Who Will Save Your Soul: And Other Dangerous Bedtime Stories Read online

  WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL

  Skye Warren

  Contents

  Title Page

  WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  BEDTIME STORY

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  MAFIA CINDERELLA

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  HEAVY EQUIPMENT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Epilogue

  Books by Skye Warren

  About the Author

  Copyright

  WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL

  Skye Warren

  Emily’s a pathological liar. When her life is at stake, will anyone believe her?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Before I tell you what happened, there’s something you should know.

  I’m a pathological liar.

  That means I lie all the time. I’m not even sure I know the difference between a truth and a lie. Not anymore. What if it’s a small lie to make someone feel better? Or what if it’s a huge lie to keep my family safe? What if I can’t even trust my own thoughts?

  There’s a boy outside, trimming the vines with clippers and a ladder.

  In this case it’s the word boy that’s the lie. He’s not young. Even from across the lawn I can tell he’s older than me, with broad shoulders and muscles that pile on top of each other.

  The word man isn’t right either. He’s nothing like the portly men wearing suits who visit my father for glasses of port and backroom deals. He stands on the second step from the top, long limbs and hard muscles straining to reach the stray leaves, the one that part from the smooth surface of plant, because imperfections aren’t allowed around here.

  He’s something else, an alien walking on my own little patch of earth. I’m not really supposed to talk to the gardeners. Not even supposed to notice them, but how could I not see him?

  When you lie enough it’s impossible to keep the truth straight. Secrets work their way around me, vines as lush like the kind that climbs the brick wall out back.

  Breaking me down inside but holding me together, too.

  Which is why I’m watching him from my bedroom, the filmy white bed-curtains hiding me from the door in case anyone comes in. Talking leads to accidental confessions. It leads to lies, which is why I should keep my mouth shut. I should be studying or doing laps in the pool. Mama wouldn’t even be shocked to find me doing drugs, or as she calls them, the things kids have to stay skinny these days.

  I can do a lot of things from within these four walls, but I can’t spy on the new gardener. Can’t strain to see the way his forearm shifts and shadows as he works.

  And I definitely can’t watch his ass in those jeans.

  He snips the last stray leaf from the back wall and climbs down the ladder. I think he’s going to move the ladder to the side wall, but he leaves it there. When he heads back toward the house, the sun lights up the sweat on his forehead, the wide dark stain of it on his shirt. Coming toward me, toward me…

  Before I can think I’m tumbling into the hallway, the same one where I did cartwheels in a different life. Down the stairs that I’ve climbed a thousand times. Through the nondescript white door that leads to the back kitchen.

  And stop, because it’s empty. There’s no gardener getting a drink of water. Only large stainless steel appliances gleaming spotless even though they’re used every day.

  Disappointment rushes to fill the empty space in my chest, a dark well that’s best not examined. I should be relieved that I didn’t see him. Didn’t feel the slickness of his skin.

  Didn’t tell him any lies.

  The knot in my throat makes it hard to swallow, too much denial and self-loathing to possibly fit in such a small space. I should wash it down with something refreshing, like maybe sparkling water from the Swiss Alps mixed with SkinnyFuse powder, berry banana flavor.

  Except when I enter the main kitchens, I’m not alone.

  There’s someone already there. The boy. The man.

  The something else.

  He stands at the larger island, beside imported granite and hand-carved cabinets. There’s a glass in front of him. Crystal. And inside, fresh lemonade. Hand squeezed by Maria in the back kitchens and then carried in a Royal Copenhagen pitcher to the front. What really puts it over the top are the round ice cubes in his glass, because rectangles are so gauche. Everything smoothed and perfect in this room, except for the gardener standing in the middle.

  God, he has no idea there’s a back kitchen for the help. And I find I can’t possibly tell him, my lips unable to form those words, any words, as he turns to face me.

  Dark eyes widen. “Oh, hey.”

  Hey. Like he belongs here. It makes my breath catch. “Hi.”

  His hair is dark, spilling haphazard and sun-glossed over his forehead. He has the kind of skin that starts tan and turns a deep golden brown after hours in the sun. There’s a line, across his forearm, where you can see the divide where the gloves go. But even with that glove line his hands are marked by a thousand scratches and cuts, a landscape of physical labor. A million reasons he doesn’t belong here.

  He smiles a little, revealing startling white teeth. “What’s your name?”

  “Emily. I live here,” I say, even though that must be obvious.

  He’s making me stupid, this boy. He’s making me yearn.

  I think what I love the most about him is the dirt. There’s dirt on the white marble tiles in faint footprints leading inside. There’s dirt in a fine layer over his skin and his dark T-shirt. It grows thick around his boots, like scar tissue in a wound reformed each day.

  “This lemonade is delicious. Did you make it?”

  I can’t help the laugh that escapes me. “No.”

