Author: Tiffany Reisz

“Your mother, she found you?”

Elizabeth nodded. “She burst into the library, saw her daughter nearly naked and bleeding, my brother barely breathing and tied to a chair, and Father a pile of bloody monster on the floor. She couldn’t deny anymore what had been going on under her nose. She got me and my brother out of the house. Took him to the hospital and dropped him off—”

“Dropped him off? She just dropped him off?”

“He wasn’t her son. She’d always hated him a little. She could have turned a blind eye to an affair, even one that produced a bastard. But to force her to treat him like a son? She never forgave Father for that. If only that had been the worst of his sins.”

“If only…”

“So she dropped off my brother at the hospital and fled with me. She divorced Father after. That was the sixties. She couldn’t bear to let our dirty laundry out in public. So no charges were pressed and they divided the assets up equally. And the assets were and are considerable. Even after dividing everything in half, they both were extremely wealthy people.”

“What happened to your brother?” Suzanne asked, although she knew part of the answer. “He was sent to school, right?”

Elizabeth nodded. “I suppose once Father came to, he remembered my brother was his only son and heir. But he refused to have my brother around, so it was off to school. St. Ignatius Academy, I think it was called. Some Jesuit boarding school for boys up in Maine. Middle of nowhere. Barely accessible even in good weather.”

“Sounds like a prison.”

“Something like that. I think Father was afraid of my brother, afraid of possible retribution. He was wrong to be, of course. My brother is no murderer. My father feared the wrong child.”

Suzanne heard a smile of satisfaction in Elizabeth’s voice.

She didn’t speak. Although young, Suzanne had been a journalist long enough to know that she often got the truth only when she stopped asking questions.

“I’m glad he went to St. Ignatius,” Elizabeth continued. “He was happy there, apparently. Converted to Catholicism. Learned a dozen or more languages from all the priests who taught there. Met that Kingsley.”

Suzanne smiled because she knew Elizabeth expected her to.

“And Kingsley’s sister, right?” Suzanne prompted.

“Oh, yes. My brother’s wife. Never met her. I found out about the marriage only after the girl had died. He did it for the money, of course.”

“The money?”

“The trust fund. My brother and I had trust funds set up by our parents. We received a huge sum at age twenty-five or sooner if…”

“If you got married.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“I think my brother just wanted to help Kingsley and his sister stay together in the States. They were both penniless, really. Didn’t end well, as you know. Which I suppose is for the best. My brother was destined for the priesthood.”

“He does seem to have found his calling.”

“It’s a lovely thing, having a priest for a brother. It’s quite nice to have someone in the family who can absolve all your sins and is bound to keep your secrets even from the laws of man. My brother…he has had to absolve me for so much.”

Elizabeth turned her violet eyes on Suzanne. In them Suzanne saw the truth, heard the truth, finally understood the truth.

Elizabeth Stearns had killed her father. And her brother knew it.

And to Suzanne, a priest who had absolved his own sister of the sin of murder and kept her confession secret even from the police…

“That sounds like a conflict of interest to me,” Suzanne said. “A brother hearing his sister’s confession.”

“I suppose it is. But perhaps you have your answer now.”

“Perhaps I do.” Suzanne rose off the bench on unsteady feet. She had to get out of there now. She knew what she had to do, who she had to see, what she had to say. And she needed to do it tonight. “I need to go. Thank you for your time.”

“Of course. Anything for my brother. I hope you understand him a bit better now. If you’re looking for a sex-offender priest, you won’t find him at Sacred Heart. My brother knows better than that. He’d have to answer to me.”

Suzanne gave Elizabeth a tight smile.

“No, I’m sure you’re right. After what happened to my brother, I can certainly sympathize with what you feel and with what—” Suzanne choose her words carefully “—with what you did. I’m glad your brother absolved you. If it makes you feel any better, I would have absolved you too. If I believed in that.”

Elizabeth picked up her trowel again and started digging once more in the dirt, this time with a much gentler touch.

“I’ll show myself out. I promise all of this was off the record.”

“Thank you, Ms. Kanter. Please have a safe trip home.”

Suzanne started for the door but paused before she touched the knob.

“You don’t call him Marcus?” Suzanne asked. “Your brother I mean. That’s what you call him—my brother. Why is that?”

“He hates the name Marcus. It’s our father’s name.”

“Thank you. I was just curious. Good night.”

Suzanne reached once more for the doorknob and stopped.

“I think I understand something you don’t,” Suzanne said as she remembered something Elizabeth had said earlier. “About your brother not waking up the way you thought he would.”

Elizabeth only stared at her and said nothing.

“You wanted him to wake up that night and kill you as he did that boy who attacked him in his sleep at school. But he didn’t. Because he was sleeping heavily. And he was sleeping heavily because he was home. And he thought he was safe.”

Even in the low light Suzanne could see Elizabeth’s eyes harden like two glinting amethysts.

“He should have known better than that. No one is ever safe.”

22

Michael had never felt so safe in his life. A strange sensation considering the agony he’d been in the last two hours as Spike, the purple-haired tattoo artist, pierced black ink deep into his damaged skin. But the pain centered him, calmed him the way pain always did. But even more than the pain, Griffin’s strong hands on him, holding him steady, brought Michael into a haven inside himself he’d never gone to before. Nora sat on the couch working on her edits. Spike dug into his wrists with her buzzing needle. But no one in the world existed but him and Griffin.

