I knew he noticed my changing figure, but he never mentioned it, never teased me for it when we usually teased each other about everything.  He seemed to sense it was a sensitive subject for me.

I was waiting for Dante in the intimidating entryway of their mansion when she approached me wearing her usual unpleasant smile.

“Scarlett,” she said, eyeing me with cold eyes.  “Just look at you.  Growing up so fast.”  Each word was dripping in disdain.

I swallowed hard, my throat so dry the motion stung like sandpaper going down, and greeted her, keeping my most stoic mask firmly over my face.

“Come this way,” she ordered, turning her back on me to stride down the hallway to her wing of the house.

She just expected me to obey.  She was a bitch like that.

I wished more than anything that I had the nerve to call her one to her face.

I hated that I followed her without a word.

As much as I rebelled against the very idea, she intimidated me, and some insecure part of me always ached for her approval.

She led me to her study, and my entire body clenched tightly in dread when she locked the door behind us.

I stayed where I was by the exit not moving a muscle as she glided with her smooth stride to her antique desk and retrieved something.

A picture, I realized as she brought it close.

It was of a girl, maybe my age or a bit older.  She was beautiful, with pale blonde hair and wintry blue eyes.  She was slender and elegant, and even in the picture I could tell she’d never had an awkward moment in her life.

She was dressed in the kind of clothes you never saw real teenagers wearing.  The latest expensive trends, head to toe.

“Do you know who this is?” Dante’s mother asked me.

“A model?” I guessed.  She fit the bill.

“She should be one, but no.  This is Tiffany Vanderkamp.  Have you heard the name?”

I shook my head.  I knew this was headed somewhere bad, somewhere that would be disastrous to me, but I wasn’t quite sure which direction the disaster would come from.

“Dante hasn’t told you about her?”

I shook my head again.

She tutted, her face placing itself into something resembling sympathy.  I knew it was a lie, but she still had me half convinced with her perfectly arranged expression.  She was evil like that.

“Tiffany, or Fanny as we affectionately call her, is the young woman that Dante is going to marry when he graduates from college.”

Ah.  There it was.

She was a dirty fighter, so of course she’d gone straight for my soft spot.

I felt my stoic mask slipping off, being replaced by something akin to dismay.  I recovered it, but not quite quickly enough.

“Oh dear, I can see that he hasn’t been upfront with you about this, the boor.”

"I-i-i-i—" Oh God, the stutter was here.  I’d known it wasn’t gone forever; it still came out to play at the most dreaded moments.

She smiled at me, looking delighted.  “You’re upset, aren’t you?  Did he lie to you?  Did he say you were special to him?  Naughty, naughty boy, just like his father.  Are you two having sex yet?”

I was shocked.  Completely.  We hadn’t even kissed yet.  "N-n-n-n—"

She threw back her head and laughed, the first time I’d ever seen her actually look happy.  Apparently all it took was making someone else miserable.

“You are,” she incorrectly guessed.  “Of course you are, you little slut.  No wonder he thinks he’s in love with you, but that will all wear off soon enough.  And of course you’re in love with him.  He’s a beautiful boy, but he’s not for you, do you understand?

I did not.  I set my jaw and shook my head at her, done with attempting to speak.

She was so wrong about so many things I wished I could have voiced it.

We had not done any of the things she seemed to assume, but she was right about one thing.

I was in love with her son.

But she was so wrong about the rest.  I owned him.  He was mine, and I was his.  She was underestimating us both if she thought she could change that.

Mutely I tried to hand the picture back to her but she waved it away.

“You keep that.  It’s yours.  And go ahead, continue doing what you’re doing.  Have your fun.  Enjoy it all while you can.  Be my son’s little plaything while he’s young and stupid.  Just never forget that you aren’t his future.  If he ever tries to put a ring on your finger, I’m cutting him off.”

Just then Dante began to pound on the door.

“Put that away,” she snarled at me.

I stuffed the picture in my bag.  It was embarrassing how relieved I was that Dante was rescuing me from his malevolent mother.

It’s not like she was beating me.  Her only weapons were words.

But they were lethal.

I didn’t bring up the incident or that girl to him for a long time.  I was embarrassed to.

And what if he told me it was none of my business?

I’d be crushed.

So I sat on it for a long time, letting it simmer inside of me like an infected wound.

“Never back down from her, okay?” Dante told me when we were free of his house.  “If she ever senses she can intimidate you, she’ll make your life hell.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

~William Shakespeare

PRESENT

I was just stepping into my shoes when someone knocked on my door.