31. Leonor

31

LEONOR

I can’t believe I just did that.

Slamming the heel of my left hand into the steering wheel, I aggressively swipe at my never ending tears with the other, trying to clear my vision as I drive the black beast through the backroads of NOLA like a maniac.

It isn’t working, though.

I just keep crying.

Nothing seems to be working.

Yelling at the boys and telling them my secrets, that didn’t help. Especially since I used all of that as a weapon to make them want to leave me instead of telling them the way they deserve because they won’t. Those four won’t ever leave me, I know it right down to my bones.

Taking off like a bat out of hell isn’t doing anything for me. Nothing but putting distance between me and Justine’s house, between me and the only people in the entire world who love me. If anything that makes me feel sick to my stomach.

And crying so many goddamn tears I might end up dehydrated isn’t fucking helping but I can’t seem to stop. Not after what I said to the four men who make up my heart and soul, and not after dredging up old wounds that will never heal but were scabbed enough to forget about until I wanted everyone to hurt.

I ruined my entire life in a matter of minutes, again, and the list of reasons why it shouldn’t be repaired is definitely growing by the second.

“Fuck!” I shout as I whip into the driveway of an abandoned farmhouse, throwing the beast into park on a sob.

I hit the steering wheel over and over, screaming and yelling, crying harder than I ever have. I curse the sky and whatever God there is, the universe and whatever force is driving me down such a fucked up path. I scream at my mother, shouting out my resentment and anger over the way she was treated, the way she allowed herself to be treated, and how dare she bring children into that sort of hell on earth.

Dropping my head to my hands, I beg for forgiveness. To whoever is listening, to whoever might be out there. Forgiveness for the way I’ve lived my life, the way I’ve let anger rule it for so long, and I beg that I can fix this, that I can fix me because the only way I’m going to continue surviving in this city of ghosts is with the love from the people I can’t seem to stop hurting.

A fucking curse indeed.

I take a few shaky breaths and try to get myself under control.

Driving while hysterically sobbing and screaming isn’t exactly safe and even though I would have welcomed the accident it could have caused years ago, I can’t bring myself to think like that now.

Which is exactly why I should probably go back to Justine and Pierre’s house, and start groveling at the feet of four gods who won’t ever ask me to do that.

But just as I’m about to throw the beast in reverse, the familiar chime of my cell phone goes off, and I frown while I start looking around.

That’s weird.

It’s been a few days since I’ve been in the van, Mark got us out of the loft in his truck and I know I had my phone up until that point.

So, how is my phone in the beast?

The two minute reminder goes off followed by the sound of another text coming through and just when I’m about to unbuckle and start looking, Pierre’s ringtone sounds from the glovebox for a few seconds before it abruptly stops.

With a frown, I reach toward the dash, removing my phone from exactly where I thought it was and when I see it’s at 100%, I let out a watery laugh.

Lucky.

He probably brought it back from the loft when they left to go to Justine’s, and since it was dead, he plugged it in and it’s been charging this entire time because it drives him crazy when I forget to do that.

PIERRE: Bonjour, belle!

PIERRE: Could you be so kind as to bring my dinner up to the mansion? Justine is out with the benefactor and I forgot it at home.

Okay…

That’s a little odd.

Not Justine doing some other god-awful thing with that Collinsworth dickhead, even at this time of the afternoon since he seems to think he can’t function without her, but it is strange that Pierre is asking me to bring him food when I know he has an entire kitchen out there at his disposal.

Then again, if he’s working, too, that means he’s fixing any number of things around the property, or going over the restoration budget and books, and that can be so time consuming it’s hard to even get up to take a piss. However, bringing him dinner might not be an option because I’m barefoot, in borrowed clothing and a borrowed vehicle so unless Lucky or Norm thought to grab my…

My wallet, that is also sitting in the glovebox.

Looks like Pierre gets McDonald’s for dinner, and I get to eat crow while I beg my boyfriends to love me in spite of how insane I am.

I’ll be there in twenty.

Deciding to park directly in front of the porch in the horseshoe drive, since I can because I no longer work here and have had a shit day, I frown, again , as I look around and don’t see any sign of literally anyone else here.

Justine might have their car, I didn’t pass it coming up because there weren’t any at the carriage house, but the last time Collinsworth had her doing shit he sent a car for her. Maybe he creeps her out too so she drove separately and planned on picking up her man later.

The thing is, I don’t see any other vehicles.

