The Perfect Wrong, page 34
“No,” I whisper, but my throat is so tight it’s barely audible.
I’m reeling, stunned that I’m living this slow-motion nightmare.
I can’t believe he’s made up his mind on total lies.
“It’s not like that,” I say. “Please. Wait for him to come home so you can talk. Let him explain.”
“Explain? Give me a break.” He rolls his eyes and drops down into his chair. “I’ve heard it all. I know what these men are like, especially when they’ve suffered so much violence. Sometimes it damages them. He’ll tell a woman anything she wants to hear. That’s not love. And even if I thought he was Prince Charming, he’s still your stepbrother. What will people say? Do you really think I’d ever just throw up my hands and give you my blessing?”
“If you knew the truth, you would. I’m not a little girl anymore,” I shoot back, digging my nails into my thighs so hard it hurts. “It’s my life, Dad. If you want to cut off my trust, go right ahead. I don’t care anymore. Soon I’ll be done with school and out on my own.”
“You think it’s that easy, huh?” He folds his hands and leans forward, staring coldly into my eyes. “I’m not asking you to go off and prove me wrong, Cordelia. I’m giving you an ultimatum—get help. Go to therapy and forget about him. I don’t want to have a conversation with the Dean, but I will if I think it’s in your best interests. Also, you owe me a drug test. If it doesn’t come back clean, you’re heading straight to the same place Evie went.”
I’m dying.
My heart feels like it’s encased in cement, falling right out of me.
All I want to do is run, stuff my face in the nearest pillow, and scream and scream and scream until I pass out.
“Please understand. If this was his doing—and I’m certain it is—I’m only trying to do what’s right. I’m trying to help you, honey, even if you hate me now,” he whispers. “I’m proud of you. I won’t have your whole future derailed by this man and whatever devious addictions he’s pushing. There’s no shame in getting help. We all need it sometimes. Lord knows I did after your mother walked out years ago.”
He pauses, his eyes going glassy with tears as he watches me shake my head, snapping it side to side.
“I’ll always love and support you, Cordelia. That’s what families do. But I’m not going to sit back and watch while you blow your life up. While he’s poisoned you with his games, twisted your heart into thinking you actually...” He swallows hard. “That you love this maniac.”
He’s still talking, but I can’t process anything after that.
I’m blotting at my eyes until I can see, and then I’m up, blowing out of his office before he can say another cruel word.
“Think about it!” he calls after me. “We’ll talk again tomorrow. I know you’ll come to your senses. I spent my whole life raising you to be better than—”
Than what?
That’s so rich I want to throw up.
If he knew anything at all about Chris, he’d know no one else in this house is fit to tie his shoes.
I cover my ears and rush through the house, the whole world going shaky and red.
There’s a figure sitting in the nook outside their bedroom—the queen bitch herself—basking in the pale moonlight with a fresh drink in her hand that’s almost drained.
I know by the amber color it’s no mocktail.
She’s hitting the bottle again, right under Dad’s nose, just like she somehow smuggled in that bag of blow.
The sneering, triumphant smile she gives me confirms it.
I won’t look at her.
I just bolt inside my room and slam the door, my only safe haven from this prison my house has become.
I can’t give up.
Can’t let them win.
Can’t let them destroy the love of my life.
I’d give anything to talk to Chris. I promised I wouldn’t bother him when I know he can’t answer, but it’s been too long and I’m being strangled in slow motion.
So I pull up his contact and start texting.
Hey, are you all right? It’s been a week. I know you’re busy, but if you can even send one word...
I sigh.
Where the hell is he?
I open my browser tab and start scanning the news like always.
Definitely not a wise decision right now, but it’s the only thing that makes me feel better—until I spot the headline a little ways down the international news page, one more tragedy in a whole litany of bad.
BREAKING! Six American Security Contractors Go Missing In Mexico!
My stomach churns before I even click the link.
When I do, I have to cover my mouth, holding my breath as the whole world spins.
Chris’ face is front and center. It’s an old photo, along with a few other men I don’t recognize, a brief list of their pre-Enguard military ranks under their names.
My eyes jump the article, skimming but not understanding.
Details are scarce.
There’s just a few words about a hazy operation with Federal approval, a cartel, a statement from the security company by a man named Landon Strauss, vowing he’ll bring his men home.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no.”
After that, I completely lose my voice.
The phone slips from my hand.
A few minutes ago, it would’ve been insanely hard, but I might’ve kept it together.
I had hope.
I had a cause.
I was ready to fight tooth and nail to stay with him, even if I had to skip the next semester.
Now, I feel the sky caving in, and with it goes any hope of ever reaching heaven.
How could I forget what those sick men in Vegas almost did to me?
What Chris implied they do to women, helpless girls, so many times?
What will they do to grown men who tried to serve them justice?
I can’t breathe.
Especially not when the doorbell rings, reverberating through the house, and I drag myself to the top of the stairs so I can listen in.
