Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

5. Evie

Chapter five

Evie

It was dark by the time Evie got home. Walter’s man drove off, leaving her alone in the lamplight on the enormous front porch of her house. She leaned against one of the great Greek columns, wishing she could disappear and go anywhere else. Walter had nearly kept her prisoner for days. Wouldn’t let her out of his sight except to use the washroom. An extreme measure he had never taken before. There was a part of her that was convinced the whole time that he intended to kill her. Ever since the murder, he’d been watching her like a hawk. Doubting her loyalty to him, surely. But he must have known there was nothing she could do. Who would she tell? It was a police lieutenant who had introduced him to her in the first place.

To tell the truth, she didn’t know if Linus would even care that she’d disappeared for so long. There certainly hadn’t been a search party. And he knew where to find her if he was stupid enough to go looking .

Stuck between Walter and Linus, she couldn’t think of a more miserable existence. And God, she was tired of crying. She patted carefully at her cheeks, blotting away the tears that fell. Then she sucked in a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and walked cautiously into the house.

Linus was usually out in the evenings, enjoying poker and cigars, or God knew what else, with his old school friends. He’d been the toast of the town since they came back, everyone clamoring to see him. It made Evie relive how lonely she’d always been in Tulsa. Her father had insisted on having her privately tutored, effectively isolating her from her peers outside of social engagement that required stiff, formal mingling and nothing more substantive than lukewarm small talk.

She’d been so lonely until she had met Ryan all those years ago.

And, well, look how that had turned out.

Just inside the foyer of the house, Evie took her shoes off and began to walk quietly across the marble floors. Though she was bound to run into some of the house staff, she didn’t want to draw attention to her arrival in case Linus was home.

She held her breath, feeling the cool kiss of the floors against her stocking feet, dreaming of just falling into her bed where she could finally sleep without Walter gripping her so tightly it bruised her, waking her up at all hours to fuck her roughly before falling back asleep and leaving her to burn with a hatred so intense that it made her grind her teeth while she wished all kinds of terrible misfortunes down upon him.

It was good to be home, though this home didn’t resemble the coziness that the word invoked. She was just letting out a soft exhale of relief when a voice spoke from the parlor she was creeping past.

“Home at last, are we?”

Evie froze, a savage curse word on the threshold of her lips. After a moment, she let her body relax and she turned to face Linus, who was sprawled like a long, spindly insect in a wingback chair. He was smoking, the smell of which should have tipped her off. And the way he was looking at her with glassy, bloodshot eyes told her quite clearly that he’d been drinking and possibly smoking more than tobacco. He was dressed for a formal dinner, white tie and all, though he’d unclasped his collar and taken off his dinner jacket.

God, he was spoiling for a fight and she didn’t have an ounce of fight left in her after surviving days of being at Walter Stanley’s mercy, certain he was about to kill her at any moment. Linus didn’t understand, wouldn’t if she tried to tell him. He didn’t give a shit.

“Yes, I’m home,” she said, trying to stay composed. “I’m going up to bed. Good night.” Then, she turned away toward the sweeping staircase.

“Not so fast,” Linus said, the barest hint of a slur in his words. He sat forward in his chair.

Evie grimaced and turned back toward him .

“You missed dinner at the LaBarons’. They were quite looking forward to reacquainting themselves with you, my wife.” Linus got up from his chair, holding his cigarette between his first two fingers.

He walked to the decanter full of brandy that they kept for guests, on full display, no regard for the laws that forbade it. With surprisingly steady hands, he poured himself a couple of fingers in a crystal cut glass and turned back toward her.

“What do you think I told them when they asked why you didn’t accompany me?” He took a sip of his brandy and rolled his lips, then smacked them.

Evie said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“I’ve gotten creative in my excuses for you.” He sauntered toward her, eyes glittering in a way that made her stomach tighten. “Sick. Indisposed. Your mother is indisposed. Your father required you. You’re out of town for the weekend. Visiting your sister in San Francisco. Oh, yes, I’ve become quite the liar on your behalf.”

“Linus–”

“But they all know.” Now his tone was growing dark. Showing the first hint of a tremor. “It’s impossible to keep anything to do with you a secret when you insist on flaunting your lover in the plain light of day, not a care in the world for what that might do to my reputation. Or your father’s for that matter.”

