I didn’t like the look on his face—it was troubled, beyond his own ailments.
“Is he…?”
“He’s going to be okay. But it’s going to take some time.”
“One man did this?” I asked. A prickle at the back of my neck made me shiver with a cold that had nothing to do with the weather.
He held up a hand. Five fingers. Five men.
Nodding my way over to the sofa, I plopped down. He took a seat next to me. We sat in silence for some time before I turned to him. I took his face in my hands, as gentle as possible, caressing skin that didn’t looked bruised or busted. His one eye closed when I leaned in and kissed his lips, just a soft touch, just a reminder that he was alive and right beside me.
“You were attacked. By five men.”
It took him a moment to “open” his eye. “Yeah.”
I was about to ask more questions when a knock sounded on the door, making me jump. His body tensed and then flinched; the reaction cost him. He secured my hand in his, his knuckles as bruised and torn as his face.
“Expecting company?” Emilia asked.
She felt it too—the tension and the black void of the story. The most important details still withheld.
“Stay here,” he said, releasing me.
Stay herewent against my curious nature. I followed behind him, hiding behind his back, peeking as he opened the door.
“Shit,” Mick stumbled back, almost knocking Violet over. “What happened to your face?”
Violet gasped, looking between Brando and me.
“Scarlett…?”
“Don’t look at me!” I said defensively. She gave me too much credit; a skilled hand, or hands, had caused all of his ailments. “He wasattacked.”
Brando gave me a mean look, which seemed harsher, given the condition of his face. He stood aside so Violet and Mick could enter.
“No shit?” Mick asked, taking the seat Brando had just occupied. “You were robbed?”
Robbed. He didn’t mention that. He said attacked. Not that there was a difference, but somehow being robbed felt safer. Somehow, this didn’t feel safer to me.
“Or did you and Nemours get into a fight after we left that tomb?” Violet sat next to Mick on the arm of the sofa.
Nemours? Olivier?I stared at Brando while he retold the story for Mick and Violet. I wasn’t paying attention, though, because my brain fought to remember. A curtain had been brought down after the dance had ended. Some parts came back to me in vivid clarity, others with a dreamlike haze. But nothing after Brando picked me up, right up until the moment I woke in bed and I was forced to face the truth.
“What happened after…after I danced?”
The conversation ceased, all eyes on me.
“We wanted to leave,” Violet said, her tone harsher than necessary. “Your friend, Nemours, he didn’t want Brando to take you.”
“Is that true?” I asked him.
“You don’t remember.”
“No.” I bit my lip, releasing it when I tasted blood. The gap made me anxious. I had an excellent memory, one of the best, according to Maja. “I can’t remember.”
“Scarlett, you, uh, turned into a girl out of a White Snake video,” Mick said, not eyeing me with the resentment I heard in Violet’s tone, but with a look that made me feel guilt. He looked at me as though he knew a deep secret and it made him see two of me. And he wasn’t sure which one he really knew.
“Just say it,” I said, crossing my arms, feeling defensive all of a sudden.