Dirt Sack and his crew might be on a break or something, I know a lot of the time they’ll do stuff inside during the day when there are a lot of people working on the house then they break and come back later to do outdoor shit. So it’s not weird that they aren’t here but I didn’t pass any vehicles that belong to the security goons either. Which means Chase and the other guys are probably gone for the day, or on some sort of break themselves and that has me feeling some kind of way.

Then again, I also wouldn’t put it past Pierre to kick everyone out so he could work on the books without interruption. Not necessarily silence, that’s rare for him, but without people in and out of his office repeatedly while he does mathématiques stupides.

Smiling my way up the stairs, I push open the front door with ease and before I have a chance to call out to Pierre, I hear Dean Martin crooning that beautiful song Memories Are Made of This from somewhere in this empty house.

And I can’t help but start to sing.

This is exactly what I needed.

I mean, I still need to go back and apologize to the boys, probably talk through a bunch of shit since I dropped bombs on them, but a little time with my daddy will be good for the soul.

We haven’t really had the time to reconnect the way I wanted to, the way I need to for both of our sakes. And I know he’ll set the budget aside for me if I ask him to dance and since Deano is playing, I don’t think he’ll put up much of a fight.

Shuffling my way to the kitchen like the late great singer and dancer himself, I set Pierre’s food on the island then head out in search of the man I owe some one on one time to.

The closer I get to his office on the second floor, the louder I sing.

I forgot how good this is.

I haven’t really listened to music for the last few years, not unless I was working and that was more or less to drown out the sound of power tools. Playing with the boys is really what brought meaning back to notes and lyrics, and this song is no exception. Dean has always been one of mine and Pierre’s favorites, all those old school crooners are, and I genuinely forgot how happy listening to them makes me.

Throwing open the slightly ajar door, I belt out a few lines in my best impersonation of the king of classic then frown when I notice Pierre’s back is to me.

“Hey, old man,” I shout with a grin as I walk toward the desk, assuming someone fell asleep at work or can’t hear me over the music. “I said…” I reach for the back of the chair, my anxiety spiking all of the sudden. “Pierre?”

My heart stops as I turn the chair to face me, the dark leather swiveling in my direction on a squeak like it always does but stops abruptly when Pierre’s hand on the arm slams into the open desk drawer and sticks.

Quickly smothering my scream with my hands, I cover my mouth and stumble backwards, my eyes unable to look away from what I’m seeing.

And I know I’m never going to forget it.

The twisted look of horror on Pierre’s face, his dark eyes wide in fear, his full lips swollen and bloody, his jaw dropped and mouth open in a silent cry for help.

The carving knife shoved through his neck, the hilt sticking out under one ear, the tip of the blade sticking out under the other.

The huge slash in his throat, gaping and wide, split almost to the bone because I can see dots of white through the torn flesh and muscle.

I will never get this image out of my mind as long as I live.

Which is when a thought occurs to me.

Pierre didn’t send those texts, he couldn’t have. Seeing him now proves there’s no way he did and that means…

The music stops and a rope comes down over my head as soon as the last note comes to a screeching halt, a noose of sorts tightening immediately and tugging me back into a large body.

“Memories, Leonor,” the distorted voice says, one of those voice altering boxes most likely in the completely blacked out mask next to my face. “They really are made of this.”

I claw and pull at the rope to no avail, gasping for what little air I can as it tightens then loosens repeatedly. I try to scream and kick, to fight as the man lifts me by the noose only to slam my head down onto the desk, my vision blurring momentarily before refocusing on Pierre’s terrified face.

Shoving me forward until I’m bent at the waist, my attacker works in silence, zip tying my hands behind my back, covering my mouth with duct tape. Each time I try to struggle he tightens the noose, his grip on that dirty, thick rope firm despite the way he’s restraining the rest of me.

I feel his hips against my ass, shoving me against the wood so hard I know I’ll bruise and when I try to turn my head, knowing in my heart what’s about to happen and how I can’t look at Pierre while it does, he buries a hand in my hair and slams my head against the desk again.

“No, no, no,” he sneers. “I want your daddy to watch. I want him to see. ”

My blood turns to ice in my veins at his words, my heart pounding so hard it actually hurts.

He leans down over me, the black void of his hood and mask coming into view as he presses my cheek harder into the heavy oak. “I want you to see, Leonor. See me .”

Pierre comes back into view as the man straightens up, the fingers of his black gloves tearing at the waistband of my shorts, roughly yanking them down to my ankles before kicking my legs wide open. There’s a slight pause as I hear a zipper followed by crinkling of foil then the unmistakable feel of the tip of an erect penis sliding up and down my entrance.

“I don’t think so.” The hand in my hair tightens as I squeeze my eyes shut. “Eyes open, eyes seeing.” Then he slams into me.

