She Discovers Their Secret, She Chooses Their World novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Night They Stood for Me
On her eighteenth birthday, Élise sees the two men who raised her sharing a woman in the study, and Sergio tells her to stay.
Every man at the table stood up when I came down the stairs on my eighteenth birthday.
There were about forty of them in dark suits, and the grey old ones pushed their canes hard into the floor.
They did it every time I walked into a room in this house.
Sergio had never told me why, and I had never asked.
He was waiting at the foot of the staircase with his hand held out.
"Happy birthday, Élise," he said.
His palm was warm and covered in black ink, a line of tattooed letters running up from his wrist.
He had held my hand on these same stairs the day he brought me here, when I was six and my mother had just been buried.
Tonight he held it longer than he needed to.
His second was already seated at his right, big and blond and bored, one arm hooked over his chair.
"Don't let them stare at you, little one," he called across the room. "They'll get ideas."
"They'll get a bullet," Sergio said, and the whole table laughed.
I laughed too and sat where he pulled out my chair.
The housekeeper brought a cake with eighteen candles.
I blew them out and wished for something I could not say aloud, because I did not know the words for it yet.
Afterward Sergio gave me a small flat box.
Inside was a thin gold chain with a green stone the exact color of my eyes.
"Turn around," said Marco, Sergio's second.
His fingers were rough and careful on the back of my neck.
They stayed there one second after the clasp closed.
I felt it all the way down my spine.
I was the only person in that room who noticed, so I told myself I had imagined it.
A guest book lay open on the hall table, and I reached for the pen to sign it with them.
Sergio closed the book before the nib touched the page.
"Not that one," he said, the way he always said it.
In twelve years he had never once let me sign my name to anything in that house, not even a card.
I put the pen down.
The guests were gone by eleven.
Sergio kissed my forehead at the bottom of the stairs, the way he had every night for twelve years.
"Go to bed. You're a woman now. You can do what you like."
"Then I'll read," I said.
"Read, then," Marco said, and he winked.
I went up.
I did not read.
I lay on top of the covers in my birthday dress with the chain cold against my collarbone and listened to the house.
At one in the morning I went down for a glass of water.
The kitchen was dark.
The study door at the end of the hall was open a hand's width, and yellow light lay across the carpet.
I heard a woman laugh.
It was a low, easy laugh, the laugh of a woman who is exactly where she wants to be.
I told myself to go back upstairs.
I walked toward the light instead.
Through the gap I saw the leather sofa under the lamp.
A woman with red hair lay across it with her dress pushed up around her waist.
Sergio knelt on the floor between her knees with his shirt open and his face against her thigh.
Marco stood behind the sofa with one hand wound in her hair, holding her head back so she had to look at him.
"Tell him how it feels," he said.
"Good," she gasped. "God, it's so good, both of you, please."
Marco leaned down and kissed her mouth hard.
Then he looked up, and he looked straight at me through the gap.
He did not stop.
His eyes stayed on mine while his hand tightened in her hair.
I stood there with my fingers pressed flat against the cold wall.
I knew these men.
Marco had taught me to ride a bike on the gravel drive and Sergio had sat up with me through every fever.
I knew how they took their coffee and how they signed their names.
I had not known this.
I had eaten breakfast across from them for twelve years, and I had never once wondered who had left before I woke.
My face was burning, and under the shock there was something hotter that made my stomach drop.
I was jealous.
I wanted to be on that sofa, with Sergio's mouth on me and Marco's hand in my hair, and I wanted her gone from it.
I was ashamed of how much.
I should have walked away.
I did not go to bed.
Sergio lifted his head and turned.
His mouth was wet, his dark eyes were heavy, and he was looking at me too.
"Élise," he said, very quietly.
The woman went still.
"It's all right," Sergio told her without looking away from me. "Get dressed."
She tugged her dress down and hurried to the door.
She brushed past me, smelling of perfume and him, and she did not meet my eyes.
I heard her heels go down the hall.
The front door opened and shut.
Marco came around the sofa, buttoning his shirt with slow, steady fingers.
"You should have knocked, little one," he said.
"The door was open," I said, and my voice shook.
"Because I didn't shut it," Sergio said.
He stood and crossed the room to me.
He was a head taller than I was, and he smelled of her.
He took my chin between his thumb and finger and tipped my face up until I had to look at him.
"You stood there watching for four minutes," he said.
"I couldn't move."
"You could have moved at any second."
His thumb pressed against my lower lip.
I should have pulled away.
I stayed exactly where I was.
Behind me I heard a soft metallic click.
I turned my head.
Marco stood with his back against the study door and the key in his fist.
"You're not going anywhere yet," he said.
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