15. Clara

CHAPTER 15

Clara

Help Thomas destroy my uncle, and claim the life I've always wanted. Refuse, and spend the rest of my very few days as a hostage while bloody war reignites between the Speares and the Warwicks.

Betray my mother's love for her brother by turning on the last living member of our family, or betray my promise to my mother by giving up on my own happiness.

It's the kind of choice I ran away to avoid making. I can't avoid it any longer.

My skin feels too tight. I pace circles around my room, but I'm just an animal wandering her cage. It's what I've been since the Speare family was founded. I tried to slip the bars, but that only means I left the cage behind me. It won't ever stop waiting for me to be dragged back.

But if I smash the bars, I don't ever have to be afraid again.

I fling myself down on my bed with a groan. My uncle is the cage in that metaphor, but he's also the last member of my family I have left. He was beloved by my mother, who made me promise on her deathbed while the bullets were festering in her gut to never lose my happiness. A happiness that has been chipped away to almost nothing by my uncle.

If I go through with this, I will sacrifice my uncle to save myself. No matter what, I'm breaking my promise in order to keep it. Would my mother accept that, or would she beg me to remain loyal to my uncle like she did?

Raleigh's daypack was abandoned by the side table when I came in, and I roll over in bed to reach for it now. My sketchbook is sitting right at the top, and I pull it into my chest, cradling it to my heart like it's the only thing keeping me grounded.

My mother was a trusted member of the estate before the rift, and able to come and go at will. She bought and gifted me all my sketchbooks, each with a note encouraging me to keep dreaming and drawing. Unfortunately, the note she left in this one was misplaced long ago, and I can't remember what it said anymore.

Delusion makes me wonder if it might have clued me in to the betrayal her brother was planning. Or maybe my mother was as blindsided by Morgan's scheming as everyone else was. Still, she stayed by his side. She kept me under her wing, shielding me from the war her brother was waging against people that had once been our friends. And when a raid went terribly wrong, and she was caught in the crossfire, she still defended her brother's actions.

What if that boundless kindness was misplaced all that time? If she had turned her back on her brother and stayed with the Warwicks, who were more capable of protecting us both, what would our lives be like now? Would she still be alive?

I grip my sketchbook tighter, crinkling the old pages. My mother is gone. Her loyalty to her brother killed her. The mafia life she chose to stay in killed her. I cannot make that same mistake.

Raleigh is a better friend than I deserve. That being said, she's no artist. She reunited me with my old sketchbook, but the only drawing utensils she packed for me were a sharpie pen, which will immediately bleed through my paper, and a mechanical pencil with lead far too hard for traditional sketching. Ironically, the sharpie is perfect for my needs right now. I whisper a ‘thank you' to the ceiling and start shaping huge letters across the paper.

I'LL DO IT. WHAT NOW??

It feels strange to hope that Thomas is in his room right now, observing me as I work. When I hold my sketchbook up to the window, I almost expect nothing to happen. But thirty seconds later, I hear the lock on my door come undone. A shiver runs through my whole body.

Thomas enters, and without preamble declares, "Tomorrow we'll go to breakfast and get you fitted for a gown."

I blink. "A gown? For what?"

He doesn't smile, but there's a spark in his hazel eyes that makes me think of car interiors and warm hands and bliss. "There's a banquet coming up, hosted by a valuable friend. We'll be there to make an impression on him."

My stomach twists a little. This is the life I want to escape, this endless scheming and manipulation. Instead, I'm walking right into it, eyes open, in the hopes that I'll walk out someday with a better future.

Having delivered his news, Thomas turns to go. But we still haven't talked about what happened in the car between us. He still hasn't apologized for accusing me of arson. There are so many words hanging between us, that at least two explode out of me when I see him leaving.

"Thomas, wait!"

He stops, but the stillness that comes over him is more profound. When he half turns to me, I see the predator under the man in a well-tailored suit. My body responds, like he's pulled a string hooked inside my belly. I want to walk to him. To put myself into his arms, where I already know I fit perfectly. Will he close the door between us and the rest of the world? Will he pull my clothes off with fevered intensity, lay me out on the floor, and come inside me like he did this morning?

Or was all of that a carefully crafted scene, more successful than all the rest, to get me to move at his beck and call?

Because I'm horrified to know, deep in my bones, that it worked.

I can't bring myself to ask him the truth, not when my body still feels so raw from his touch. Instead I say, "Breakfast? Will it really be breakfast?"

No more intimidation games, now that we're on each other's side?

Thomas nods, his gaze piercing. Is it my imagination, or does his gaze flick over my body? "Just breakfast," he agrees. "And a gown, fit for a woman of the mafia."