beige walls filled with priceless paintings. All the little trimmings and details that made this hallway elegant and homey, they all just seem to disappear.
As if that was the prelude, the beige start changing as well, until they’re now white. Stark white.
No.
Ahead of me, Nancy’s bedroom door is no longer the beautiful furnished brown it was the last time I walked toward it. It’s now white.
Stark white.
And I can’t stop myself from walking toward it or reaching for the doorknob or twisting it and opening the door.
When I do though, I’m assaulted by a flood of blood. It all comes rushing to me but in that sea of blood, I see mangled bodies, with limbs torn apart floating atop the thickness that rushes at me.
Among them are Nancy’s, Aiden’s, and my boys. Cole, Liam and Julian.
I scream…
“Mia, wake up!”
I gasp awake and immediately jump out of bed, with my heart pounding away so viciously I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack.
Frantic, I look around but I’m back in Rye’s house and there isn’t any blood here. I look to the bed… wait, I just got out of bed.
It looks like I slept in my bed all night and didn’t wake up on the bathroom floor with a razor in my hand, my wrists bleeding. Intense relief has me heaving as tears threaten to spill over. I didn’t slit my wrists this time. Oh God.
Does this development have anything to do with the phone call from last night? Or did Julian make a difference with the chaos in my head?
Before I can think more of it, I hear a quick rap coming from my door just before it opens and Rye peeks in her head in, a big smile on her face. God, she’s too sunny and smiley for my liking. She’s the one who woke me up, I realize.
“Mia, God, I swear you sleep like the dead,” she says with a whine. “Wake up! It’s D-Day.”
Oh fuck.
“I don’t think I’m going.”
“The hell you aren’t,” Rye says as she pushes the door open fully. “You’ve been practicing your heart out for years, but knowing you, I’d say you’ve been waiting for this day since you were a toddler.”
Yeah, back when I believed wholeheartedly that I had to follow in my mother’s footsteps. But now, everything is so damn uncertain that I don’t think I can do this.
“It doesn’t matter,” I murmur as I go walk over to the window to look out at the beautiful city of Paris.
It’s a good day to be let down, I can feel it in my soul.
“I don’t think I have what it takes.”
“Bullshit,” Rye sighs. “The Mia I know would eat those other bitches for breakfast and spit them right out. You’re a boss bitch and can dance circles around them, own it.”
If my life was still as it was before the Fitzgerald family wrecked it up, I would have been smiling with pride at that and done just that. Go over to the Paris Opera Ballet company and demand that they see me dance like my mother. But, she’s not my mother and she’s gone.
“Things are different now, Rye,” I whisper. “I cry all day. I can hardly function and I… I just can’t do it.”
“Well, that’s disappointing,” a deep voice says, making me freeze the moment I hear it. No way.
I spin around and there he stands, his signature cocky smile on his face.
“Come on now, Cupcake, I was expecting more life in you,” Liam says, cocking his eyebrow as he looks at me. “Right now, you look like a fucking scarecrow with your eyes wide like that.”
It’s really him. I look to Rye who’s smiling from ear to ear, but I can see the lust in her eyes as she looks at Liam.
“How…” I stutter still unable to believe that he’s here, dressed like he’s ready to go clubbing or on a murder spree, you never know with Liam.
“How am I here?” he questions. “Yeah well, I know you better than you know yourself, Cupcake. I figured if you ever embarrassed yourself, or made a mess you couldn’t fix, you’d run away to join some biker gang or maybe even a cult where you’d have the perfect opportunity to sacrifice my family to.”
“She’d so totally do that,” Rye says with a giggle and I shoot her a look.
“I know right,” Liam says with a wink in her direction. Flirtatious much? Liam starts to slowly walk over to me, the