Chapter 35: Breaking Taboos
The silence Charlotte left in the kitchen congealed around Veronica. She ate automatically, the spicy ackee tasting of nothing, her ears ringing with the click of retreating heels. Stephanie’s laugh, bright and oblivious as Jacqueline recounted a story about Adrien, seemed to come from very far away.
Veronica set her fork down with a quiet, definitive click. “Finish up. I’ll be back.”
She didn’t wait for a response. She pushed back from the table and strode out of the kitchen, her socked feet silent on the polished floors. The grand staircase rose before her, and she took the steps two at a time, a focused heat building behind her breastbone. The hallways of the big, old house felt suddenly too narrow, the colorful art on the walls too loud.
The door to the main guest suite was closed. Veronica didn’t knock. She turned the handle and stepped inside, closing the door behind her with a soft, final sound.
The room was oppressively elegant. Charlotte stood before the large, ornate mirror, not looking at her reflection, but staring out the window at the bare winter trees. She didn’t turn.
“You have a habit of entering without knocking,” Charlotte said, her voice flat.
The calm observation was the spark to the tinder. Veronica’s composure, already frayed, snapped. The cultured, careful English she usually maintained for outsiders evaporated, replaced by the raw, rhythmic patois of her home.
“Mi hab haadly a habit, woman. Wha’ a gwaan wid you?” The words tumbled out, low and heated. “Yuh stand up deh a door way like some duppy a watch people. Den yuh come dungstairs an’ sit pon yuh high horse an’ mek slick talk ‘bout ‘passion’? Yuh tink mi a fool?”
Charlotte finally turned. Her face was a mask, but a tiny muscle jump in her jaw betrayed her. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Yes, yuh do! Yuh understand perfectly. Yuh weird. Yuh creepy. One minute yuh look like yuh wan’ fi throw up, de next yuh look like yuh wan’… like yuh wan’…” Veronica stepped further into the room, the lush Persian rug muffling her steps. “Wha’ yuh want, Charlotte? Seriously. Because mi si di way yuh did a watch. Is not disgust. Is hunger. A nasty, hungry, secret-keeping kind a look.”
Charlotte’s composure cracked. A flush, high and ugly, spread up her neck. “How dare you,” she hissed, the French accent sharpening her words to blades. “You speak of me? You, who fucks her own sister?”
The air froze.
Veronica stared. Then a low, incredulous laugh bubbled up from her chest. It wasn’t a happy sound. It was harsh, surprised, and utterly devoid of humor. “Wow. Is that what you think you saw? Or is that what you wish you saw? Something so wrong it make what you feeling look ordinary?”
“Do not play games with me,” Charlotte spat, taking a step forward. Her fists were clenched at her sides. “I saw you. In her bedroom. On the floor. Her legs were—”
“Shut up.” Veronica’s voice cut through hers, not louder, but colder. “You saw Jacqueline and her boyfriend, Adrien. In his room. After they got engaged. They were drunk. I walked in on them. That’s what you saw, you desperate, twisted…” She ran a hand over her face, the laugh coming again, drier now. “My God. All this time. You been sitting on that, thinking you had some power? Thinking that made you better than me? That’s pathetic.”
Charlotte’s face went from flushed to bone-white. The information landed, a direct hit. Her certainty, her moral high ground, crumbled under the weight of a simple, embarrassing misunderstanding. She looked gutted. Exposed.
Veronica pressed the advantage, striding closer until she was looking down at the shorter woman. “So, let’s try again. Since mi clearly ‘ave you up innuh corner. Wha’ yuh want? Stephanie? Is that it? Yuh see har looking at mi like mi put di sun inna di sky, an’ yuh stomach start roll up wid a want yuh cyaan even name?”
Charlotte’s eyes were wide, her breath coming in short, sharp gusts. She tried to rebuild the mask, but it was shattered. “I don’t… It’s not like that. She’s my sister.”
“But yuh wan’ har.” It wasn’t a question. “Mi see it. Clear than dis mirror. Yuh wan’ fi know wha’ it feel like. Wah it sound like. Yuh wan’ fi know if she would look at yuh wid dem big blue eyes an’ call yuh name while yuh mek har scream.”
“Stop it.” The command was a whisper, devoid of all authority.
“Why? A truth a kill yuh?” Veronica leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Here’s a truth fi yuh. If yuh did ever grow di spine fi tell har… if yuh did ever ask… mi would let it happen. Once.”
Charlotte’s sharp intake of breath was the only sound in the opulent room.
“Jus’ once,” Veronica repeated, her green eyes boring into Charlotte’s. “Fi di experience. Fi get it out a yuh system. Mi would set it up nice. Light some candles inna dis pretty room. Mi would even lend yuh a strap—mi have a smaller one dat might suit yuh frigid temperament. Den mi would sit in dat very chair,” she nodded toward a velvet wingback, “and watch. Mi would watch yuh try fi handle har. And when yuh fail—because yuh would fail—mi would take har back. And yuh would understand exactly what yuh cyan ever have.”
The vision was grotesque. Intimate. A tempting, horrifying gift. Charlotte’s mind recoiled even as something primal and starved within her spasmed at the imagery. The control, the humiliation, the sheer, debauched possibility of it. She saw it. The candles. The silk sheets. Veronica’s impassive gaze from the corner. Stephanie’s trusting, eager face turned toward her, for once.
Her voice, when it came, was stripped raw. “I don’t want to fuck my sister, Veronica.”
It was the first time she’d said her name. It hung between them.
“No,” Veronica agreed softly, her patois fading back into a heavily accented, quiet English. “You don’t. You want to be me. For a night. You want to be the one who makes her forget her own name. You want her to look at you with that fire, that surrender. But you can’t. Because you are a locked box, Charlotte. And she is sunlight. You would only chill her.”
The finality of the statement was worse than any insult. It was a diagnosis. A death sentence. Charlotte took an involuntary step back, her heel catching on the rug. The fight drained out of her, leaving a hollow, shaking shell. She looked toward the window, at the gray, impersonal sky.
Veronica watched her for a long moment. The anger had bled away, leaving something closer to pity, and the fierce, protective satisfaction of a boundary drawn in steel. She had won. Utterly.
She turned and walked to the door. Her hand was on the crystal knob when Charlotte spoke, her back still turned.
“She deserves more than a grunt in the dark and a strap-on before breakfast.”
Veronica didn’t turn around. “She gets exactly what she asks for. And right now, she’s asking for me. Mind your contracts, Charlotte. They’re safer.”
She opened the door and stepped out, closing it gently on the image of Paris’s sharpest accountant standing alone in a room of velvet and gold, her desire laid bare, ugly, and hopeless at her feet. The hallway air felt cooler, cleaner. Veronica took a deep breath, the phantom scent of Charlotte’s expensive, bitter perfume replaced by the familiar, woody smell of her own home.
Downstairs, the sound of Stephanie’s laughter floated up, tangled with her sister Jacqueline’s. It was a warm, human sound. Veronica headed toward it, her step lighter, a silent claim reaffirmed in the quiet of the upper hall. The war wasn’t over, she knew. But the first, crucial battle was. And the enemy was left utterly routed, armed with nothing but the shame of her own wanting.