Strangers in the villa, p.15
Strangers in the Villa, page 15
“Did I… do something to someone you care about?” His voice wobbles with desperation. He’s grasping, confused, on the verge of tears. She finds it satisfying.
“Getting warmer.” She reaches for her beer and takes a drink.
Curtis looks around the kitchen to ensure they’re still alone. Then he clears his throat and starts. “Back in New York, I worked with some people who were into some shady stuff. I regret that I got wrapped up in it. But I never hurt anyone. I certainly never killed anyone.”
“Yes, you did,” she snaps. “And we have proof.”
“Keep your voice down.” He grabs her by the arm, pulls her toward the back door. She’s about to scream, to hit him, but that will bring Damian and Sydney running. Everything will come out then, and Sydney will leave. Curtis will be hurt but not destroyed. That means Bianca will have to kill him.
They step outside, between the house and the skeletal remains of the shed. Curtis closes the glass door behind them. “Who is L.B.?” he demands.
Her hand moves to her chest, touches her locket. How has Curtis seen the inscription on the back? She took the pendant off both times they went to the beach and left it on the nightstand. Curtis has been in their room, searching for information. Of course he has.
“Was that your mom? Did she lease property from my company or something?”
Bianca laughs in his face. “You think we’d do all this over a property lease? You think this is about a business transaction gone wrong?”
“I don’t know what else it could be! I’ve never hurt anyone!”
The intensity of Bianca’s rage is blinding, deafening. For a moment, she sees a blank whiteness, hears a shrill hum. Her body vibrates as every cell screams at her to attack, to smash the beer bottle over his head, to claw, to scratch, to strangle him. But she can’t. Not yet.
So she spits in his face.
Curtis doesn’t flinch, doesn’t wipe it away. Because deep down he knows he deserves her vitriol. He knows what he’s done, even if his arrogance won’t allow him to admit it.
“Get the money,” she growls, “or Sydney will know what a piece of shit you really are.” She heads back inside.
33
Damian feels the sun baking his naked skin, soothing his tired muscles, drying the pool water in his damp hair. He’s vaguely thirsty, and he wonders where Bianca is with his beer, but he’s too relaxed to look for her, too content. This is the life he’s always wanted. It’s the life he’s always deserved. He slips into the fantasy that this is his house, that he and Bianca are alone in the hillside haven. It feels comfortable and right. Soon, their reality will rival the dream.
It’s not that their life back in the States was terrible; it was just mundane. They had decent jobs. They rented a cute little house. A lot of people would be satisfied with what they had, but not Damian. He’s known since childhood that he was destined for more, a bigger, bolder existence. And then he fell in love. He put his partner first. He’s been patient and devoted. He’d kept the promise he’d made to Bianca in that field on prom night, and he’d waited.
After high school, Damian attended community college. Tech was where the money was, so he studied computer programming. It didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t cut out for it, so he switched to a psychology major, worked at a big-box appliance store part-time. He moved into a house with a bunch of guys he’d found in an online rental group. It was filthy, rowdy, fun.
Bianca still lived at home then. She was going to design school, running interference between her mom and her little sister. Bianca stayed with him on weekends, and sometimes Lyric came, too. She was a cute kid then, silly and goofy. He didn’t mind playing grown-up for a few hours a week, but he worried about Lyric. His roommates regularly came home wasted, smoked grass on the back deck, and brought various sex partners home. It was no place for a kid, and he told Bianca that.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s still a healthier environment than my mom’s house.”
One day, shortly after he’d finished college, he went to pick Bianca up at her mom’s battered bungalow. He rang the bell, but no one answered. He knocked loudly, but no one came. A crash came from inside, followed by a screech. The door was locked, but he rattled the handle, banged on it with his fist. Finally, Bianca opened it. Her face was flushed, and she had a duffel bag over her shoulder.
“Lyric and I are moving in with you,” she stated, only the slightest tremble in her voice. “She’s packing her stuff.”
“Uh… okay.” He wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but it didn’t appear up for debate.
