Page 9 of Worse Than Wicked
I shrug, avoiding his eyes. “If she wasn’t real, then I could be her. I could use her name because she wasn’t using it.”
“She doesn’t own that name.”
“But she does.”
They both stare at me, and for once, I find myself wanting to talk. I don’t know if it’s the glass of champagne I drank, or the dim candlelight that makes it seem unreal, like the fairytale in that cave when Baron gave me wine the first time, and we tangled our legs together and he told me his secrets too—that he thought he was a sociopath, and maybe he knew what made him one.
Or maybe it’s the way Duke is looking at me, his dark eyes filled with sympathy, the gold flecks like fireflies on a summer night; sparks spiraling into the black velvet blanket of sky that time we burned Devlin’s house, when I learned whatfunfelt like for the first time.
Or maybe it’s just the way Baron’s face betrays the slightest shade of skepticism, like he thinks I’m the one making it up to play them.
“She wasn’t like the other women in our families,” I say. “The ones who did what they were supposed to do, who were quiet and obedient and soft. That’s what Darling girls are supposed to be. And Delacroix girls too.”
“I don’t think girls in your family are any of those things,” Duke points out. “Have you met your cousins? Or yourself?”
“It’s what we’re supposed to be,” I say. “What people are supposed to think we are. But Dahlia wasn’t like that. She wasn’t afraid of anything. I remember the adults saying it was because of her mom, some outsider who worked her way in and captured a coveted Delacroix husband.”
“You heard people talk about her, but you thought you made her up?” Duke asks.
“I guess… I thought I made that up too,” I admit. “You don’t know what it was like. You made me question everything. Not just you. Myself. Reality.”
A tear slips down my cheek, and I angrily brush it away. They don’t deserve to see my tears. Not when they caused them.Not when they’re probably doing it again right now, telling me what I want to hear like they did at the start, making me believe because I want so desperately for it to be true—for someone to see all those same things that everyone always said made me a freak, and to think they make me special instead. To not scorn and shun me, or tolerate me for a time before realizing I’m not worth it and leaving me behind. To love me.
And when I’ve let my guard down, when I love them so completely, so stupidly, that I don’t listen to the few people who want to help, then they’ll take it all away.
Their love. Their lies.
My delusions that I could be loved, that I could be part of something, that I could be a normal girl with a family, with a career and a husband and kids and all the things I never knew I wanted because I never thought they were an option.
I will never fall for it again. I know those things are not options for me.
If they were before, they’re not anymore.
The Dolces took that away like they took my sanity. I got that back on my own, and I won’t let them destroy it again. I won’t believe a word that comes out of their mouths, no matter how much I want to. What does it matter if Dahlia is real, anyway?
She’s real to me. Maybe she was a part of me, the part that dared to fight back, to do things that sweet, quiet, bland Mabel Darling was never allowed to do. And when I took her name, I did those things too. For a while, I was Dahlia, and I made men pay.
Not anymore.
The Dolces took that away too.
It was too risky, they said. The FBI might connect it to me, after that man in Maine disappeared. The FBI might connect it to them, and then they’d discover the Alice inWonderland operation, and we couldn’t have that. I risked it all every time I met a man online, but they risk nothing. They let me risk nothing. They keep me safe, like Baron always says. They are here to protect me, like Duke always says.
Because sweet, bland, quiet Mabel Darling needs protection. She needs safety. She is a treasure, one who adorns their arms like a jewel, admired by all. She remembers her manners and doesn’t make scenes.
Dahlia made scenes.
Dahlia didn’t walk demurely to the restroom in a fancy French restaurant and let a man defile her because that’s what he wants and it’s his anniversary too. Dahlia didn’t tolerate it without complaint, then walk back to the table like nothing happened.
They didn’t want Dahlia, though, so that’s not who I am anymore. I’m Mabel Darling. Just like they wanted.
They are men, after all, and Mabel Darling was always good at being exactly what men wanted her to be.
So why, after they took Dahlia away from me, are they trying to give her back?
three
Baron Dolce
