Page 38 of Always
The money thing still gets to him sometimes, I think. Even though he’s making it pretty good at Columbia. Plus, he’s been working on his novel for a few months now and Iknowthat’s gonna be a bestseller.
We end the night with a scary movie and then all go to bed. In the same bed.
Two Nights Later
I wake up in the middle of the night and reach for my wife, but she’s not there. Once I clear my eyes, I sit up to see that she’s standing by the window, gazing out onto the street. Under the sheets, I silently sit up, bring my knees up and drape my arms around them, just watching her.
She has my hoodie on, arms folded over her chest, the moonlight pouring in through the blinds makes her look so… spectral. She brings her thumb to her bottom lip and rubs it.
I can feel her thoughts racing from here as she sways a bit. Raven sighs silently, tilting her head to the side working things out for herself. As much as I want to, I don’t interrupt. I simply watch my wife- learning her just a little bit more. It takes a few minutes, but she sighs again, this time with a little hum, telling me she has an answer.
“Baby?”
She turns to face me and climbs back in bed carefully so as not to wake Damon up.
“What’s going on?”
She reaches over, grabs her phone from the nightstand to show me something. It’s an alert from the security system Aleksi installed at the Monroe mansion. It takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at- Sofia is walking around the place confidently and goes up to her old bedroom. There’s no staff there. Raven made sure to give them all severance packages when she let them all go. It’s been sitting vacant since the deed has been switched to her name.
I peer over at my baby pressed to my side where she belongs.
She drops her phone on the bed and her hands fly up.She’s been there for a while.
“What do you mean?”
I was sent an alarm a week ago. I thought it was a fluke. But she’s gotten bold. I think she thinks I won’t come for her because she’s my mother.She rubs at her temple then slides her hand to the back of her head, wincing.
I quirk my brow. A few months ago, Raven told me she hears what she calls her Death Lullaby in her head when someone on her list is nearby. Kind of freaky but somehow that makes her hotter to me? Like she’s my gothy little witchy psychic. I wonder if she’d use me for a freaky sex ritual. Do those exist? Is there a crystal for that? I’ll have to Google that later if I remember. Anyway, I equate her Death Lullaby to my tummy aches when I can just feel that something bad is about to happen. Maybe we’re both psychic. MaybeIcan perform a freaky sex ritual onher. I can feel myself start grinning and make myself frown. Focus. I gotta focus. Fuck, she’s so pretty. Nope. Talking about Sofia. My dick can wait. “So… is it time?”
My wife nods solemnly, pretty eyes wide.
“You want to go just us, huh?”
Well, I can’t go alone,she signs with a frown.
“No baby, you can’t. Alright. Let me call the GM and tell him I have a family emergency and let him know I’ll be gone for a day. We can drive out there. Do you have a plan?”
She shrugs her shoulders but I have a feeling she does. And if she doesn’t… I do.
Because nobody hurtsmywife and gets away with it.
Quietly, we both get out of bed and go to her room to start packing what we’ll need.
I tell Damon and Mav where we’re going, letting them know Aleksi agreed to coming with us and it really won’t take us that long, just a day, and we’ll be back before sunrise.
It takes us five hours to get to the mansion from Brooklyn in Aleksi’s unmarked SUV. I don’t really know the guy but he’s pretty fucking cool. Once we’re in Raven’s old neighborhood, we park curbside for a while and wait for the sun to go down, watching Sofia via the camera feed.
Now that we’re shrouded in darkness, Aleksi works his tech magic and turns off the alarms from the outside, so we don’t make any noise or alert Sofia that we’re here. He waits for us in the SUV as we slip inside.
Raven and I find Sofia in the kitchen stuffing her face, clearly having gained a good amount of weight in such a short period of time. And when I say stuffing her face, I mean Sofia’s practically deep throating an entire slice of cake while crying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone eat cake with such…vigor. The chocolate frosting iseverywhere. I cover my mouth with my hand as Raven stifles her giggle. I grab her and we slink back into the darkness, back into the shadows to hide until the time is right, which actually doesn’t take too long.
Sofia takes the entire chocolate cake, cradling it and goes upstairs, sobbing.
God, it’s fucking sad. But it makes me happy.
About an hour later, the wails of personal woe have quieted down and nothing but the sounds of a Spanish soap opera come from the room. Raven’s asked me not to interfere, just be there as back-up in case Sofia tries to get away. My baby put on her all-black contact lenses and she’s been a little paler than usual lately which just adds to her looking like my sexy vampire. I’m trying really hardnotto get hard watching her move about her old bedroom. She puts her hair up in a tight bunon the back of her head, but that sexy silver stripe comes forward and curls back, so at least it’s out of her face.
It’s pretty empty here. Once Raven acquired the deed she had Galvina put on a huge estate sale. Raven split the money between the gardeners, Galvina, the maids and the house manager as an extra farewell tip. The last time she spoke to Galvina, she retired back to Puerto Rico with her family. So yeah, needless to say without any of the staff here, the mansion is creepy, dusty, and messy from where Sofia hasn’t cleaned up after herself. The only things that are still here are the beds and a few pieces of furniture that didn’t sell.