Evie swallowed, but she didn’t know what to say. There was simply no defense .

He watched her, an unfriendly smile curving his lips. He chuckled through his nose in small bursts. “Cat got your tongue? Or is it Walter Stanley?”

Hearing his name on Linus’s lips was jarring. She’d never made much of an effort to hide her relationship with him, just as Linus made little effort to hide his own indiscretions, coming home with lipstick on his collar and reeking of perfume, sometimes cheap, sometimes expensive, but never her own. But it still disconcerted her that he was confronting her about it. Since when did he care?

Her cheeks started to sting with the heat that was creeping into her face.

“I’m going to bed, Linus. Good night.” And she turned once again toward the stairs. The smack of a crystal glass going down onto a wooden table and the hurried steps of her husband following her were almost enough to send her bolting. Instead, she forced herself to hold her ground. She turned toward him, calmly.

Linus, for his part, didn’t look calm at all. A sheen of sweat was forming on his forehead and his eyes blazed with anger. She started to open her mouth, but his hand closed on her forearm, causing her to gasp and try to pull away. He held fast.

“Linus.” She tried to keep her voice steady. When he wouldn’t let go, she gave her arm a hard yank, but he held her like she was a daisy. “Let me go!”

And then he was dragging her across the beautifully waxed chevron flooring, causing her to stumble and trip in her effort to stay upright. She tried to yank away from him, but he shook her like she was a rag doll. They stumbled up the stairs, somehow avoiding the long fall down to the floor below. He dragged her around the mezzanine toward the upper grand staircase that led up to the third floor of their home, where the family bedrooms were located. She tried to catch the balustrade with her fingers to gain some purchase in order to stop him from throwing her around like a doll, but she only succeeded in breaking two fingernails.

She started to slap at him and tried to bite his arm, but he put a hand around her throat and slammed her against the wall, breathing hard.

His eyes were wide, crazed. A version of him she hadn’t yet experienced. “Just give me one goddamn reason,” he whispered in a voice that washed over her like ice cold water.

For one moment, the look in his eyes genuinely frightened her. She really had pushed him past a breaking point. But once she recognized it, she honed in on that rage inside of him and threw herself into the black, boiling center of it.

She spit in his face. “Do it. Do it. You coward. You don’t have the courage.”

Slowly, he dipped a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a carefully folded linen handkerchief. He wiped the spittle away with so much delicate grace that one might have thought he was wiping perspiration from his face on a pleasant summer day. Then, as fast as a snake, he shoved the handkerchief in her mouth, plunging it so far into her throat that it made her gag.

“You’re going to regret that, so help me god,” he said. He grabbed her by the hair this time and yanked her so hard that she fell to her knees. Instead of letting her get back to her feet, he dragged her across the floor, causing her to scream through the handkerchief he’d shoved in her mouth. She gripped his wrist with both hands to try to relieve some of the agony in her scalp. She couldn’t stand the pain long enough to let go and pull the handkerchief back out of her mouth.

He dragged her up the stairs by her hair, causing her back and her hips to slam painfully against every step as he went. She tried to scream at him, to demand that he stop. To beg him to stop, but he kept marching forward, determined to make her suffer.

One explosion of pain after another. She let loose her fury and her terror into the handkerchief stuffed in her throat, but it did no good. The wad of linen choking her made her feel like she was suffocating, drowning her in her own spit and the bile that kept surging to the back of her throat. She could have suffocated for all Linus cared and he wouldn’t have given a good goddamn. Her fingers scrabbled at the stairs, trying to catch them, to hold herself in place, but he was relentless.

When they reached the upper landing, he dragged her down the long strip of carpet that bisected the neatly polished wooden floor. The rug dragged up her skirt and ripped holes in her silk stockings, burned the flesh it exposed, soft from rich oils and expensive ointments. She turned this way and that, trying to shift the burn, but all she managed to do was set her body on fire in a greater variety of places.

Behind her, she heard her husband lift one of his polished shoes and kick their bedroom doors open, two huge double doors at the end of a long corridor. Blissfully cool and slick wooden floors met her ravaged skin. At last, in the privacy of their rooms, he released her hair and let her fall to the floor. With shaking fingers, she reached into her mouth and pulled the sticky, soaking wad of fabric out of her throat. Spit rushed down her chin along with tears and snot.

