Did this bitch really just break her Waterford bowl? Shock was now warring with renewed rage.
“I like to have a nice cup of tea in one of your fancy imported home-shopping Japanese teacups and watch your favorite movies, even though I’m not really big on horror.” Zoe made a face, signaling her distaste in Vanessa’s film choices. “Sometimes, Bobby can’t finish me off. Well, a lot of times he can’t since we had Everly. The only thing that does the job anymore is that little rose in your special drawer. I skyrocketevery time. Where did you get it? Online? I’ve been dying to ask but then I’d have to explain…” She gestured at the room and laughed shortly.
Vanessa fought the almost overwhelming urge to be sick. “Oh my God, please tell me you’re just saying that to fuck with me,please.”
Zoe rolled her eyes at her, as though she’d just asked a stupid question. “Of course, I’m fucking with you. You’re disgusting. I’m not trying to catch your slut germs.”
“What the fuck is happening here?” Antoinette asked, backing further into the far corner, staring wide-eyed at Zoe. “Who is this?”
“I’m her sister. Her sorta bestie, really. Or at least we were, in the beginning. And then she got an attitude with me because she realized her boyfriend wanted me. But I know who you are. Santino’s ex. Not as cute as I’d been picturing. Anyway, I’m here a lot. And I see things.” Zoe gave them a sly, almost coquettish look. “For instance, I’ve seen Santino sitting outside in his cousin’s car, watching you. He follows you to work, to the courthouse. He acts like he’s some sort of mafia guy on the hunt, but he’s never spotted me following him even once. So dumb.”
“What?” Vanessa whispered.
Suddenly, the pages in Santino’s sketchbook fluttered open in her mind. He’d drawn her rose bushes, but she hadn’t planted them until after he’d moved out. He’d known about Scott before she’d told Dani…How had she not seen this?
“Uh-huh. I saw Scott too when he came around. I followed him when he left once. His place in Manhattan is gorgeous. A pre-war on Riverside Drive?” Zoe made the “ok” sign with her thumb and forefinger. “I can’t believe you fucked that up, too. That’s twice, Vanessa! How you could get two different rich, hot men wrapped around your finger and then fuck it up both times is…its…well, it’s mindboggling.” She was still fingering the candle, passing her hand over it like an ancient wielding secret powers.
“Zoe, you have so much.” Vanessa was trembling when Zoe picked up the candle and wiggled it from side to side playfully with dark, flat eyes. A doll’s eyes. “You have Everly. Don’t do something that’ll keep you away from her. Put that down.”
Zoe looked between her and Antoinette, then at the living room, the clean white walls, the long, billowy curtains. With a shrug, she said, “Okay.” Then tossed the candle down on the floor where it landed at the base of that curtain. The flames took hold and whooshed up the cloth in mere seconds. And seconds after that, seeing what she’d done, whatever accursed spell had possessed Zoe to drop that candle suddenly vaporized with the fabric.
“Oh my God,” she said, turning in panicked half circles from side to side. “Oh my God, your curtains. Yourcurtains…”
“What the fuck is going on in here?”
Before any of them could run or respond, there was a man standing in the living room now, also coming from the kitchen and dressed in black from head to toe. He was staring at the flaming curtain with his mouth open.
Vanessa froze, unable to believe what was happening. Three uninvited motherfuckersanda fire in her house?
This newcomer stared at the growing blaze, mesmerized, seeming to have forgotten the tire iron he carried in one hand. And in the other was another bottle of D’Alessio wine from her kitchen with a piece of cloth tucked into the neck.
It seems they weren’t the only two frozen with shock. Zoe and Antoinette remained in their spots, their eyes wildly swinging from the fire to the intruder, obviously trying to decide which threat was worse, just as Vanessa was.
“Is this your husband?” she asked Antoinette, who stared at the man and shook her head as she shrank back in fear.
“Who the fuck are you?” Zoe finally exclaimed over the crackling noise of the hungry flames licking up the curtain to the ceiling.
“Who the fuck areyou?” he shouted back. Scanning their faces, he focused on Vanessa with a triumphant sneer. “You were supposed to be here alone. Never mind.”
The thick-set, dark-haired man picked up the candle that was next to Belle’s picture and tossed it onto the couch while they gaped at him as if their feet were stuck to the floor. He used the third candle on the coffee table to light the cloth of the bottle. With full force, he threw it at the front door and another fire started. The door was no longer an exit, but a barrier to safety.
Antoinette somehow overcame her paralysis and ran at the assailant. They grappled for a moment, looking like a bizarre mismatched couple between her light and sweet pink dress and his dark henchman uniform.
After she punched his face, like a gnat hitting an elephant, he snatched Antoinette by her hair and punched her back, hard, casting her in the other direction like tossing a ragdoll. Her head lolled to the side after that sickening blow, and she didn’t move.
Now he was blocking her way. It was either go through the fire that was inching closer, crackling hot and greedily waiting to devour her or go through him.
He grinned at her, looking like the spawn of Hell with his skin flame-painted a sickly reddish-orange. Less frightening in appearance but even more deadly was the acrid, rising smoke, forcing useless coughs out of her tightening lungs. Having lived with a firefighter, she knew she was supposed to drop to the floor and crawl, but that bastard would be on her in seconds if she did.
“That’s my sister. You can’t have her,” Zoe snarled.
To Vanessa’s shock, Zoe launched herself at the stranger like a tiny wildcat and tried to wrestle the tire iron out of his hand. He punched her, too, and pushed her down where Vanessa could no longer see her beyond the fiery couch.
He turned back to Vanessa and raised the tire iron, but Zoe wrapped her arms around his leg. Cursing, he turned and hit her with it across the back and her muffled cry was both pitiful and horrifying.
Vanessa shouted, “Leave her alone!” through a throat strangled with smoke.
It didn’t matter if she and Zoe hated each other. That was Everly’s mother. That baby couldn’t grow up knowing her aunt had let her mother die. There wasn’t enough petty left in her to bear the thought of that.
