired us to take care of his enemy, but he’s never crossed a mafia family. Does he realize yet that the shit in the movies and the books is real? Does he get that we don’t fuck around?
After tonight, he will, and I can already see the wheels turning.
“We have a contract,” I start when he doesn’t speak. “One that binds your daughter to me. That says she belongs to me.”
His eyes narrow.
“She. Belongs. To. Me,” I say again so as to leave no confusion.
“Not for another two years. Terms are clear.”
“Think of it like buying a car. You negotiate an agreement, pay your money, but then come delivery time, you get that car just not quite in the condition you agreed upon,” Caius says from where he’s leaning against the wall. I see a hammer and nails on the shelf beside him and if I know my brother, he chose that spot on purpose.
“Dad,” Odin says. “What did you do to her?”
Marnix scans the room. He glances at the soldiers standing at the stairs. I hope he’s not foolish enough to try to run for it. I’m glad to see in the next moment that he’s not that stupid, that cowardly. He takes a deep breath. His whole face relaxes then, and he’s the man from upstairs, the one holding court.
“The girl needed to learn a lesson,” he says to Odin, then turns to me. “She has a big mouth. I should wish you luck with her. Hell, you can have her now if you want her so fucking badly,” he tells me, then turns to his son. “You fucking kids are both a disappointment.”
My chest tightens and breathing is hard. “You cannot give what is not yours.”
“What did you do?” Odin asks him again.
The older man shifts his gaze to the far wall.
“He whipped her. Welts two inches thick across her thighs.”
Odin’s face looks pained. He turns from me to his father. “Why? Why hurt her?”
“Why not? Isn’t she the one who broke us?”
“Mom decided to jump. She was sick. You know that. It had nothing to do with Madelena.”
“Like hell it didn’t.”
Odin’s jaw tenses. This is clearly an argument they’ve had before.
“For your part, you didn’t protect her,” I tell Odin, because he didn’t.
“I didn’t know,” he says, hanging his head and something in his stance, in the way he looks, it’s almost broken, like this was a step too far. It gets to me.
“Get him out of here,” I tell a soldier.
“No,” Odin says, straightening. He then turns to his father. “I will stand witness.”
“Interesting,” Caius says, picking up the hammer and weighing it.
I stalk toward the older man who, to his credit, doesn’t back away. “I asked you a question earlier. Is that the belt you used?”
He nods once.
“Take it off.”
His eyes narrow. I guess he thinks it’ll be an eye for an eye, that he’ll get off with a belt whipping.
That’s not how I operate. He will learn that tonight.
With an almost victorious grin, he unbuckles his belt, slips it from the loops, and dangles it out in front of me.
But I’m going to need my hands free. I gesture to a soldier, who takes it and remains standing directly behind him.
“You do not touch what is mine. You’re going to learn that tonight. Put your hands on the block.”
“If you’re going to whip me, go ahead. I won’t move. I’m no coward.”
“Put your hands on the block.”
“Fine, asshole,” he says with a shake of his head and a grin toward Odin. “Good opportunity to teach you how to take a fucking whipping like a man.”
I turn to Odin, whose eyes are locked on his father. Given what his father just said, it’s not the first time he’s hit them, like I had already guessed. I wonder if Odin stood between him and Madelena, but tonight isn’t the time for that. Tonight is to teach. “Just know that if I ever have to punish you for going against me, this will look like child’s play. You hear me?” I ask Odin.
Odin’s eyes are narrowed and still locked on his father, but he nods. Turning my back on them, I walk toward my brother, who grins and hands me the hammer.
“What the hell?” Marnix De Léon says when I turn back around. He draws his hands from the board just as I give a nod to the soldier, who hooks the belt around his throat and crosses it at the back of his neck. He tugs but not too tight—don’t want him getting off too easily. But it forces Marnix to clutch at it.
“I told you to put your fucking hands on the block!” I say, rage amplifying my voice. I grab hold of his right arm, force it onto the block, and drive a nail through the back of his hand, pinning it.
Marnix De Léon stills—then, a split second later, he screams.
Did she scream when he beat her? His own daughter, a woman half his size. Did she scream?
I raise the hammer and drive the nail in farther, then raise it again to bring it down on his hand once, twice, three times. I meant to aim for his thumb, but to be honest, I’m not that critical. He just keeps on screaming as I shatter the bones in his hand.
As abruptly as I began, as quickly, it’s over.
I slam the hammer down beside his mangled hand. When the soldier releases his hold on the belt, Marnix drops to his knees, the arm of the trapped hand stretching. He’s whimpering, still attempting to scream but unable to as he gasps for air.
Odin looks on, fucking witnessing. I don’t know what I expect to see in his eyes or on his face but apart from the green of his complexion, I don’t see fear or anything resembling it. When he meets my eyes, he swallows down that bile and holds my gaze. He knows his father deserved this and probably much more, and I wonder how many times Marnix De Léon has beaten his son—if his limp is because of the asshole now whimpering on the floor.
“Oh, that’s going to be quite the puzzle to piece back together,” Caius says, having come over to examine the mangled hand of the man kneeling on the floor. Marnix’s arm is stretched up, that nail doing its job and keeping it where I told him to put it.
“Let’s go,” I tell him and my soldiers. I’ll leave it to Odin to get the nail out. We walk to the stairs. Caius stops to pick out two dusty bottles of wine.
“I’ve had enough of the party,” Caius says to me once we get upstairs. “These look good. Shall we?”
I nod, and we head toward the elevators that lead to the penthouse apartment. Although as a rule I don’t drink, I make an exception tonight. I drink a bottle of wine with my brother, and I think about the woman in the next room. I think about what could have happened to her… what can still happen to her.
And I decide. Maybe I decided earlier that night, but I know without a doubt in this moment what I need to do. I’ve been wrong before, and my poor judgment cost me. But I wasn’t the one who paid the ultimate price.
“You’re lost in thought, brother,” Caius says.
I drink the last of the wine directly from my bottle and stand at the window, looking at the fog that’s rolled in and at the light from the lighthouse. “I want her out of here tomorrow. She doesn’t go back to that house, doesn’t see her father or her brother. I want her guarded twenty-four-seven.”
“Santos,” he says, coming to me when I stand. He takes my shoulders, turns me to him. This is the problem with not drinking. When I do, it makes everything slower, and it takes a moment for my eyes to focus on him. “The past is not repeating itself. Not with her. Wait the two years. It’s what you agreed.”
I shake my head. “No. Not making that mistake again. Arrange it. You’ll take her.”
“Doesn’t she start school or some shit in a few weeks?”
Art school. Local. I remember. “Fix it. Do what you need to do. I want her out of Avarice. Somewhere no one can find her.”
He studies me, sighs. “All right. Fine.”
I nod, put my hands on his shoulders and think about what Dad told me tonight, how he changed the will. “I love you, brother,” I tell him. That’s going to be another problem for another day.
“Fuck, maybe you shouldn’t drink,” Caius says as he gives me a hug with a pat on my back. “You become a sentimental fool.”
I smile.
“That was intense down there. On point, but intense. You’re a sick son of a bitch, you know that?”
“Ditto,” I say. He was the one who’d handed me the hammer, after all.