Every inch of my skin burns, inside and out, the lubrication on the condom doing nothing to stop the pain that comes with an unwanted invasion. He goes slowly at first, dragging the rubber along the inside like a thousand tiny matches, scraping and sparking before they catch fire then shoving back inside until his hips are flush against my ass.

Oh god, it hurts.

Every move, every thrust. What he’s doing to me… it overrides the pain of his fingers tearing out bits of my hair, the tearing of skin each time the rope around my neck gets too tight, the way he shoves my face harder into the desk to make sure I don’t look away from Pierre.

I don’t.

My eyes stay locked with his horrified and frozen ones as this man takes the pieces of my soul I was starting to put back together, stealing them from me, taking my happiness, my healing , and shattering all of it into a million shards, scattering them in the wind so I can never find anything remotely like it again.

He picks up his pace, pumping into me faster, inching the desk across the floor with the force of his movements, each emphasized with a high pitched scratch along the wood floor and that’s when I lose myself almost completely. My past mixing with this present, Collin Hastings’ voice switching and alternating with this man’s. I can almost feel the knife enter my body with each punishing thrust, tearing its way from my core all the way to my chest in a dry, searing pain, the cold steel against my skin burning just like everything else.

The grunting and groaning above me starts to fade in and out, the distorted voice still rotating in and out for Hasting’s as his movements become more brutal and he starts waxing poetic about coming inside me so I won’t ever forget him.

Hastings said that, too.

As he raped me, as he killed me, over and over like everything else, he said I’d never forget him because he was a part of me now.

Twice in one lifetime.

A ghost that’s come back to haunt me.

A devil determined to drag me to hell.

The man cries out as his movements become uncoordinated, as he does what he said he would so loud and hard that the chair wobbles and Pierre slumps forward, his head landing just a few inches from mine.

“That’ll be more satisfying the second time around, Leonor,” my attacker says as the noose cuts off my oxygen completely. “But I need you out of my hair while I take care of daddy dearest . I’ve got big plans for the both of you and it gets me excited when I think about it.”

He laughs as he rams into me one more time, his erection almost gone but still in me and when he pulls out it feels like every inch of tender flesh and bruised muscle along my destroyed insides tears, but I don’t have time to process it because he pulls the rope even tighter and I quickly black out.

Sometimes, when I dream about the night I died, I’m absolutely certain that I saw my life flash before my eyes. Every rotten fucking minute from the time I was born until the time I was reborn had me praying this was it, the one time death actually took me away but then… oh, and then, I’d see my real parents, I’d see my boys, and I’d see everything we’d built together and when that happened, I begged whoever was listening to let me have just one more day of that.

Other times, I know for a fact that was a PTSD delusion and the first time I died, I saw nothing but that cold, empty void and the countless demons waiting to feast on whatever was left of my soul.

Right now, I’m somewhere in between.

I keep fading in and out of consciousness.

One second I see the icy void, the next it’s the faceless monster who killed my father.

He threw me on the floor after I passed out then left me there while I fought to stay awake, keeping the rope wrapped tightly in his hand while he did up his pants, while he stuffed the used condom and its wrapper in one of his cargo pants pockets.

My vision kept blurring as he lifted Pierre out of his chair and onto a tarp, rolling his lean body in the heavy plastic before using zip ties to keep him inside of it. I started to see spots when the man began cleaning every inch of the office, using the chemicals we had on hand, making sure not one surface was untouched, not one bit of evidence was left behind.

I didn’t understand why he left Pierre’s head unwrapped, though.

If he wants to make sure there isn’t anything that could indicate what happened here, surely he’d have to cover that, too, otherwise… My eyes droop and grow heavy but I manage to force them open in time to see our attacker crouch down by my father’s head, then tug the rope around my neck to get my attention.

“By the time I’m finished,” he whispers as he pulls a scalpel from one of the pockets on his vest. “I’ll have six pairs.” He lowers it to Pierre’s wide open eyes, carefully slicing away the eyelids of the left one before slipping the blade into the socket. “Six sets to watch me break every single piece of what’s left of Leonor Allan. Six pairs of eyes that will sit on my shelf, two rows on either side of yours, those soulless blues staring at me everyday, seeing nothing but me.”

My heart starts hammering in my chest, my fear taking over enough to send my adrenaline surging through my veins. I try to keep my breathing even, to pretend I’m still hazy and out of it in hopes that I can try to get away when the opportunity presents itself, and thank fuck, it actually does.

