Chapter 1
1110 Words
Isolde
"You have such pretty hands."
That was what Dorian had said to me three hours ago before I stabbed the bastard who tried to harass me to death, right before he pressed his lips to my knuckles at my own engagement party. Right before he slipped something into my champagne glass while his brother's back was turned. Right before he cornered me in that upstairs hallway and told me that a girl like me should be grateful for the attention of a man like him and I was like what the heck?
Now those pretty hands were covered in blood. I turned the tap higher, hotter, until steam curled off the marble sink and my skin screamed pain. The water ran pink, then pale, then pink again. I scrubbed harder. My nails, short and bare because Marcus had told me long nails looked cheap, raked against my own palms like I was trying to peel something off that lived deeper than skin.
It wouldn't come off.
"Come on." My voice broke. "Come off."
The bathroom mirror threw my reflection back at me and mascara down both cheeks. The silk strap of my pale blue dress torn at the shoulder. My lip split at the corner where my face had met the floor before I found the letter opener on Dorian's desk. Before everything changed. Before I stopped being the girl who flinched and became something I didn't recognise.
Downstairs, Dorian Voss was not breathing anymore. I pressed both hands flat against the sink and made myself stand still. The room tilted. Whatever he had put in that drink was still threading through my blood, making the light too bright, making my thoughts slippery and slow. But the fear was sharp. The fear cut through everything.
Somewhere far off, sirens wailed. My stomach dropped instantly.. I grabbed the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles went white. The bathroom door opened.
Marcus stepped in. For one second, one stupid, desperate second, I felt relief. I almost said his name. I almost crossed the room and put my face against his chest the way I had done a hundred times before, the way that used to feel like safety.
Then I saw his face. He looked at me and also looked at my hands, at the ruin of my dress, at the smear of red on my forearm I had missed. Something moved behind his eyes, something I can't really phantom, calculation I guess..
"Marcus." My voice came out small. "Marcus, he tried to, he drugged me, I had to, I didn't have a choice, I need you to listen to me."
He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms.
"I know what happened," he said.
I exhaled. "Then you know it was self-defense. You know I didn't, I would never, Marcus, please, we have to call someone, we have to explain before his people get here, we have to go to the police and tell them what he, what he tried to do to me, they'll believe you, your family has connections, you can, "
"Isolde." He said my name like a full stop. "You killed my brother."
"He assaulted me."
"You killed my brother," he said again, softer, which was worse. "And now you belong to this family. You understand that? You're not walking out of this house, not tonight, not ever, You're ours now. Insurance."
I stared at him for seconds… The man I had said yes to four months ago. The man who had kissed me in the rain outside that tiny restaurant on Brewer Street and told me I was the only real thing in his life. That man was watching me with flat, cold eyes, and I understood that he had never existed. He had been a door. And I had walked straight through it into something I couldn't name.
"You're going to stay right here," Marcus said, stepping fully into the bathroom, reaching past me to pull the door shut. "My father will be here in forty minutes. He'll decide what happens to you."
"I'm not staying."
"You don't have a choice."
"I didn't have a choice upstairs either," I said. "And look how that ended."
Something flickered in his face. Uncertainty, or maybe fear. He reached for my wrist. I grabbed the decorative vase off the shelf beside me, the heavy white one with the gold rim that probably cost more than my rent, and I swung it into the side of his head.
The sound was ugly and devastating.. Marcus went down like a bag of sand. I stood over him for three seconds, chest heaving, vase still in my hand, watching him breathe. He was breathing. I told myself that mattered. Then I dropped the vase, stepped over him, and ran.
No shoes. I didn't have time for shoes. The marble stairs were cold under my bare feet. The grand entrance hall spun past me in a blur of chandelier light and white walls. I hit the front door with both palms, yanked it open, and fell out into the night.
The rain was immediate and total. Cold and hard, soaking through my ruined dress in seconds, plastering my hair flat against my face. I didn't stop. I ran down the long gravel driveway, stones biting into my soles, and out through the iron gate that had been left open for the party guests who were long gone.
The street was dark and wet and empty. I ran anyway. My lungs burned. My bare feet slapped the pavement. The drug in my system made everything pulse at the wrong rhythm, the streetlights smearing into long gold streaks when I turned my head. I didn't know this neighbourhood. I didn't know which direction led to people, to safety, to anywhere that wasn't here.
I just ran. I heard the motorcycle before I saw the headlight. It came fast around the bend, and I was already on the road, and there was no time, no time at all, only the screech of brakes and a shout and then the impact that spun me sideways and put the wet tarmac against my cheek.
Everything went soft. The rain kept falling. I could feel it on my face, gentle now, almost kind. My eyes were open but the world was shrinking at the edges, tunnelling down to a single yellow streetlight and the smell of rain and engine oil and someone crouching over me.
I heard a deep and rough rough voice coming close to me..
"Who the hell dumped an angel in front of my bike?"
Then there was nothing at all..
- Writer