“Look at you.” Slowly, she looked up at Linus, looming over her like the spoiled little prince he was. Ruler of his own kingdom. Heedless of any will but his own.

The eyes that had once held love and affection raked over her with disgust. The very idea of marriage was a disaster. What had she been thinking, marrying a man she’d met only six months before? She was lonely in New York. And he’d reminded her of home. He was handsome, rich. A very sought after bachelor. And most importantly, he didn’t want children.

Both of their families had encouraged it with unprecedented enthusiasm.

One thing led to another and then they were getting married.

But she hadn’t counted on Linus being quite as petty and spoiled as he turned out to be. She hadn’t counted on hating how limited her life was, being someone’s wife instead of her own woman. And she certainly hadn’t counted on the fact that she didn’t grow to love him like she thought she would. Quite the opposite.

And he, for his part, made no effort to hide the fact that he was meeting with other women within a month of their marriage.

“The talk of the town,” he repeated. He started to pace a little. In a leisurely manner, as if he had all the time in the world to contemplate her treachery. She wanted to kick him in the groin, to watch him go down screaming. She wanted to paint her face with his blood and run screaming through the house. To throw herself off of the roof.

Crazy, she was going crazy.

Linus laughed at her now, an echo of Walter’s laugh. Cruel, relishing her suffering. A laugh that promised pain. The similarity made her shiver with revulsion and fear.

“All the tongues are wagging about you.” Linus crouched in front of her now. He pitched his voice high, like a silly society woman. “‘What’s she wearing these days? Where is she going? What’s she had for lunch?’” Linus’s button eyes glittered with hatred as he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. “‘How many men have used her like a filthy rag while she wears the furs and the jewels that her husband buys for her? Walter Stanley, Walter Stanley.’ All I ever hear about these days is my wife’s name mixed up in a pile of shit with Walter Stanley. ”

Evie just looked at him. She simply had nothing to say. In the face of this rage, this fury, she simply didn’t care about it. She looked at him and felt nothing except for hatred. She hated him so much that she had started to feel nothing for him at all. Nothing about his thoughts, his feelings, or his existence mattered to her.

“Well, my dear wife,” he said, giving her head a yank. She gave a squeak of pain and then clenched her teeth, resolving to give him no further reactions. “We are putting an end to that. Do you understand me? I frankly don’t care who you wish to use you like the trash that you are. I knew from the moment I touched you on our wedding night that I’d bought soiled goods, but I made the best of it. At least, I told myself, her father is the wealthiest man in Tulsa. At least I have some social credit for this arrangement. But you have tried to see fit to destroy every last shred of my good name in this town by making me a fucking fool!” His voice rose and he gave her head another yank. Her teeth ground together and her eyes watered. The urge to smash her fists into his face moved through her like a hot, sharp current of electricity but she held herself back. The look in his eye told her everything she needed to know about what he would do to her if she struck him just then.

“I didn’t make you a fool,” she said in a shaking voice. “You were already a fool when I married you.”

He snapped her head back and forth, his voice a hot, quiet breath against her face. “I would be very, very careful right now if I were you. ”

He fumbled in his pocket for something, something heavy and dark that flashed into her vision.

Evie’s body went still, all concentration fixed on the small revolver that he pressed under her chin.

“I’m so upset right now,” he said, a mad gleam in his eye, “that I can’t promise that my finger won’t slip.”

For an instant, her soul surged toward the dark tear in reality that this pistol offered. The long sleep, silent and unknowing. Mortal sufferings ripped away and put to rest. But fear rose through her on a tide of bile and the courage she had to beg for this thing, this release, did not outweigh the fear.

They stared at each other, both breathing heavily with a potent mix of fear and fury. The alcohol on his breath and the smell of his sweat scented the air, causing her stomach to roil.

