He laughs, the same delighted, rolling laugh he uses in the club, and cold rushes over my skin. “You’re going inside. Get out of the car.”
“It’s not a car,” I scream back at him. It’s the screaming I should have done back in the cathedral. It’s the meltdown I would have had if I’d had the luxury. “It’s not a car, it’s a death trap, and I can’t get out. I can’t even open the door.”
“Sweetheart.” I hate him, I hate him. “The door is already open. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
The horror of the last day is a crushing wave and I gasp for breath like it might be actual water. It chokes me, burning its way down into my lungs, and I can feel my knees starting to go. I sink down onto the floor of the SUV in a cloud of tulle and lace. This is it. This is the end of the fantasy that I could ever have saved myself. This is the end of imagining the nightmare scenario and a woman who could overcome it with grit and in bare feet if necessary.
I danced with him.
I told him I cared about him.
And his devil of a brother brought me back here for what? For what? The screaming starts up again but it can’t possibly be me. I can’t make that inhuman of a sound. It turns into words in my mouth. “I’m not your whore,” I spit at him.
He blinks. That? That’s what’s going to get under his skin? A sneer curls the corner of his mouth. “You’re no prostitute, Brigit. You’re property. My property. Didn’t you know?”
It’s so egregious, so awful, that I throw myself forward, knees or not, leaping for him.
I’m going to kill him with this bouquet.
He stops it in mid-swing, with one hand, and rips it apart. Petals burst out from the arrangement, fluttering down, and the rest of it goes flying into the street. And I’ve been so stupid. I’ve been so foolish. Because in my attempt to murder him with plants I’ve put myself in his reach.
He did this on purpose.
The gown, so heavy and caging, is nothing to Zeus. Neither are my fists. But I try, I try. My arms burn from throwing punches that don’t land, each of them swatted away by one of his huge hands. He’s already smiling. He’s already smiling like he didn’t need anything in the world other than for me to get out of the car. “I’m not going with you.” The howl echoes down the street. It’s noon, so there’s no one to watch, not that I can see, only Hades and Persephone. She’s taken his hand. I take one last swing at Zeus’s face and he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, one arm banded across my waist.
The contact with my stomach drives the rest of the breath from my lungs. It’s quiet out here when no one is screaming. It’s only now, in this moment, that I feel for myself how hard he’s breathing. The smile, the laugh—it was all a front. My fists have a mind of their own. I pound at his back.
It does nothing.
“The uncle,” he says.
“Taken care of,” answers Persephone.
“Are you sure?”
“He didn’t make it all the way up the stairs.”
Shock descends. I was being led out of the church by a killer. I thought she was gentler than Hades. I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid. And she’s so matter-of-fact. I am slung over a man’s shoulder like the property he says I am and there she is, coolly saying that there is no pulse. My uncle—she killed him. It was her. I wait for singing relief but there is none. She didn’t kill my father. He still exists. What’s to stop him from coming here again? I don’t even know how he got to me the first time. Or who—or why.
And I’m out here in the open.
We’re just standing here, like there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t mean to thrash but I do in a last bid to get away, to run. Open skies are dangerous. Open sidewalks are dangerous. There is nothing safe here. Nothing and no one.
“Good,” Zeus says. He moves toward the front doors. Reya’s gone back to keep the door open, her jaw set. I don’t want to go in. I don’t want to stay out. “Stop kicking. You’re not going to get free with that pathetic kick.”
I kick harder. He stops on the stairs, turning back, and I’m still trying to find my voice. The screaming was so short-lived. But even if I screamed again, who would help me? No one in the world.
“You’ll stay for dinner.”
“The fuck we will,” says Hades.
“Your plaything looks pale underneath her makeup, Hades. Ask her if she wants to get on the train.” Zeus is stepping through the front doors, almost out of earshot, when Hades’ low curse follows us in. “We have things to talk about,” Zeus sings in reply. “Once I’m finished with Brigit.”
7
Brigit
I catch my breath halfway to the elevators and resume my struggle but it’s as pointless as ever. The numbness comes in waves, and when it’s gone, the pain is so bright and immediate that it reminds me of grieving my mother. I keep waiting for it to subside but it never does. My foot catches the elevator door and I try to hook my toe around it and pull us back.
Zeus has none of this. He unhooks my foot, takes us into the elevator, and flips up several layers of tulle to deliver a set of stinging blows to my ass. It knocks a panicked cry out of me. “That’s better,” he says. “I’d rather hear that than your useless arguments.”
I grit my teeth against the possibility of tears. “Why.”
“Why what.”
“Why are you doing this?” I claw at the back of his jacket, knowing that he won’t feel it. My nails can’t cut through the fabric. I wish they could. I wish they were on his bare skin. I wish— “I don’t want to be here.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.” A sob hitches at the back of my throat but I don’t let it out. “I’d rather be anywhere else.”
“You were somewhere else, sweetheart. I don’t think Persephone’s strong enough to take you out of a church all by herself.”
“I didn’t want to come here.” He sets me back on my feet at the same instant the elevator stops. The doors slide open. Zeus puts a hand on the back of my neck and guides me forward. He’s hardly using any force and my feet go forward. No. Fight him. Don’t give into him. But I do. With every step, I do. My knees are jelly. I only have one shoe. The dress feels like quicksand, ready to pull me into the floor. Oh, fuck, I can feel the earthquake coming. When it finally arrives it’ll tear me apart. “I don’t want to be with you.”
It becomes more impossible to focus with every step so I’m surprised, I’m foolishly surprised, to find that the elevator has let us off in his bedroom. I turn around to make a run for it and his hand moves down to my shoulder and pulls me back. He just carried me up here and still shock strokes its fingers down my throat. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand to have him touch me.
But he is.
He forces me back and back until I’m standing at the foot of the bed.
Someone is crying.
Someone is ugly crying, in huge, gulping gasps. I can’t fathom who would make that sound. I can’t fathom it until the sensation catches up with the sound and I realize it’s me, my stomach heaving, crying so hard I’m on the verge of being sick. I haven’t cried like this since my mother died and even then I only let it happen once in a bathroom at the funeral home that smelled like baby powder and hand sanitizer.