Yvonne staggered into view then. She was clearly drunk or on drugs, perhaps both. She wore a silky robe and nothing else, her thigh slipping through the fabric. “Damian, why are you with this little whore?” She slinked toward him. “You could do so much better.”
“Leave him out of this, Mom,” Bianca growled.
Yvonne was close now. He could smell booze on her breath. “If you ever want to be with a real woman, you know where to find me.”
It turned his stomach, made his skin crawl. Damian’s parenting bar was fairly low, but Yvonne Richards was on another level.
“Lyric, hurry up!” Bianca cried.
“She’s not going with you.” Yvonne’s smile was triumphant. “She loves her momma. You can’t turn her against me.”
“I’m not going to let you destroy her,” Bianca said. “Lyric, come on!”
The girl appeared then. She was about thirteen at the time, and while her heavy makeup made her look twenty, her coltish body and the innocence shining in her eyes betrayed her real age. “I—I can’t go,” she stammered. “All my stuff is here.”
“See?” Yvonne crowed, eyes on Bianca. “She doesn’t love you either.”
“Lyric, come with us,” Bianca pleaded. “You know it’s not safe here.”
“I’ll be fine,” the younger girl said. “I promise.”
Yvonne moved to Lyric, draped an arm around her shoulders. “Get the fuck out, Bianca. You’re not welcome here anymore.”
So they left. Bianca never talked about it, never shed a tear, but it hurt her. Her emotional callus thickened even more.
Soon Damian and Bianca moved out of the party house and into a decent modular home. It had two spare rooms, and they rented one to help with costs, kept the other for Lyric. At first, she came around often, but Lyric was growing up, changing. Damian had been fond of her when she was a kid, but she’d become a pain in the ass. She had attitude in spades, not that he could blame her. He knew what Yvonne was like. He knew what it took to survive in that house. But Lyric could be rude and condescending to Bianca, treated her like an annoyance instead of a savior. The kid didn’t want rules and boundaries. She wanted the freedom of Yvonne’s indifference.
Damian and Bianca were busy. They worked their nine-to-five jobs; they had a network of like-minded friends who were open-minded, sex-positive, and uninhibited. There were parties, blurry nights when he’d wake up next to another woman, find Bianca in a different room with another lover. He was okay with it, most of the time, but sometimes he’d feel insecure, and they’d argue. But they always pulled it together, provided a wholesome environment for Lyric, who came over every Sunday.
One weekend, they waited for Lyric to arrive. When she didn’t show up, Bianca texted her, but the message wasn’t delivered. She tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail. “Something’s wrong,” she said to Damian.
“Your sister’s seventeen. She’ll be off with her friends. Or maybe her phone died.”
“No,” Bianca insisted. “Something’s not right. I can feel it.”
She couldn’t call her mom. Yvonne had blocked Bianca’s number years ago. There was no option but to go to the house. Damian had offered to go alone—Bianca would not be welcome—but she was adamant that she accompany him. She stood behind Damian as he rang the bell.
Yvonne was dressed and appeared sober when she answered. “If you’re here to see Lyric, you’re too late.”
“What do you mean too late?” Bianca pressed forward, pushed her way past her mother and through the front door.
“She’s gone,” Yvonne said as Bianca peered around the cluttered house.
“Gone where?”
“She moved. To New York City.”
Damian had snorted in disbelief. Lyric was a teenager, a small-town kid. How could she pick up and move to the biggest city in America? He’d had big dreams at her age too, but reality had set in, had kept him here. Bianca wasn’t laughing.
“She’s seventeen,” she said. “She hasn’t even finished high school.”
Yvonne rolled her eyes. “Who cares? She wasn’t exactly academic.”
“What will she do there?” Bianca asked. “How will she support herself?”
“Not my problem,” Yvonne sniffed. “Lyric thinks she’s something special, but she’ll end up a whore or dead in the gutter.”
Bianca hit her mother square in the face with a closed fist. Damian heard the crunch of bone and cartilage, saw the blood spurt from Yvonne’s nose. Yvonne bent double, hands covering her face. Blood seeped between her fingers and dripped onto the floor.