The man lets go of my noose and turns slightly as he removes Pierre’s left eye, carefully placing it in a little glass jar he produces from another pocket. Watching that happen has me hesitating, has me holding my breath and forgetting what I’m supposed to be doing but as he goes back for the other eye, I kick my ass into gear.

I quietly and carefully roll toward the open door, every inch of my body aching but not enough to slow me down. I roll again then again until I’m in the doorway, seeing now that the house is mostly dark and the sun is setting outside.

This time I stop breathing intentionally, pushing and wiggling myself to my knees, using what little strength I have in this moment to get to my feet and just when I think I might make it out of here, the goddamn floor creaks.

My attacker’s head whips in my direction a second before I dart into the hall, the adrenaline rush hitting an all time high as I book it toward the stairs.

“If I didn’t want to kill you myself when the time is right, I’d do it now just so you used up your nine and stayed fucking dead!”

Right as I reach the landing at the top of the stairs that lead to the main floor, all the wind is knocked out of me as I’m tackled to the ground, both the man and I sliding across the antique rug and crashing into the wall. His back is against it and despite the pain radiating through the entire right side of my body, I kick my legs until I hear him yelp, my foot connecting with his balls.

Then I’m running again.

Up the stairs to the third floor this time, set on getting to the servant hallway where I’ll take that steep as hell staircase and get outside through the kitchen. I’m nearly out of breath by the time I get to the landing, looking over the rail briefly to check on the man.

Who is no longer there.

He’s not on the floor and I know he didn’t come up the stairs but…

A figure dressed in all black comes flying out of the servant’s hallway, running at me full force while that distorted war cry comes from somewhere beneath the all black mask on his face, his forearm connecting with my chest so hard I flip over the railing.

And I’m falling.

It’s like slow motion and fast forward all at once, my body light as it twists in the air, my matted hair whipping around my face as I look up to see the man watching me.

That’s the last thing I see, too, before my body crashes to the floor, the only thing saving me from a fate similar to the former madam of this house, the rolled up rugs that are waiting to be cleaned. They broke my fall the slightest bit right before I pass out again.

When I wake up, I’m being dragged by my noose through the back of the property.

Through the open yard, the stalks of dry and busted corn.

Further through the woods, getting closer to the swamp.

My feet and legs burn from all the cuts and scrapes, everything from the waist down completely naked still. The t-shirt I’m wearing is barely hanging on, catching on every branch and twig, every rock and bit of cement, which is when I know exactly where we are.

“Stupid bitch, maybe you’ll stay dead here.”

The Bissonnette family cemetery.

We stop at the biggest tomb, the one that contains whatever is left of the original Bissonnette bastard and his direct family, the one that sits in the center of the fenced in cemetery with a huge marble cross in front with his name on it.

At the base of the cross, what I see, it has my eyes welling and my chest going tight.

Pierre .

My father is laid out on the sparse grass and leaves, his hands folded over his chest, legs crossed at the ankles, his empty eye sockets staring up at the night sky waiting for the angels to come and take him away.

Still with the fucking knife through his neck.

The man suddenly picks me up and slams me against the cross, using another zip tie to bind my left wrist, leaving me to dangle while he steps over Pierre to do the same on the other one. He stands on the huge base of the cross, staring at me for a few seconds before he reaches out and hits me in the face, my head snapping back on my neck before he grabs my noose.

My attacker wraps the free length of rope around the vertical point of the cross, circling my throat twice before tying a knot at the end that forces my head to stay up and restricts my airway. He pulls a bloody scalpel from his breast pocket moving closer to me before grabbing the collar of my shirt and cutting it down the middle, ripping the sleeves at the seams before I’m completely bare to him.

I keep watching.

I watch this man as he tilts his head, looking me up and down, obviously stopping on each of my scars. Then he moves forward again, the small blade pressed to my skin but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything until warmth begins washing over my lower belly and pubic bone, coating the lower half of my body in a thin layer of red. Which is when this monster reaches for my ankles and holds them in one hand while he opens his fly again, his penis already hard and covered in a condom.

Pointing my eyes to the sky I search for stars, for anything to hold my attention but as soon as I do, the man hits me again, forcing my stare on him with a threatening hiss.

“You will see me, Leonor.” He squeezes my cheeks before slapping me then moves to hold one of my thighs in each gloved hand. “See me, bitch.” He lifts my ass away from the marble behind me, my eyes on him this time, watching as he lunges forward, his erection tearing through my flesh until he’s slamming me into the cross. “You will see me.”

He chants it over and over, the words matching each bone breaking thrust and as I watch this man rape me, violating me over the dead body of my sweet daddy, once again helpless to stop this or my impending death that follows, all I can think is…

Please god, let me live, nevermore.