Alone.
The only sound is the soft, steady drip of my life onto the floor.
The warmth is everywhere now, a sticky, spreading shame. I don’t move, I can’t. I am hollowed out. Empty.
A single, hot tear escapes my eye and traces a path through the grime on my temple. It is the last warm thing I feel.
The blood trickles on.
And I wait for the quiet to take me.
Two weeks.
Fourteen days of a silence so profound it has become a physical presence in the house, a deafening roar in my ears. Fourteen nights of a cold, vacant space in my bed that feels like a freshly dug grave. I have become a ghost haunting my own life, pacing the marble floors of the study, my reflection in the dark windows a gaunt caricature of the man I was supposed to be. Antonio, the untouchable. The fortress. A lie, spun from arrogance and fear, now crumbling to dust.
Each time the phone rings, my heart attempts to claw its way out of my throat. Each time a car door slams in the courtyard, a jolt of insane, stupid hope shoots through me, followed immediately by the crushing weight of reality.
They have her.
The Esau.
And they have not made a sound…until now.
The box sits on my desk.
It’s a plain, unmarked cardboard cube, delivered by a terrified-looking courier who couldn’t meet my eyes, who stammered that a man in a ski mask had paid him a thousand pounds to bring it directly to my hand. He’d already fled, the cash burning a hole in his pocket, a small price for his life.
I’ve been staring at it for ten minutes, my hands flat on the cool wood of the desk. My world has shrunk to this box. This simple, terrible shape holds the answer to the question that has been eating me alive. Is she alive? The silence from it is worse than any sound.
Finally, I slide a letter opener under the tape. The rip of the cardboard is obscenely loud in the tomb-like quiet of the study. I fold back the flaps. Inside, nestled on a bed of white packing peanuts is a smaller, polished wooden box. Cherrywood, I think. It looks like something meant for expensive jewellery, the kind I bought her.
My hand is steady as I lift it out. It’s heavier than I expected. I set it down and lift the lid.
And the world stops.
It’s not jewellery.
Nestled on a cushion of black velvet are two perfect, delicate shells. Pale as alabaster, curved like tiny, exotic sea creatures. For a second, my brain refuses to process the image. They are too beautiful to be what they are. Then, my eyes trace the familiar, soft lobe of one, the tiny, almost invisible freckle just below the helix. I’ve kissed that freckle. I’ve whispered secrets into that ear, my lips brushing against that very skin.
Grace’s ears.
The air leaves my lungs in a single, stifled gasp. A high-pitched whine fills my head, the sound of my own sanity straining at its tether. I stumble back from the desk, my chair screeching against the floor. I can’t breathe. My vision tunnels, the room tilting on its axis. I have pieces of her. Discarded, mutilated trophies.
All my pretence, that cold, stoic façade I wore like armour, shatters into a million jagged pieces. The carefully constructed lie that she was just another woman, a pawn, a convenience, evaporates in the face of this horrific reality.
I love her. I have always loved her.
And my love for her is the weapon they are using to destroy us both.
My refusal to admit it, even to myself, my stupid, proud need to appear invulnerable has led to this. They didn’t just take her; they unmasked me, and in doing so handed me my own heart, carved out and bleeding.
A sound rips from my throat, a raw, animal noise of grief and rage that I don’t recognise as my own. I grip the edge of the desk until my knuckles are white, my entire body trembling. I want to burn the world down. I want to tear the Esau apart with my bare teeth.
My gaze fixes on the box again. There’s a note, tucked beside the cushion. My hand shakes as I reach for it, the paper feeling unclean, contaminated.
Antonio,
A token of our esteem. A reminder that time, like flesh, is finite. Come to us. Alone. You know the place. The Quarry. If you delay, we will continue to pare her down to her essentials, and we have so many pretty boxes that she’ll fit into.