“You fucking cunt!” she screeched. “I’ll call the police! I’ll have you charged with assault!”
Bianca launched herself at Yvonne, and they tumbled to the floor. Bianca straddled her mother, grabbed her by the throat, and squeezed. If Damian hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t ripped her off, dragged her kicking and screaming out to the car, Bianca would have killed her. He saw the cold determination in her. He saw the rage and the hatred.
“This is bad,” Bianca said, nursing her bruised knuckles as he drove them home. “Lyric is a naïve kid. How could my mom let her move to New York?”
“Lyric’s wise in a lot of ways,” he tried to assure her. “She’s a pretty girl. She’ll be fine.”
But she wouldn’t be fine. Because she was about to meet Curtis Lowe.
34
Bianca is rattled by the confrontation with Curtis, shaken by his denials, his feigned ignorance, his attempts at manipulation. Spitting in his face had been a weak expression of her hatred, just a drop in the bucket of her loathing. She needs to calm down, to compose herself and process his words. She hurries out of the house, to the privacy of the van. It’s hot and stuffy, but she’s shivering, cold all over. The strength of her disgust has chilled her to her core.
She hears Curtis’s car start and back quickly out of the driveway. Part of her hopes he’s gone in search of the money; part of her hopes he’s planning to drive his little car off a cliff. How can Curtis live with what he did? Does he really not remember his vile, immoral behavior? Perhaps he’d blocked it out to combat his guilt. Or were his depraved actions normalized by his cohort of entitled narcissists? People with so much money that they think the rules don’t apply to them, that they can indulge their sickest fantasies with no repercussions. Either way, Curtis’s innocence is a delusion.
Just for a breath, she lets herself consider his denials. Did Bianca somehow get it wrong? She wasn’t there. She hasn’t seen the video evidence, though she knows it exists. But Bianca has always trusted her gut instinct, her inherent ability to sort good people from bad. What happened in New York is likely worse than Bianca could imagine. She only knows what Lyric told her, but that’s enough.
It was a Sunday in October when Bianca found her sister. It hadn’t been that difficult: Lyric wasn’t hiding, exactly. After a couple of weeks of silence, she responded to Bianca’s barrage of concerned texts. Lyric had assured her older sister that she was safe, happy, even thriving in New York City, but she was short on details. She had an apartment, but she didn’t say where. She was working at a restaurant but wouldn’t say which one. Lyric claimed to be loving life in the Big Apple, but she didn’t mention museums or the theater or even nightclubs. It was all too vague for Bianca’s comfort.
“I need to go see her,” Bianca told Damian. “Something feels off.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” he’d said dismissively. Damian cared for Lyric, but he was not her family. And more than once he’d complained about her teenage presence: the mess, the attitude, the sense of entitlement. “Go if it’ll make you feel better.”
When Bianca told her little sister she was coming to visit, Lyric was quick to inform her that she shared a one-bedroom apartment with two other girls, that her “room” was a futon behind a cheap paper screen. There was no space for guests. Bianca booked a relatively cheap hotel in Midtown for two nights and a flight with a budget airline. Her younger sibling agreed to meet her at a nearby Pret A Manger. They’d grab coffees and spend the day together exploring the city.
Lyric arrived a little late, but not concerningly so. She wasn’t wearing her sophisticated makeup, and she looked beautiful in an easy, unassuming way. Her long wavy hair was still damp from the shower, and Bianca noticed a couple of pimples on her chin that she’d tried unsuccessfully to conceal. She looked young, sweet, and wholesome. Lyric dropped her too-cool attitude and ran to embrace her.
“I missed you.” The girl’s voice was muffled by Bianca’s hair.
“Me too.” Bianca savored her sister’s closeness, the concrete knowledge that she was safe. Bianca had been right to come, to see that Lyric was okay with her own eyes. She felt a nearly jubilant sense of relief.
They made their way toward the park. Lyric lived downtown, didn’t know her way around the chaos of Midtown, but they found their route, chatting breezily about her life in the city. Lyric was more open in person, discussing her roommates (a girl from Atlanta who was cool, and another from Chicago who she suspected had an undiagnosed personality disorder). Lyric had a job as a food runner at a chichi restaurant.
