Page 37 of Taming Seraphine

Her head whips around, and she glares at me, her eyes blazing with blue fire. “Are you on his side?”

“I want to understand why you took it so far,” I say.

Her breath quickens, and she growls, her lips tightening into a grimace. “Because he deserved it.”

“He did.” I keep my tone measured. “But you still haven’t explained your thought processes.”

Her hands curl into fists on the tabletop, and her tiny frame trembles with a banked fury that can only come from years of pain.

What the hell did those people do to this girl?

My protective instincts rear to the forefront, urging me to give Seraphine a break. She doesn’t need a refresher of what she suffered—it has to be unimaginable. Still, I can’t work in the dark, and she can’t continue to lash out and get herself in trouble. I won’t allow it.

Silence continues until I remind her I need answers with a sharp, “Seraphine.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” she says from between clenched teeth. “All I saw were their faces.”

“Whose?” I ask, imagining her captors.

“The men Dad used to punish Mom.”

“By Dad you mean Frederic Capello?”

Her face contorts. “He’s not my father. He’s a monster.”

“But you call him Dad.”

Deflating, she bows her head, hiding her face with a curtain of hair. “That’s what I called him all my life. He used to be a normal dad, living with us in a house on the hills with Gabriel and Mom.”

“What changed?”

“One night, I heard noises. My dad was supposed to be away on business. When I went to wake Mom, the bed was empty, so I took a bat and crept down the stairs.”

Her breath quickens, and the fists on the table pull into her chest. I want to reach out across to place a hand on her shoulder, to offer some strength, but I don’t want to risk interrupting her.

“The noises were coming from Dad’s office,” she rasps. “I peeked inside. Dad was there with his bodyguards, and they had Mom bent over his desk.”

Silence stretches out for several seconds, punctuated only by Seraphine’s rapid breaths. “They were taking turns with her. She was screaming, begging them to stop, but Dad said she was getting what she deserved.”

My breath stills.

“How old were you?” I ask.

“I’d just turned sixteen,” she whispers. “I didn’t know what to do or how to help, and I froze. I was so scared that the men would turn on me.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran upstairs.” Her voice breaks. “I picked up the phone, called the police, and begged them to send help.”

“You couldn’t fight them,” I tell her.

“The woman on the other line said she would send a squad car. She told me not to approach the men and to find somewhere to hide, but nobody came.”

“The noises… they just got worse and worse, so I went back upstairs to fetch a gun.” She pauses for several seconds, catching her breath. “I meant to go in and shoot the men hurting her, but I found one of them on the floor with his throat slit. There was blood everywhere, and I panicked.”

Did Seraphine’s mother have an affair with the dead man?

“What did you do next?” I ask.

---