Baron goes on when I don’t answer. “We fucked with Lindsey a little, but she was too easy, and then Preston threatened Gloria, so we moved on to Colt’s family. We had some fun with them.”
I think of the missing finger on Colt’s hand, the burn scars. His dad’s missing finger, and his cane. Mabel not just blowing out of town but changing her name so they can’t track her down. I swallow hard, wanting to hear the details I’ve been in the dark about for so long, but fuck. The blasé tone in Baron’s voice makes my skin crawl.
“And then there’s Jeremiah and Jedediah. Twins, actually. Jed had some kind of accident and died of blood loss. He had kids, but they’d already grown and moved away. Jeremiah has two kids. His son would have been a sophomore this year, but he disappeared mysteriously right before he would have started at Willow Heights. But he didn’t change his name, and see, I’m pretty good at finding people. We’ll be watching, and if he ever comes back, we’ll be ready. And then their daughter Magnolia will be a freshman next year. That’ll be fun.”
“You don’t even know these people, and you’re literally torturing them until they die?”
“They tortured Royal,” he says, as if that explains everything.
“Some little twelve-year-old girl tortured Royal? Or, wait, she’d have been ten at the time?”
“She’s a Darling,” he says. “They would have done the same to us. They tried. The difference is, wherever they tried, we succeeded.”
“All because one of them dared to love your sister?”
“They killed our sister,” he says, his voice hard. “There are two more Darling men, too. They were disowned by the grandfather and changed their names, but we found them. One of them had moved away, but one of them actually lived in the same trailer park where I believe you hail from. John Jr. I hear he was close with your mom a while back, maybe when you were really little?”
I don’t say anything to that. Lots of men have been close with my mom, and it’s not like I want to explain to Baron Dolce that my mom is a trailer park slut.
“Never heard of him,” I say after a minute, because it feels like Baron’s expecting something.
“Oh, well, I guess he OD’d, so he’s out of the picture, anyway.”
“You literally studied Darling family history and found anyone with that name and just destroyed their lives?”
“Not just their name,” he says. “Their blood. Blood makes family, not a name. A name is something you can hide behind or run from, but you can’t hide your DNA. Their blood is poison to this town. And poison has to be eliminated.”
“That’s… Harsh.”
“They started it.”
I lie there not even sure what to say. I want to laugh at the ridiculous pettiness of his response. That’s all he has to say? They started it? That’s the excuse of a five-year-old on the playground. I’m pissed off for the Darlings and I barely know one of them. But shit. No wonder people say the Dolces are evil. They’re brutal as fuck, and Baron just sounds like he’s recounting a boring story about our grandparents when he talks. This isn’t something that happened to someone else, though. He and Duke and yes, Royal, did all this. Drove people to suicide. Had them imprisoned and committed to mental institutions.
I shiver at the thought of what they would do if they found out I was reporting to someone about them. They’d fucking kill me is what. So I better get Mr. D what he wants and cut all ties, the sooner the better.
“The Darlings started it by kidnapping Royal?” I ask, pulling the sucker from my mouth.
“That, and stealing Crystal, and even before that, they fucked with our dad when he was in school here. Dolces never forget.”
“Can I ask you something?” I say after thinking that over. “Why do you do anything your dad says? Royal’s eighteen, and you’re what? Seventeen? You don’t have to do that.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he says. “You come from a fucked up family.”
“And yours is so functional.”
“Family is everything to the Dolces,” he says. “That’s what Crystal forgot.”
“Damn,” I say. “That’s cold.”
“It’s a fact,” he says. “People always say that—cold hard truth, cold hard facts. But facts aren’t cold anymore than they’re hot. They’re just facts.”
And that’s the cold part, I think to myself. This guy isn’t just cold, his heart is made of ice. Royal can make himself that way, but there’s some switch he flips inside to get there. But Royal feels. He feels a whole fucking lot, probably more than he wants to. Enough that he goes into that dead-eye mode to protect himself.
Baron, though… Baron’s ice cold to the core.
I remember thinking that about Mr. D, and I wonder yet again if I got it wrong, if it’s not a gross old guy but a hot young guy.
“So, she forgot, and she died for it,” I say. “Is that what your dad says to get you to obey him? He threatens to kill you?”