“But when I’m twenty-one, I can train to be a server.”
Bianca didn’t comment that four years was a long time to wait to become a waitress. She wanted their visit to be pleasant. Later, she’d bring up Lyric’s high school diploma and some sort of career training.
“Do you make enough money?” Bianca asked. “New York is an expensive place to live.”
“I get amazing tips,” Lyric assured her. “All our customers are super rich. And really generous.”
“Maybe I’ll come in for dinner tonight?” Bianca suggested.
“Good luck,” Lyric laughed. “You have to reserve months in advance unless you’re a VIP.” She scrunched up her nose. “And it’s really expensive.”
Lyric sounded impressed, thrilled to be serving New York’s upper crust. Bianca was tempted to remind her who she was and where she came from, but now was not the time. She needed more details on her sister’s life and couldn’t risk her storming off in a huff.
They strolled the tree-lined promenade of Central Park, their arms linked. The fall weather was brisk, the sky a flat gray, but colorful leaves clung to the tree branches. Lyric asked about Damian, about their hometown, about Bianca’s design job. Neither woman spoke to their mom anymore, and they both felt lighter for it. Healthier. There was no guilt. Yvonne had a new boyfriend; she wouldn’t miss them.
“Are you hungry? Can I take you for lunch?” Bianca asked. She couldn’t afford anywhere fancy, but she was still the big sister.
Lyric checked the time on her phone. “Sure. I’ve got a couple of hours before I have to get ready for work.”
They walked back to Midtown, where Bianca had noticed a decent diner next to her hotel. Their conversation was full of giggles and reminiscences, and Bianca felt at ease. Her kid sister was on an adventure. She was young, and she would make mistakes, but there would be time for her to get back on track.
Over corned beef sandwiches and Diet Cokes, Bianca teased more information out of Lyric. She got the name and location of the fancy restaurant where Lyric worked, the venue where Bianca could never hope to get a table. She wrote down the address of her sister’s Chinatown apartment, promising to send her some of the items she’d left behind in her haste to leave. And she insisted they meet for breakfast the next day.
“What time?” Lyric whined. “I work late, and sometimes we go out after.”
Bianca sipped her Diet Coke. “Where do you go?”
“We get invited to clubs and we get VIP entrance.” Lyric was lit from within. “Sometimes we go to private parties that are insane.”
As her underage sister spoke about bottle service and velvet ropes, Bianca felt her comfort level plunge. She’d never been impressed by shallow displays of wealth, and she knew the narcissism that often came with money. Rich people played by their own rules. They took whatever they wanted.
“You have to be careful.” It came out sounding distinctly maternal. “You can’t trust these rich pricks. You’re just a kid, and they’ll take advantage of you.”
“They’re not like that,” Lyric said, setting down her sandwich. “They’re really nice people. Important people. And they have connections in finance. And Hollywood. And Silicon Valley. Something big is going to happen for me here, B. I can feel it.”
Bianca looked at her bright-eyed sister, so young and pretty, and she wanted to believe her. But she couldn’t. She knew the ugly side of human nature, the dark desires of powerful people. She wanted to tell Lyric to come home and finish school, to live with her and Damian, who could keep her safe. She could move back to New York when she was older, smarter, wiser. But Lyric wouldn’t listen to her. She was wild and rebellious. She was a girl.
“I’ve flown a long way to see you,” she said. “It won’t kill you to go home early one night so you can get up and meet me for breakfast.”
“Fine.” Lyric rolled her eyes. “I’ll be there.”
35
When Bianca still hasn’t returned half an hour later, Damian pulls on a pair of shorts and goes looking for her. The house is empty but for Sydney snoring softly behind her closed door. He grabs himself a beer and surveys the property. No Bianca. No Curtis. He heads out to the van. Pulling open the panel door, he finds his partner on the bed, curled into the fetal position. “What’s wrong?” he asks, climbing inside and pulling the door closed behind him. He perches next to her, lays a hand on her shoulder.
