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Clara
I cry furious tears until I’ve given myself a headache and my throat feels raw. When I finally tire myself out, the clock beside the bed says it’s past four in the morning. I can’t imagine ever sleeping again after tonight, so I unfold from the bed with a groan. Exploring my glamorous cage feels morbid, but it’s that or pound my fists against the door until they turn to pulp, so I decide to poke around.
Reluctantly, I wander over to the snack bar in the opposite corner of the room. Apples and oranges sit in a bowl beside a basket of deluxe granola bars. There are sodas, juices, and small bottles of water in the mini-fridge beneath the counter. I snatch some water, and the cool liquid feels so good on my ravaged throat that I don’t breathe until I’ve finished one bottle and started another.
Taking more careful sips now, I head to the en suite, which is dominated by a freestanding marble bathtub and walk-in shower. The barest morning light is coming in through a huge window that looks out over the backyard of the estate, a hedged-in courtyard, lawn, and garden that puts the old one Raleigh and I used to play in to shame. Large-leafed monstera plants crowd the corners of the room, and a plush red rug protects my bare feet from the mosaic tile floor.
This bathroom is fit for a king, not a hostage. I turn in place, dazed and exhausted and trying to take in the fact that this is my new cell, when my eyes snag on my own reflection in the huge mirror above the sink. I almost trip back into the bathtub at the sight of myself.
My hair is wild with tangles and dirt. There are black smudges on my face, and my arms are adorned with cuts and scrapes that I’d honestly forgotten about until now. My pajama shirt and shorts are hopelessly wrinkled, caked with more soot and dirt and just a little bit of blood. Thanks to all the crying I’ve just done, my eyes are bloodshot and half-swollen.
Unwelcome, a thought pops into my head. This is what Thomas was pretending to seduce. He called you beautiful with a straight face, and you were too dazed and stupid to doubt him.
I turn away from the mirror and stomp out of the bathroom, unwilling to watch my cheeks flush with heat.
I go straight to the bedside table. A guest room as lavish as this is bound to have writing materials of some kind. Sure enough, I find a pen and a small notepad in a drawer. Not my ideal drawing tools, but my sketchbook is back in Raleigh’s house, along with my favorite pencil and my paints-
A pang goes through my chest, and I almost drop the notepad on the ground. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me sooner. I probably lost my sketchbook in the fire, along with all my most essential art supplies, packed in a rush before I left my uncle’s house. My exhausted eyes prick with fresh tears, but I press my lips into a firm line and sniffle them back.
After all, this wouldn’t be the first time my uncle has ruined my most precious belongings. And this time, the price could’ve been much higher.
I flick on the room’s light and have to blink away the dazzle of it for a minute. When my eyes finally adjust, I return to the bed and sit up against the headboard, resting the notepad against my propped-up legs. I’m feeling a thousand cruel things, but none of them crystalize into an image in my mind. Instead, I try to sketch the things I see around me in the room. The end of the bed, the doorway leading to the bathroom, the objects sitting on the snack bar- anything to work out the tension in my body and my mind. I’m not used to sketching with a pen, and for a while, I hope that my attempts to translate my cross-hatching techniques from graphite to ink will distract me.
It doesn’t.
How did my plan go so horribly wrong so quickly?! No- I can’t lie to myself about it now. I had no plan when I left my uncle’s house last night with money pilfered from the safe in his office, a change of clothes, and a sketchbook. All I’d had was a dream, and a terror that if I lived one more day in the mafia world, that dream would die.
When I was a girl, I’d entertain my mother with grand ideas about owning an art gallery filled with my paintings. There would be flower fields in every color of the rainbow and beyond, snow-drenched mountains crowned by the aurora borealis, and a hollow tower filled with bookshelves stretching up into infinity.
There would be charcoal work to contrast each burst of color. A woman in a fine evening gown, half hidden in her husband’s cigar smoke. A deer standing in a meadow surrounded by a forest thick with mist. A crumbling castle sitting at the top of a crumbling cliff, haunted by heavy storm clouds.
My mother would praise the worlds I wove in my mind and every awkward attempt to get them down on paper. Even after her brother uprooted our lives and founded the Speare family, she told me to prioritize my dreams.
Then she died.
After that, I found an unlikely ally in my uncle’s enforcer, Paul. Despite his grizzly work, he has an easygoing and nurturing personality that I needed as I grieved my mother’s loss. Without him, I might have given up on art altogether. I definitely wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did in my uncle’s house without him.
I click the pen shut and toss it to the end of the bed, followed by the notepad. Maybe a hot shower would be a better distraction from the fact that I’m more trapped than ever before. It’s not like I couldn’t use it. My hair still smells like smoke.
I’ve just worked up the conviction to face my reflection in the bathroom mirror again when I hear a soft tap at the door. My whole body locks up, expecting Thomas to barge in for another interrogation. Instead, a whisper calls my name.
“Clara? Are you awake?”
It’s Raleigh. Relief floods through me, and I tumble out of bed and hurry to the door. It’s locked of course, but I press a hand to the cool wood like it’s a window and Raleigh can see me on the other side.
“Raleigh, I’m here. Are you okay?!”
She’s quiet for so long that I almost think she left, but finally, I hear, “I’m okay. You?”
I let out a choked laugh. “I’ve been better.” Guilt twists my stomach, and I hurry to add, “I’m so sorry Raleigh. Your house- I-I didn’t think I was followed when I left. If I did, I’d never have come to you-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Raleigh interrupts, her whisper a little rough. “Thomas can rebuild it. Besides, Iris told me the fire was put out pretty quickly.”
I try not to feel too much hope that my sketchbook survived, but it’s hard.
Raleigh continues, “What did Thomas say to you?”
Swallowing hurts. I try not to think about his hands on my skin and his lips in my hair. “He said I’m a prisoner for life, and that I’d better give him information about my uncle, or else.”
