Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

ROSE

I used to think this time of year was depressing. The brilliant hues of fall dimming into the dead of winter. Now, as I stared out the car window, headed away from my secret haven and back to the city of vultures and peril, I couldn’t help but admire a bittersweet sadness in the landscape.

The leaves, now dark brown and dead, covered the ground, but I knew that eventually they would decay and be the sustenance that gave life in the spring. There even was something eerily beautiful about the way the branches stuck out of trees like sharp spikes twisting in on each other and themselves.

We didn’t see it in the spring because of the fresh leaves covering the sharp, bare truth. But it was still there. That made me think of my life and everyone in it. My mother’s appearance did not reveal her as the raging, blackmailing, violent narcissist that she was. She looked like many other society women. Perfectly polished on the outside and absolutely rotten on the inside.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if there wasn’t some similarity between nature and people. We all went through seasons of growth and decay, the growth and the splendor not being possible without that decay. Could that be what made nature so incredible? It didn’t hide what it was. It accepted and embraced it. Whereas on the Upper East Side, almost every single woman there spent millions to look like spring in the autumn of their lives.

Untold money spent on designer clothes, Botox, spa treatments, and plastic surgery, all to continuously look like the budding breath of youthful spring, while all the rot was still there, deep inside. Hidden but not gone.

Was there perhaps a better way? Could embracing the progression of time be what took a person from a youthful glow to the splendor of aging gracefully? Was there a point where if a person did not allow themselves to change, the rot would seep out anyway? Images of some of my mother’s older friends, the women who constantly looked surprised, or could not show any emotion at all, or had so much lip filler they could hardly be understood when speaking. Was that the rot coming through?

Or was the rot revealed by being so hateful that even a priest would destroy people close to you, just to see you suffer?

I hadn’t said a single word to Father Manwarring —Thomas—the entire morning. What was there to say? He told me to pack my paintings and leave them for someone to come box up and collect, then to get in the car.

So I did it without complaint. For a moment, I wondered if I should just burn the paintings so he couldn’t use them against me. What did it matter? He was convinced that my mother ruined his life, and she probably did, and he was going to destroy her through me.

What did it matter if he did it with my art or by some other means?

I was surprised, however, to see that he drove himself to come get me. He was a Manwarring. He could have easily taken the helicopter or have had someone drive him up. Instead, I was sitting in a black sedan in the front seat with him next to me, driving, while I stared out the window.

It was an odd feeling. I didn’t think I had ever been in the front seat of a car before.

“What happens now?” I asked as I saw the New York skyline peek through the distance.

“What do you mean? Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed,” I said, staring at him in disbelief. “Are you expecting me to continue on like we have? Am I supposed to just be okay with you destroying my mother’s life, destroying my life?”

“What life?” he scoffed. “Your mother controls absolutely everything you do. If anything, I’m setting you free. Before me, you had a boyfriend who was using you for a payday, one that used to screw your mother for money.”

My stomach lurched at that reminder.

“I still have…” My words trailed off when I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“Tell me then,” he said, glancing over at me with an unreadable expression. “Tell me what goals you have that your mother actually allows you to work toward.”

I bit my tongue for a moment, not wanting to talk back, but… fuck it.

That word was getting so much easier to say and think. Though what kind of rebellion was a little swearing when I was also screwing a priest?

“My art,” I answered, crossing my arms defiantly over my chest and sticking my chin out. “Mother has agreed that if I get into a school on my own merits, she’ll allow me to go.”

“Then why aren’t you there now?” he asked, and my heart sank.

“Because my own merits aren’t good enough. I’m not good enough. Not yet, but Amelia said she would?—”

“Stop,” he barked out. “I never want to hear those words out of your mouth again.”

“What words?” My heart lurched when he yelled.

“That you’re not good enough.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Was he mad I wasn’t good enough for an art program? Or was he mad I wanted to leave again?

“There is not a single art program in the entire world that wouldn’t do whatever they could to get you into their program. I have seen the greatest art in the world. I have been to the Louvre, visited countless churches in Rome and the Vatican where the greatest Renaissance masters in the world perfected their craft as a tribute to their God. Their work pales in comparison to yours.”

“You’re saying that because in the paintings you’ve seen, you’re the subject.” I rolled my eyes.

He let out a huff of laughter as he reached behind my seat into the leather duffle he had put back there.

“I’ll admit, those are my favorite pieces. But Luc has a painting you did for Amelia a few years ago hanging in his office. There are also several of your pieces in Amelia and Luc’s home.”

“She only hangs them because she’s my sister and she wants to be supportive.” I rolled my eyes again. I appreciated Amelia’s support, but it wasn’t the same. Those paintings were hung because she loved me, not my work. “Amelia telling me I did a good job is the same as someone’s mother telling them they did a good job. At least, I assume, for someone who has a supportive mother.”

