Have they lost their fucking minds?
7
LEILANI
I shovethe door open and enter the reading room. No one reads in this house, but that hasn’t stopped me from asking the interior decorator to create this safe haven for me.
Most people avoid this room like it’s cursed.
It could be.
I just don’t care.
Someone said people were killed in this room.
More reasons not to care.
The space is dark, the shelves crammed with books.
It’s also quiet and doesn’t connect to the rest of the house.
A long corridor is the only way to get here. The walls are even soundproof.
A secondary door opens into the balcony facing Etna in the back.
On nights like this, when the sky is clear, I can stare at the stars and imagine what the sky would look like if the volcano erupted, spewing lava, fire, and ash.
I love this place more and more with every passing day, but I resent my family.
Never fond of them, I like them even less now.
I push the door open and walk onto the patio.The wind curls around me like an old friend.
I suddenly remember how hard it was to adjust to this place initially. They removed me from everything familiar to me two years ago.
I look away, my pain refueled, my anger growing.
Somewhere on the shoreline in some fancy apartment, he might be looking at the sky, perhaps, like me now.
Maybe he’s checking the time on his expensive watch.
He probably knows by now about my family’s efforts to push me out again.
He must also be pondering whether to come to my party.
Perhaps he is alone.
That’s a possibility too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve all worked together to bring me to that point of saying yes to them and their stupid plans.
Who my ‘husband' is in the end won’t matter.
I’ll be living in a golden cage, privileged, and erased from this world, having no say in anything.
I’ll have power over people, and I could have my family go to war for me, but in reality, I’ll be someone’s property, buried in the secret chambers of their home.
That's what being married to one of them means.