It looks like it takes all of Dad’s effort to keep standing while Evie rubs his shoulders.
A tall, older man who looks more like a movie star than any CEO—Strauss, I guess—tells them Chris is missing in action. Likely still alive in cartel hands.
Likely.
I barely stumble back to my room after a few more hurried words float up, crawling along the wall for support.
Maybe I really do need therapy.
For the first time in my life, I think I’m going crazy.
20
White Terror (Chris)
If I had a wish for every fracture in my body, I’d be king of the universe.
It’s dark.
So fucking dark, even if I’m sure my eyes are wide open.
For a second, I think they’ve buried me alive in some pit until I hear footsteps.
The shrieking hinges of a heavy, reinforced door.
Then a strip of light so intense it’s blinding, coming from outside wherever the hell I am. The lights hum loudly behind the small group of shadow men standing in the doorway.
They mutter back and forth in Spanish.
There’s another wish. If only I understood more than the awkward snatches and fragments every white boy who grows up in California absorbs by osmosis.
When the tallest figure steps forward—the only one whose face isn’t hidden behind a balaclava mask—I already know what’s on his mind even before he stomps on my chest and starts snarling in my ear.
“You. I chose you because you brought it back.” He thrusts his fist down to my face, and it takes my throbbing eyes a few seconds to catch the glinting, ornately carved metal on his finger.
The ring.
The second ring I kept from those bastards in Vegas that I didn’t turn over as evidence.
The same cartel prize I brought for good luck, now wrapped around his finger. He brushes his other hand over it the same way you’d caress a lover.
“You killed my men,” he whispers. “Did you think death would stop them when they belong to me?”
Eladio Joaquin.
No one else.
I try not to cringe at his soulless villain schtick.
And if my eyes would work better, I know he’d be leering at me with his razor-sharp eyes.
“What do you want?” I grind out.
“Everything,” he says in his thick accent, his voice like thunder. “Hold nothing back, or we stop wasting time and play twenty-one roses.”
Fuck.
I try not to gag, hating that these pricks really are as sadistic as their reputation.
Twenty-one roses.
Ten fingers.
Ten toes.
One penis—or sometimes a face.
And they’ll remove them all slowly with a dull blade, laughing, one grisly piece at a time if I don’t give them what they want. I wish I’d caught a bullet from that goddamn contraband gunship before it was blown out of the sky.
It has to beat letting them turn me into a mangled meatsack of a man—or worse, sending me home in a destroyed state that’ll cost Delia her soul before I ever heave out my last breath.
“I already started on the old man,” he says dully. “Got two roses in before he gave me his name. That was all I needed. Sexton Jones.”
I want to swear so bad it hurts holding it in.
Not half as badly as I’d like to rip this asshole’s throat open with my teeth.
But if they’ve actually captured Sex, tortured him...they could do a fuck of a lot worse to everyone if I ignore these monsters and decide to be stupid and brave. Emphasis on stupid.
There’s a rustling noise next to my ear. I realize he’s reaching into his designer pants, fishing something out—his phone, judging by the blaring square of light in my face a second later.
What the hell am I looking at?
My eyes sting before they finally focus on a laughing picture of a little girl. It’s a family photo from Facebook or some shit. Sexton stands over her shoulder, dressed like an ordinary grandfather and not the human rock I know he is in the field.
The rock they’re breaking apart.
“You recognize her?” Eladio growls.
I shake my head, even if it feels futile.
Not the answer he wants.
His sneering lips peel back as he punches my throat.
I’m a coughing, spluttering mess for the next minute. I can’t think, can’t scream, can’t even twist and roll with one leg on fire every time I move, and my hands cuffed behind me.
“Do not bullshit me again,” he says. “Understood?”
I stare at him, waiting, the only thing I can do and fucking hate it with every fiber of my being. It takes too much effort to nod.
“Good. So you know this girl and the man. Your commander,” he whispers with a cryptic smile. I don’t move a muscle. “When I told you twenty-one roses, you understood?”
A few more breathless seconds.
I nod, one bruised eye fluttering shut.
“I don’t think you did,” he says with a frown, standing up straighter, turning back into a thing of pure shadow by the time I look up at him again with wide, confused eyes.
What the hell are you getting at? I think with a searing breath. I understand how you’ll mutilate me and my entire team if I don’t fucking squeal, you sick assh—
“When I said we play twenty-one roses, I meant with the little girl,” he says, smiling as the fear comes into my eyes. “We will find her. We will take her. And then, my scared little gringo, we will take a new piece of her for every day you don’t talk. So start tonight. Start now. Save the girl and the old man some tears.”
He turns while I’m still paralyzed. My eyes flick to the silver toes of his boots, the gleaming ouroboros snakes eating themselves and still seeming hungry for more.
More lives.
The entire world fades into the scuffing click of his leather boots moving across the floor.