  We don’t make anything in this house. Nothing sweet, anyway.

  We make bad decisions in the Coulter household. Like when I take a step closer to him, close enough to see the stubble across his chin, a swipe that he missed when he shaved. Another in a long list of imperfections. Another thing to make my skin flush and turn hot.

  He tilts his head sideways, as if he’s studying me back. My Tanglewood Prep T-shirt from high school and my yoga pants. My nails done in Emerald Cove this week, a deep green that matches the vines outside.

  “You’re the one watching me from the second floor.”

  Oh God. He saw me watching him?

  He says it casually, as if girls stalk him every day. Maybe they do.

  My pulse beats hard and loud against my ribs and farther out, reaching to my fingertips, to my face, its rhythm incriminating, relentless.

  Ba bum. Ba bum. Ba bum.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t mind.” Those dark eyes hold a thousand secrets. So many secrets they might match my own. “You could keep me company outside.”
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  Is he flirting with me? “I don’t think so.”

  A slow smile. “Or I could keep you company inside.”

  My heartbeat feels almost unbearable, a drum over the taut surface of my skin, vibrating all across my body. This is moving way too fast. And why do I even want it to move with him at any speed? I don’t, but this the most alive I’ve felt in forever.

  Words scatter through my brain, petals in the wind, each one with a different response—how dare you? And no, thank you. And yes, why don’t you come upstairs. I can’t grasp any one of them long enough to answer.

  The smile drops, a mask sliding away, revealing only brutal disdain. “Or maybe you only wanted to fuck around with the help. To make me hard and then skip back upstairs where you’re safe. Is that it, rich girl?”

  Acid burns my throat, sharp and sudden. He isn’t flirting with me. There’s something other than lust burning in those coal-black eyes—disgust. Maybe even hatred. He thinks I’m a silly little rich girl, and what’s worse is that he’s probably right.

  Humiliation sharpens my words. It makes me haughty. “You aren’t even supposed to be here. This is the main kitchen. Laborers use the one in back.”

  My stomach clenches into a tight knot, cemented by the terrible awareness that I sound like my mother. He doesn’t flinch at my tone; I’m the one who takes a step back.

  “Then fire me.”

  Moving slow enough it’s clear he won’t be rushed—not by me, anyway—he swallows the last inch of frosty lemonade in the glass. I know from experience that the bottom will be stronger than the rest, the liquid heavy with sugar, the lemon still tart in summery defiance.

  My gaze can’t move away from his throat, the play of muscle and tendon, the slick of sweat. And cuts. There are little cuts all over him, where the thick gloves can’t possibly cover him, bright red stripes small enough the pain must blur together.

  He sets down the glass in the sink, more considerate than I would have expected, especially considering my behavior. Except when his eyes meet mine, it feels more like he’s marking his territory than being polite. As if he’s showing exactly who’s comfortable here. Not me. Him.

  Then he stalks back outside, leaving faint smudges of dirt in his wake. Long strides I couldn’t possibly match as I run to the patio doors. I slam them shut as if that can keep him out.

  Out of the kitchen, out of my head. Out of the secrets this family holds close.

  It shouldn’t be smug, the way he goes back to such strenuous work. But I can’t deny the casual grace of him as he walks across the lawn. Or the strength of his body as he works for three more hours under the weight of the sun.

  I can’t deny the countless cuts that mar his skin. Does the salt of his sweat sting them?

  The vines are beautiful, making the bricks look soft, a padded perimeter for the modern day castle. I’ve never been close enough to see if they have thorns.

  Never gone close enough to the edge to be cut.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I wake up to blinding sunlight and an incessant ringing in my head. A dream presses against the edges of my mind, fighting to pull me back. It takes me a minute to register the phone on my nightstand. Forcing one eye open I read my mother’s full name on the greenish Caller ID screen. The pink plastic of the receiver feels cool in my palm.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Are you still asleep?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock.”

  My alarm clock is shaped like a panda bear, the black spot over his eye faded from years of hitting the snooze button. Neon blue numbers tell me it’s only ten fifteen. My mother’s flair for the dramatic extends to telling time.

  “Is there a reason you’re calling or do you just want to know if I need anything?”

  My mother has never asked if I need anything, not ever. I can imagine me as a crying baby in a designer crib, my mother peering in with that same frozen look on her face, telling me that wet diapers make my butt look big.

  “If you can manage to pull yourself out of bed, your father needs your help.”

  “Really.” This should be interesting.

  “He has a work associate coming this afternoon, but he’s probably going to be running late after golf.”

  “By work associate you mean…”

  “Sergio De Fiore.”

  “The mobster?”

  A snort. “You’re so dramatic, Emily. He’s a completely respectable businessman.”

  Right, just like Daddy’s a respectable businessman. “Why can’t you meet him?”