He bit back another laugh, and I wasn’t sure how I could actually make jokes after everything. For whatever reason, I was just accepting that this was my fate, and I was glib about it.

“So you’re telling me, after all the bullshit your mother has put you through, the abuse, the?—”

“Do you really get to judge her for hitting me?” I snapped.

“That was different,” he said, shooting me a look.

“Was it?”

“I’m assuming that when your mother hits you, you don’t get dripping wet and fucked afterward?”

Well, he had me there. He pulled a stack of envelopes out of the leather satchel and set them in his lap.

“Still, you can’t expect me to do absolutely nothing while you destroy my mother.”

“That’s exactly what I expect, angel, and I expect you will actually help me take her down. Yes, it will more than likely destroy your reputation in high society circles, but that community of two-faced snakes does not suit you. It’s become a gilded cage that has trapped you, and your mother has been your jailer. Help me take her down and you’ll gain your freedom.”

“I am free,” I argued, my voice not sounding convincing even to my own ears.

“Free to do what? You say you applied to these art programs. Did they reject you?”

“Yes.” I crossed my arms over my chest tighter. I hated talking about art school. I hated knowing that I wasn’t worthy of so much as a rejection letter. The judges who went through submissions probably laughed at my work before they tossed it aside and moved on to more promising students.

“Are you sure about that?”

“When people don’t send you an acceptance letter, that means they denied you,” I bit out.

“Or it means that your mother is actively stopping you from pursuing your dreams and destroying your self-worth while she’s at it.”

He handed me the stack of envelopes he held, and my breath caught in my throat as I stared at the emblem on the first one. Otis College of Art and Design. Their logo stared me in the face and I could see the envelope had already been ripped open. The letter was still inside.

I pulled it out and the first words had hot tears spilling down my cheeks.

“Dear Rose Astrid, We are thrilled to accept you into our fall term?—”

I dropped the envelope like it had burned me. The next one was the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. I ripped the letter out of the envelope and saw the words “pleased to accept?—”

One at a time, I went through the envelopes, pulling each letter out. They were from some of the finest programs not only in the United States, but France, Italy and even the Royal College of Art in London, my dream school. When I opened the others, I was hopeful, but when I came to the Royal College of Art, I was utterly speechless. Ripping the letter out of that envelope and seeing my acceptance but then reading further and finding that the deadline for the semester had already passed—I didn’t understand.

“Where did you find these?”

“The same place I found all the blackmail on my family and half the other families in the city, your mother’s safe deposit box.”

“No,” I said. “She wouldn’t. She knew this was my dream. She knew it was my?—”

“It was your path out from under her claws. Your mother doesn’t want you going to school for the same reason she hasn’t tried to marry you off in some ridiculous contract marriage. She wants you under her thumb where she can control absolutely everything you do.”

I stared at the crushed pages, wrinkling in my hands, still not understanding what this actually meant.

“Your mother destroyed my life with a vile lie that forced my father to throw me into seminary school. My priest’s collar was not a calling, but a prison sentence forced on me by your mother. She took my life, and I am getting my revenge. I am asking you now to join me. Take revenge for the life she stole, while you’re still young enough to reclaim it.”

“You’re not exactly old,” I replied, still staring at the pages.

“No, I’m not. But I’m also not part of my family’s business. I do not have the college education that would allow me to live up to my name, and while your mother is still freely walking about, she is a threat.”

When a horn blared, I looked up and saw that we had made it to the outskirts of the city. I would not give Father Manwarring, Thomas, an answer. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. There was so much here that I had to process that I could not wrap my mind around it all.

My mother being a horrible person was not exactly news. I had seen firsthand the way she meddled in people’s lives and the lengths she would go to, to destroy them. But to have her do that to me.

To have her get my hopes up, encourage me to apply to schools so I wasn’t such an embarrassment, just for her to take away my acceptance letters and use my assumed rejection to further shame me.

It wasn’t until I held those envelopes in my hands that I realized I had still held onto some hope that she loved me. That somewhere deep down in her cold, vicious heart, she was doing what she thought was best for me. Every time she screamed at me, every time she belittled me or struck me, she did that for my own good to help me become the woman that I needed to be.

Then to have this so cruelly thrown in my face. What was I supposed to do now? Pretend that Thomas wasn’t using me to get back at my mother this entire time? Was I supposed to pretend that he hadn’t manipulated me into developing feelings for him?

Was I supposed to pretend that he never manipulated me to get to my mother’s safe deposit box? Or that he hadn’t killed Raul? And even if he hadn’t killed Raul, he still went there. He still shot that recording, intending to hurt me.

“Do you understand now?” he asked. “Can you feel the same rage coursing through your veins that I do?”

I stared out the window at the city I had called my home for so long and gave him the first answer that felt like pure honesty. “Yes, I can feel the rage.”