Every few minutes Spike would pause and reink her needle. Griffin would loosen his grip on Michael’s forearms and offer him a drink of water or ask if he needed a break. The pain hit its peak and sweat would drip down Michael’s forehead. Griffin would call for a break, wipe Michael’s face and let him breathe for a few minutes before Spike started up again. At no point did Griffin ask him if he needed or wanted to stop. And for some reason Griffin’s faith in his ability to take the pain meant more to him than anything.

“That’s it, mate,” Spike said, leaning back in her chair and stretching her back. “Done as much as we can do tonight. Let it heal. Six weeks, we’ll do touch-ups.”

Michael turned his eyes from Griffin’s to his own wrists. During the entire ordeal he’d kept his gaze on Griffin’s face and not on Spike’s needle. He hated seeing his own scars, hated the memory of that moment of despair and idiocy that had led to them. And he’d yet to find anything or anyone in the world he’d rather look at than Griffin. But now he looked at his wrists and inhaled at the sight of them—and not with disgust as he had every day for the past three years, but with awe.

“Wow…” he breathed. “Spike, it’s—”

“Motherfucking beautiful,” Griffin said, gently touching the skin around the edges of the raw and still-bleeding tattoos.

They were beautiful, his black wings that covered the insides of both wrists. Somehow Spike had managed to create the illusion of delicate feathered edges out of flesh and ink. And the scars…they were gone. The body of each tattoo completely covered the angry, raised remnants of Michael’s suicide attempt.

Griffin took both of Michael’s hands in his and pushed his freshly tattooed wrists together side by side, creating a wingspan.

“Gorgeous, Mick. They’re gorgeous.” Griffin squeezed Michael’s fingers. “Just like you.”

The pain from the two-hour tattoo session had already pulled Michael to the very edge of arousal. And Griffin’s hands on him, the hungry tone of his voice made Michael painfully aware of the one part of his body that ached more than his bleeding wrists.

“I’ll be right back,” Michael said and yanked his hands away from Griffin. He nearly ran from the room and into the bathroom down the hall. Standing at the sink he bent over, turned the taps on and splashed water on his fevered face.

He couldn’t do this anymore. For two months now, his lust for Griffin had been like the scars on his wrists—something he hid, something that shamed him, something he was afraid to look at. But tonight on that table, it wasn’t only the scars on his wrists that had been transformed.

Michael loved Griffin. He knew that now. And he had no fucking idea what to do about it.

“Angel?” The door to the bathroom opened and Nora stood staring at him with concerned eyes.

“Nora…” Michael stood up and raised his hands in a kind of surrender. “Nora…I…”

“I know, Angel,” she said. “I know.”

She shut the door behind her and reached for him, pulling him close. He nearly groaned at the human contact, the touch of her hand on his face, her lips on his cheek. She reached between them and unzipped his jeans as Michael raised her skirt.

He pulled her panties down and pushed inside her. Never before had he been this aggressive with Nora. But this wasn’t about sex or scening or S&M. This was survival. He thrust roughly as she gently ran her hands through his hair and down his back.

Michael came quick and hard, shuddering against Nora with his face buried in the crook of her neck.

“I don’t know what to do, Nora,” he whispered as he pulled out of her. “I don’t know what to say. He’ll kill me. My father will kill me. And my mom, she’ll never look at me again. I don’t know…”

“You have to tell Griffin,” Nora said. “You have to talk, Michael. You have to speak.”

“I can’t, I can’t.” Michael’s whole body seized up in the agony of his need and his love. His knees buckled and together he and Nora sunk to the floor of the bathroom.

“You can, Angel. You’ve been so brave this summer. You’ve faced so many demons. And I’m so proud of who you are and who you’re becoming… Just say it. Tell me what you want to tell Griffin. Just get it out. No one will hear but me. But you’ve got to say it to somebody. Just talk, Angel. Speak. What do you want? Tell me.”

“I…” Michael began and stopped. Even to Nora it seemed a Herculean task to say what he felt, what he wanted.

“Michael, this is an order from your mistress. Tell me what you want. Now.”

“I want Griffin.” The words came out immediately. She had trained him too well. “I want Griffin so much it hurts. I love him, Nora. I have never felt anything like this before. And it’s absolutely stupid because he’s rich and he’s perfect and amazing and I’m a nobody. I’m a nobody, and I’m in love with someone I can’t be with. He’s so beautiful. I can’t stop looking at him, I can’t stop thinking about him. I dream about him at night. And he’s the first thing I think about when I wake up. And I want to touch him so much. I want to touch his face and that fucking perfect hair of his. And his lips and his chest and his arms—and I think about those arms around me, and it’s humiliating how much I want that. And, God, I want to live in his bed. I want to spend the rest of my life underneath him. I want to feel him on top of me and inside me. And I want submit to him. I want to go down on my knees in front of him. I want to call him sir and wear his collar and kiss his fucking feet if he told me to. And I want to walk down the busiest street in New York with him holding hands so the entire world can see us together and know that I belong to him. I love Griffin, Nora. I’m in love with him. And I can’t be with him. But that’s…that’s it.” Michael turned his head and buried it a little deeper into the cleft of Nora’s neck and shoulder. He wanted to stay there so he wouldn’t have to look her or anyone in the eyes ever again. “You won’t tell him, will you?”