“Now, you will listen to me,” he said. He gave her head another yank and she almost screamed at him to stop. He was going to pull her head straight off of her body. “You will stop this. All of this nonsense. And if you don’t, I am going to have you committed to the mad house. I’ve already made the arrangements, should I require them. All I need to do is pick up the phone.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said, furious. “My father–”

“I don’t care what your father has to say about it.” There wasn’t a trace of a bluff in him. His words hit like a heavy iron bell. “I don’t need him. I don’t need you. I have every fresh cunt I could ever want falling into my lap. I have my own fortune. I have my own social standing. Marrying his worthless daughter has, in fact, only served to demean my social standing. With all the trouble you’ve caused, no one will be surprised when I lock you away. When I tell any old matron who asks about it that you just need some rest. That you are exhausted. That you are in a place where they are taking good care of you.” He stroked the muzzle of the revolver down the side of her face. “I’ve been considering this option for some time. But it’s a matter of the cost versus the benefit. It’s been a struggle. Is it better to have a whore of a wife, running around the city with dresses that are getting shorter by the day on the arm of any man she wants, without a care in the world who sees her? Gambling and drinking with my money? Or is it better to have her locked safely away, where she can do no more harm to my reputation?”

“You wouldn’t–” she said again, weakly. But he just smiled at her.

He meant it. The bastard meant every word.

“You’re mine, Evelyn,” he said simply. “To do with as I wish. To dispose of, how I wish. In the eyes of God and the law, you are mine.”

God, her stomach was starting to turn faster and faster. She began to choke, to heave. He let go of her at once like she was a filthy snake and she just managed to crawl over to the water closet and upend the contents of her stomach there.

“If there’s a brat in your dried up old womb, you will get rid of it,” he said behind her in a tone so cold that it sent goosebumps up her spine. “I don’t care if it’ s mine or the cab driver’s. I want nothing else from you.” There was a pause, a shuffling that sounded like him putting the pistol back in his pocket. “Heed my warning, Evelyn. I am not bluffing.”

Then his shoes moved away. She waited, hunched over the toilet, fearful that they would come back. But he walked across the floor. The sound of the door opening. The sound of the door closing.

Evie sat, frozen on the cold white tile. The deepest frost radiated from the center of her, turning her body to rigid ice.

And then she started to cry. She stumbled to her feet and staggered out into the bedroom. All opulence and splendor, but to what end? She moved toward the bed and sank down on the edge of it, drawing the velveteen bedspread into her hands, crushing it between her fingers, sticky with tears and spit. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her reflection in the huge mirror of her dressing table. She turned her head slowly to see herself, pale and rumpled on the edge of the bed.

If there’s a brat in your dried up womb–

The final insult.

What else was there for her but this spiral of destruction? Everything she could have ever wanted had been taken from her.

She stared at herself in the mirror, a woman she didn’t recognize. She got to her feet and walked closer, every step more unsteady than the last .

Something started to cave inside of her while she looked in the mirror, skin still burning where the carpet had rubbed it away. A persistent throbbing etched its way across her scalp from where her hair had borne the weight of her body. She gritted her teeth together and hugged herself tightly.

What would Etian think of her now? No, God, she couldn’t think that. Wouldn’t think that. She tried so hard not to think about that these days, but the thought came at her like a swarm of hornets, stinging her on every surface of her being. Her fingers slipped over her face and blocked out the light. As if she could hide from the truth of all of it.

A faithless wife. An indolent, vapid woman. A murderer.

She should have been his wife. And there would have never been a more faithful one alive.

A sob ripped out of her throat. Another followed. And another. They rose in intensity until she was screaming hoarsely, gripping her hair.

She picked up the small jar of her night cream and threw it into the mirror. Glass shattered everywhere, but she barely noticed that glittering rain that scattered like dangerous sequins across the surface of the dressing table and the floor. She picked up the heavy silver brush and hurled it into the rest of the shards of glass hanging in the frame. She picked up her jewelry box and threw it across the room as hard she could. She picked up her hairpins and threw them, though they fluttered around her like feathers and denied her the cathartic violence she craved. She seized her perfume bottle and pitched it. The little peacock her mother had given her as a gift erupted into fragments.

The room was starting to grow dark around the edges.

The adrenaline of the moment was starting to drain from her and it left a cold, wicked dread in its wake. She sank onto the edge of the bed and numbly began to strip off her blouse. The exhaustion from the hideous encounter with Linus and from days of being Walter Stanley’s prisoner, was settling over her like an enormous hand, pressing her down into the bed. She shrugged the silk down off of her shoulders and then felt the last of her energy leave her. She laid back and curled into herself, drawing the coverlet over her, not bothering to undress further or to crawl under the covers and orient herself properly.

Sleep, she hoped, would be merciful tonight.