Then that square of light disappears with a groan, leaving me in hell.
If I still had the life to scream, I’d do it until my throat blows out.
21
Blinding Truths (Delia)
“I wish it wasn’t coming down like this, Cordelia. Whatever our family complexities, I’m sorry. We’ll do everything we can to bring him home safe.” Dad’s eyes flick nervously to mine in the rearview mirror.
I barely shrug.
I haven’t sat in the back seat with him driving since I was a kid.
Today, I feel like one, broken and helpless.
Shattered from the inside out by weeks of wondering, worrying, hurting.
Chris disappearing gutted me.
I’ve barely crawled out of bed to eat, much less accomplished anything useful.
Emails go unanswered.
I haven’t touched my paints for weeks.
I should’ve been back on campus a week ago, but I’m taking a leave of absence.
That sent Marnie over in a panic. She showed up a few days ago, trying so hard to be encouraging, to urge me back to life.
All I could do was cry on her shoulder. Literally.
And when I told her what was killing me, when I spilled the truth about Chris, I asked her one thing.
How can I ever pretend to go on?
That’s what I’m still wondering now, riding to this ridiculous treatment center against my will. When Evie started pushing Dad to have me shipped off to a facility a couple weeks ago, at first he put up a fight.
Then he showed up this morning, pushing into my room and pleading for me to come down to breakfast.
Just like I have so many times lately, I refused.
The pale, tired look on his face told me he’d made up his mind. I stopped giving him excuses a while ago, too burned out to even lie.
I keep thinking that one day something will just click in my head.
Maybe I’ll just wake up and feel well enough to go through the motions, leave the house, and summon the energy to finish my last semester and get on with my shadow of a life.
Somehow, I won’t feel sick to death anymore.
I’ll only wonder if Chris will ever come home alive every other waking moment.
And the nightmares where I see him beaten, bruised, crunched up in this dark, dingy cell will just go away.
Yeah, who am I kidding?
I’m so alone.
Lost.
Lovesick.
“We’re almost there,” Dad says softly, looking back at me in the mirror again. “Just try it out for a few days. They’ll help you feel better, honey, if you give them an honest chance. I’ll be back Friday to see how you’re doing.”
Evie snorts next to him from the passenger seat.
“Oh, back off the girl, Bruce. She’s just heartsick. She hasn’t reverted back to the crib.” Evie looks up at him from filing her nails.
There’s a steady rain falling on the hills, spattering the entire metro area. It already has that familiar bite of fall coolness. I stare out the window, wondering if it’s a fraction as dismal as the cold distant place where Chris is being kept.
The drumming rain merges with the scratch of Evie’s nails.
A rough, grating sound. Like my whole world ripping in two, plunging me into an empty grey pit I don’t know how to escape.
The next few miles stretch on in silence, the streets weirdly empty today.
“But you’d still say the program helped, wouldn’t you?” Dad asks quietly when we’re at a stoplight.
“Huh?” She looks up. “Oh, of course. I’m sitting here, perfectly dried out and sober, helping you with—with this, aren’t I?”
Dad nods woodenly.
I can only stand to look at Evie’s outline for a second, noticing how sour she looks.
“What’s with you today?” she asks. “God, you two act like we’re going to a funeral! Don’t you see this is what it takes? Back in my program, they said nothing good happens without work. Well, family takes work too. A year from now, I think we’ll all agree it’s worth it.”
And what if this family has a gaping Chris-shaped hole that can never be filled?
I bite my tongue to keep from lashing out at her.
“You’ve certainly been adamant about making hard choices,” Dad says quietly.
“Someone has to, Bruce. I know this isn’t easy for you—for anyone—but you know I’ll do what it takes to make things right. Anything.”
“Anything,” Dad repeats weakly. “Right.”
The conversation fades as I look up and see the clinic looming large in the distance.
It’s one of those old-school places funded by rich donors fifty years ago and still decked out in these incredible gardens hiding a sleek white stone castle behind its walls.
It’s a reputation that needs no dressing up.
Celebrities and business moguls go here to find their way back to sanity.
I can’t say Dad hasn’t always offered me the best in everything, even when he’s twisting my arm.
I stare at it through the window glumly, wondering how I’ll actually feel once I’m stuck inside, knowing I can’t leave. A cage decked in gold and ivory is still a cage.
My stomach knots up.
The only thing I’m sure about is that it can’t be worse than wherever they’re holding Chris. I only have to worry about endless doctors pestering me.
Not being beaten within an inch of my life.
This place is another kind of torture, even if it can’t hold a candle to the horrors he’s suffering.
The worst part is, I know he still thinks of me.
If he could see what I’ve been reduced to, where I’m going, instead of finishing school...
I bite my lip to hold back the emotional overload.
Jesus Christ.
While I’m selfishly worried about ruining my education, they’re ruining him in all the most vicious ways.
