Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

ROSE

R aul was dead, but was I obligated to mourn him when he was trying to scam me? Knowing that he had slept with my mother, was I obligated to feel guilty about the things that I had done?

Those thoughts kept me up late into the night, and the next morning in the shower. Over and over they spun in my head, and I simply didn’t know.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Not at Raul, or even at Father Manwarring. But at my mother, and her hypocrisy.

That rage brought more questions. Did I have to listen to her hypocritical bullshit, knowing that she paid an underage boy to fuck her? It wasn’t a secret that she had already been unfaithful to my father. Harrison made it very public knowledge that he was a bastard. Did my father know she was still unfaithful? How many other men have there been?

Was I or Amelia illegitimate?

How many opportunities to live my life had I passed up because she wouldn’t have approved of what I was doing, while all along she was fucking the son of the help in secret, and she started when he was a teenager?

The more I thought about my mother and her hypocrisy, the more anger and hatred swirled in my gut and I would not take it anymore. I couldn’t take it.

When I got dressed, made myself presentable, I went downstairs to find my mother. I knew she had a full schedule for the next few days, and there was another gala later in the week that she and my father were attending. So, I knew she’d be home preparing for that before the church board meeting this afternoon.

Sure enough, she was in the parlor with racks of dresses, all from this season, pulled for her to browse while her personal stylist fluttered about the room, picking things to accessorize them and find her perfect look for the event.

“Mother, may I talk to you for a moment please,” I said, keeping my anger in check.

I was going to give her a chance. An opportunity to listen to me, to hear what I wanted, and let me make at least one choice about how I spent my time.

“If you must.” She sighed as one of her assistants held an emerald dress up to her. The neckline was far too low for someone of her age. She wouldn’t wear anything like it to the event, but I knew she liked to indulge in trying them on so she could pretend she was half her age. The entire activity was just an exercise in narcissism.

“Can we have the room?” I asked.

Nobody moved. Instead, they all looked toward my mother. “Now,” I said, putting some force behind my words.

My mother rolled her eyes and waved everyone off, muttering something about dramatic girls.

When the door closed behind them, she turned to me, looking me up and down with a sneer on her lips.

“What is so important?”

“I came to inform you I will not be helping the church with the Christmas bazaar. There are other things that require my attention.”

“No, you will do as you are told. You will help with the bazaar, you will help with anything that the priest asks of you, and you will show the world that not all the Astrid children are spoiled, ungrateful disappointments.”

“Amelia has a successful art school and married into one of the richest families in the city.”

“Her husband will ruin that entire family,” she scoffed. “He is too strong-willed and the second Lucian Manwarring steps down, their entire empire will fall.”

“Harrison is the DA,” I argued. “Surely you are proud of him.”

“Your brother is an ungrateful son who married a common gold-digging whore. He has brought shame on this family by exposing things that were nobody’s concern.”

The anger that had been building up finally spilled over.

“That’s rich coming from a woman who baby-trapped Dad with another man’s child. Tell me, Mother, was Harrison’s biological father at least of age, or do you only fuck the teenage help?” My words dripped with condescension and disgust. I couldn’t believe I had actually said that out loud, not only the accusation, but the word fuck in front of my mother.

“Excuse me?” she said, her eyes widening in disbelief.

This was my chance to make an excuse, or backpedal like my life depended on it. I would still be punished, but maybe I wouldn’t have to cover bruises or try to get blood out of the new dress.

Then I looked behind her and saw the picture of our family. Mother smiling serenely. Father looking proud, but Amelia with sad eyes, like she knew she would never be happy, and Harrison standing a step apart.

I was there too, with a fake smile painted on my lips, and I remembered how she had pinched me, leaving a huge welt on the back of my arm, for wanting to wear the pink dress instead of the black one.

It was an oil painting, one where the artist was no doubt paid handsomely to make us look like the perfect family, but if you looked closely, you could still see the pain and the distance between us. If Mother had looked at anyone other than herself, she would have had the artist ruined.

At the time the painting was commissioned, we were in the Hampton house. I was barely fifteen, so Raul would have been sixteen and already being paid for sex. Maybe if Mother hadn’t turned him into a whore, things would have been different for him.

Fuck her.

I doubled down.

“Sorry, I must have misspoken. Let me be clear. Harrison did not bring shame to this family. You did, every time you opened your legs to fuck a man that wasn’t your husband. The world knows you are a slut, but what do you think will happen when they find out that you paid the gardener’s teenage son to fuck you? Does that make you a pimp or just a pathetic old bitch?”

I knew she was going to hit me. Violence was practically her love language. What I didn’t expect was for her to backhand me across the face using the hand wearing diamonds on every single finger.

She hit me hard enough that I fell to the floor, and she stood over me, digging her heel into the back of my hand, pinning me in place.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, and frankly, I don’t care. Here is what’s going to happen. You are going to show up at that church, you are going to do absolutely everything asked of you. You are going to be the shining jewel of the Astrid family, and you are going to catch the eye of a family that is actually worthy of marrying one of my daughters. I will not be embarrassed further. You’ll be the beacon of modesty, chastity, humility, charity, and every other fucking virtue. You will do nothing to bring more embarrassment to this family or so help me God, I will ruin you. Harrison is too public of a figure for me to destroy, and Amelia is under the Manwarrings’ protection. You are neither. No one will protect you from me. No one loves you, and no one cares. Be of use, or I will dispose of you.”

“No,” I argued, trying to pull my hand out from under her heel.

“I will not lose my place on the board because you are throwing a tantrum. Get yourself cleaned up now and take yourself to the church or so help me God, I will have you diagnosed as a psychopath and leave you to rot in a third-rate, locked psychiatric ward.”

She dug her heel in my hand for another moment, pressing harder until she finally walked away.

“I expect you at that church in less than an hour,” she said dismissively as she went back to her dresses.

She would do it, too. I wouldn’t be the first “misbehaving” upper-class girl who ended up in an institution. It didn’t happen nearly as often as it used to, but it still happened.

Tears burned behind my eyes as I ran upstairs to clean myself up, wondering why the hell I thought I could stand up to her.

The red mark on my hand throbbed, but it wasn’t bleeding and I could move my fingers without too much pain. It would swell, and was definitely bruised, but nothing was broken.

My face, however, did not fare as well. Her rings had left long bloody scratches along the top of my cheek, and my eye was already blackening.

What lie did she expect me to come up with for this? That I was attacked by a cougar? However, if what Raul said was true, I guessed that wasn’t far off.

Covering the marks as best I could, I changed again and made my way to the church, knowing that if I didn’t, Father Manwarring was just going to come collect me, anyway. My mother wouldn’t stop him; in fact, she would hit me again, or worse, for not following her orders.

I was at the church in forty minutes. Keeping my head down, I walked in and discovered Father Manwarring waiting for me.

“Why is your mother requesting I confirm your arrival?” he asked, looking at his phone.

“She is controlling like that,” I answered, staring at the floor.

He put his knuckle under my chin and lifted my eyes to meet his. His face froze as he took in my injuries.

“Who did this?”