Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“No,” he says. “If you ever tell anyone or show up uninvited, you’ll be dead.”
“Cool,” I reply. “You look stupid. There’s no way you’re really reading that fucking newspaper in this lighting with a mask on. How’d you even get it?”
“You look stupid sleeping on the bathroom floor. Why’d you do that?”
“It was warm,” I reply weakly. I grab my purse from the countertop. “I’m leaving. I’m sure I’ll fucking see you around even if I don’t want to.”
“Yep,” he says without looking up, still pretending he’s reading the fucking paper.
As I walk toward the doorway, I realize
“I don’t have any shoes.”
“There are shoes in the closet,” he says.
“They won’t fit me,” I say. “They’ll be too big.”
“So? Go barefoot, then.”
I sigh. If he were Luca, there would have been new shoes waiting for me when I woke up this morningcoffee and food, too. There’s no way this guy doesn’t drink coffee. He can’t do that in a mask.
If he were Luca, he’d hold me after.
“Where are they?” I ask. My lower lip trembles, and I bite it back. “Where are Luca and Declan?”
“I don’t know,” he says dully. “Eastern Europe, I think.”
“Why aren’t they here? When are they coming back for me?”
“The De Rossis brought an organization that’s existed as a feared whisper for hundreds of years into the spotlight and under scrutiny because they couldn’t properly dispose of bodies and needed to bring women they barely knew, like you, behind the curtain, and then they couldn’t even run away right. That’s why they aren’t here.”
“Isn’t that last part your fault?”
“No,” he says. “They should have shot you all and left you on the bus to be placed into barrels, but they didn’t. They’ve been given too much leeway because of their father and their fame; people who should have known better let Declan De Rossi make his own rules and his own harem, and now we have a bunch of twenty-year-old girls to babysit and one of the dead ones left a diary behind for the police to find. I don’t think anyone is in a hurry to help Declan and Luca back into the country. Famous people on ‘Most Wanted’ lists don’t exactly move around easily. And Teagan, as far as I know, they haven’t even asked.”
“Luca loves me. He wrote that song for me.”
“Maybe he did. But that doesn’t matter,” he says, so disinterested he still doesn’t even bother looking up.
Defeated, I grab my bag from the counter, throw it over my shoulder, and walk toward the door, preparing to drive home barefoot.
“Your phone will be scrambled until you’re ten miles away from the compound,” he says to my back as my hand closes around the doorknob. I pause, listening. “Just head west once you’re down the mountain. The government is watching you, Teagan. They’re listening to your calls and reading your texts, tookeep that in mind.”
“And are they the only ones?” I ask.
“No.”
Without replying, I pull the door open and begin descending the staircase into the garage. And there sits my old grey Toyota, right beside the shiny blacked-out Aston Martin.
The garage opens on its own as my feet hit the floor. I climb into my car and pull out onto the one-lane road, heading down the mountain and then west once I get to a highway. When my phone starts lighting up with notifications, I put in my address and continue home.
Two hours. I’m two hours from my house, and it takes even longer once I hit traffic outside of L.A.
When I finally make it home, I park down the block and walk through the front door, finding my parents sitting in the living room.
“It hasn’t even been a week, Teagan,” my mom says. “Where were you?”
“I was out,” I say. “With a man.”
“Jesus, Teagan,” my dad sneers.
“What man?” she asks. “Where did you even meet this person?”
“I knew him from before.” It isn’t really a lie. I did know him from before I was locked up, just not that long before, and I don’t really have any idea who he is. “If you don’t want me to bring people to your house, that’s fine,” I tell them, tears welling in my eyes. “But I am so lonely, I think it might kill me. I miss being touched; I miss being loved. I miss them, and I know I’m not supposed to say that, but I do. And I want this to work, but I don’t know how. No one is ever going to hire me, and no one is going to love me ever again. And I know you guys are trying to love me, but you have to try. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Teagan, that’s ridiculous,” my dad says. “Of course we love you. We’re doing everything we can to help youafter everything you’ve done to humiliate us. Stop being selfish.”
“You’re not listening to me,” I say. “Do you have any idea how miserable I am? I can’t live like this, or I’m going to hurt myself. If you want me to go, I’ll go. But I can’t do the curfew. I’m going to go take my medication and lie down. I’m in pain.”
“They didn’t love you, either, Teagan,” my mom calls after me as I climb the staircase.
“You’re not making the point you think you are,” I tell her, turning into my bedroom and pulling the door closed behind me.
I crawl under the covers, pop my earbuds into my ears, and listen to “Pretty Poisoned” on the web over and over again.
It occurs to me that no one ever let me mourn. Not for the love I lost, not for the family, not for Brady and Rhett. I certainly wasn’t comforted. I was just locked up and told I needed helpthat I needed deprogramming to realize that I didn’t lose anything at all. And I almost believed it when I thought Luca was dead. I almost believed it when I saw Hazel on TV.
I almost believed it when I thought I’d be able to get a job, wear a dress at my sister’s wedding, and slip seamlessly into a life where I wasn’t a murderer, and where I’d stop fantasizing about all the ways I could kill someone with only the things in the room and biting my cheeks just to taste blood.
But I can’t get a job, I can’t wear the dress, and in this life, I’m still a murderer. And I don’t even care if that makes me a bad person anymore. I know I’ll do it again; just like Declan said, I won’t be able to stop. It’s the second-best drug I’ve ever experienced, and I’ll never have the very best drug ever again.
But unlike Declan, I don’t have anywhere to hideno mountains, no wealth. I’m going to end up in jail or Bone Saw is going to put me down. Maybe I can convince him to do it nicely.
And worst of all, Luca is alive, but he can’t and won’t come for me. There will be no putting my heart back in my chest, no getting away with our crimes. No foreign beaches, no secrets.
The road to ruined really is paved with good intentions. That’s certainly what I am now.
I don’t move for three days.
“Teagan, you need to get up,” my mom says, shaking me. “It’s after five. You’ve barely left your room in days. Have you even showered?”
“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “I don’t remember.”
“You missed your appointment with Dr. Miller,” she says.
“I was too tired.”
And I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to see someone in a gold mask watching me. But he’s still around; I know that much. I feel it.
“Have you heard anything back on those jobs you applied for?”
“No. Nothing.”
“I think you’re right, Teagan,” she says. “This isn’t going to work. We need to do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I talked to your Aunt Beth in North Carolina. She has an apartment over her garage that she rents out; she said she’d be willing to rent it to you once the current resident leaves in a few weeks. You could start over there, change your hair, change your name ”
“You’ve told me not to be myself, that I should be ashamed of my body, and now you’re telling me I can’t even have my name anymore?”
“I’m just saying it’s an optionyou should think about it. And I think you should get out more, so don’t worry about the curfew. Your sister invited you to her bachelorette party this weekend, and that man sent you flowers. They’re downstairs.”
“What man?”
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