  “Because I cannot stand that man. There are terrible rumors about him. And he always looks at me like I smell bad, when he’s the one drenched in cologne. It’s horrible.”

  “You do realize it’s bad to leave your teenage daughter to meet with a dangerous criminal, right?”

  “He wouldn’t possibly do anything to you, not when he’s working with your Daddy on a deal.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “Besides he’s bringing his wife. She’s so much younger than him. It’s disgraceful. You’ll probably have much more in common with her, anyway. You can braid each other’s hair and play with Barbies while you wait.”

  “I’m nineteen, Mom. Not nine.”

  Nine when I was carted to the psychologists office and left there, like some kind of reverse hostage to remain in that leather chair until I had a diagnosis. It was a problem, though. None of the usual suspects fit. Not narcissistic personality disorder or even sociopathy. My lying was so habitual, so pointless, that only the pathological lying—both a syndrome and a symptom—could fit.

  I’ve always thought it perfect that pathological lying is controversial in the psychobabble community. As if nothing about us can be fully trusted, even the diagnosis they give us.

  “Show him to the front room, understand? Offer him something to drink. Wear something nice. And for God’s sake, Emily, don’t tell him any lies.”

  The line clicks in my ear, and I drop the phone onto the sheets.

  I’d been dreaming when the phone rang. Most of the dream slipped away through the sieve of my mother’s grim aggravation, but a little bit lingers. I have the most uncomfortable sense that it was about the gardener.

  I’ve been a little obsessed with him for the past three days. With the dirt under his nails and the triangle of scruff he missed while shaving. He was just so real. So alive standing in that kitchen. He made me feel more than the boys in school ever did.

  Part of me wants to push my fingers into the waistband of my yoga pants, to think about those dirt-stained fingers and that uneven scruff a little longer, to make myself shudder and clench and moan.

  But I need to get up. I need to shower and change and wear something nice.

  And possibly get out my Barbie dolls.

  Our house was built in the 1920s, which means it has Gatsby-level extravagance. Cherub sculptures shoot water from the stone façade into an actual moat between the house structure and the wide paved drive. Some of our neighbors tore down the old rotten structures, building modern mausoleums in their places. Others spent large fortunes restoring each banister and balustrade.

  My parents took the Frankenstein approach. They ripped out the interior and left only the opulent shell. So my bedroom has plush shag carpeting with leaves and stems etched into the green wool. The bathrooms are finished with white marble and shiny gold, two separate showerheads in the large standing space.

  Water beats down on me from both sides, wiping away the last vestiges of my dream and my mother’s wakeup call, both the good and the bad swirling down the drain.

  I wrap the white bath towel around my body, pushing the corner into the top edge so it will stay put. It will have to do until my hair dries enough to tease it. My mom may not care about the meeting enough to come herself, but she’ll throw a fit if she finds out I didn’t look my best.

  Come to think of it, this must be some kind of punishment for Daddy. Makin
g him host with me as the shitty substitute. It will be an insult to this Sergio De Fiore. Goose bumps rise over my bare arms.

  He’s not the kind of man you want to insult.

  The panda clock says I have forty-five minutes, but what if he’s early?

  Or what if my mom decided to punish me, by telling me the wrong time? That’s exactly the kind of thing she would do, and if I called her on it, she’d tell me to stop lying.

  I head downstairs to check the front room, because I’d rather lose a few minutes of time for makeup than be surprised by one of Daddy’s “secret” grown-up magazines on the coffee table with Sergio De Fiore beside me.

  My feet slap the wooden floors as I skip downstairs. The sound always echoes more when I’m alone. Or maybe I’m louder because I know can be, without either one of my parents yelling at me to be quiet.

  I stand stock-still at the arched entrance to the front room. There’s a man inside, his broad back facing me. Air whooshes out of my lungs, in a hurry even though I’m frozen in place. For only a second terror speeds through my veins, as if maybe he’s Di Fiore let inside by the butler we don’t have, wearing a smudged white T-shirt instead of a suit.

  Except it’s not the mobster.

  No, worse than that. It’s the gardener.

  * * *

  He smiles when he sees me, as unconcerned as if we were friends saying hello in class. “Good morning, princess. You’re up early this morning.”

  I don’t even know where to stay with him. That smug handsome smile. The word princess. Or the fact that he’s making fun of my sleeping habits. How does he even know my sleeping habits?

  “What are you doing here?” I sputter.

  He lifts a crystal tumbler, one finger of some no-doubt expense liquor at the bottom. “Having a drink. You said the kitchen was off limits, but I was thirsty. Hope this is okay.”

  His twinkling dark eyes tell me he knows it’s not okay.

  Challenge lights the air between us, electric and hot. Part of me wants to pick up the phone on the side table and call mother. The second she knows he’s stomped all over her oriental rugs with his muddy work boots, he’s fired.