Verona Blood Read online

  “With Joshua Grayson’s sperm.” I bend over, picking up the joint and handing it back to him.

  Nathan's hands clench at his sides. "I'm going to fucking kill them," he rages.

  "Let's kill them later," I say quickly, not wanting Nathan to get too caught up in his revenge fantasy. "I have to go and break up with Will.”

  Nathan scrubs his palm across his chin, clearly agitated by my news.

  “I think I smoked too much,” he says, looking between the joint and me. “You’re saying some really fucked up shit.”

  I sigh loudly, taking the joint from him and placing it between my lips again with an air of finality. He might be too stoned, but I’m not stoned enough. Time to balance things out.

  “Nobody wears that much eye makeup to a funeral,” Nathan says, watching me layer black crayon under my eyes like I’m about to play Cleopatra in a high school play. “Not even a hooker.”

  I open my mouth to correct him, but then I stop. He’s right. I might be incredibly high-class, but at the end of the day, my pimp Daddy did just sell me to Joshua Grayson.

  “This hooker does,” I mutter, throwing the eyeliner pencil down onto the bathroom counter and handing him back the joint. “Don’t come to my birthday party high,” I warn Nathan, pointing a finger at his face to really drive it home.

  “I gotta go.” I go to kiss him on the cheek, and he stops me.

  “Were you serious? Did they really do that to you?”

  I nod. “Apparently. On the bright side, I still have a fully functional appendix.”

  Why am I not upset? Why aren’t I throwing myself on my bed, kicking and screaming and hugging the sheets to me and weeping until my eyes feel like they’re going to bleed?

  “Avery,” Nathan says slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I reply, squeezing his hand for a moment. “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I would have done something if I’d known,” he says.

  I nod, smiling sadly. “I know you would.”

  Nathan frowns. "Are you going to live with him, then?"

  I shrug. "No. Yes. I don't know. What am I going to do without you?"

  My eyes linger on the door at the other end of the closet. I don't sleep well, have never slept well, so whenever Nathan is around he's usually rudely awoken by me hopping into whichever bed he's crashed out in. He stays on his side and I on mine, but hearing his steady, even breaths as he sleeps stops the worst of my nightmares from seeping in.

  And now I'll be sleeping with a strange man I've never even been alone with.

  Nathan breaks the silence. "I'll be around, Aves, just like always. It's us against the world, remember?"

  I nod, suddenly feeling very small, my shoulders curving forward and down, heavy with my defeat. I knew I'd have to give up Will. I didn't realize I'd be giving up the only person who's kept me sane these past years since Adeline died. "You're my best friend in the world," I say in a small voice. "You're all I have." I sound like a little girl when I say it. Nathan smiles, but there's emotion behind the gesture, a heaviness that feels like grief. He doesn't reply. He just keeps looking sad. If sadness were fire, I think forlornly, our grief would burn this house down, just like the one next door, the one that used to belong to a family just like ours.

  A sense of impending doom threads around my lungs and pulls tight as my driver takes us closer and closer to the dead center of town; the old farmland outside of the city that used to contain vegetables underneath it’s topsoil, not decomposing bodies.

  Holy Cross Cemetery is probably the largest and the most grand of the seven cemeteries that are dotted through Colma, the place that houses one and a half million dead people who used to live and work and love in San Francisco City at one time or another. It's also where my mother and my sister are interred, their bodies secure in the Capulet family mausoleum. I visit them every week. My father hates me coming here, and so I probably come here even more just to spite him.

  My driver drops me off at the front of the imposing chapel that sits on Holy Cross Cemetery Grounds. When I enter through the large wooden doors, the sounds of a children's choir flood out. They must be practicing, I think. It’s a school day — where did these kids come from? There isn’t a school nearby. The dead don’t need to learn how to read. I stand there for a moment, letting their high-pitched little voices wash over me. The sound is quite beautiful, and at the same time, completely haunting.

  It is eerie walking up the long corridor between the church pews as these small children fill the huge room with their voices. They sound like angels. And I all I can think about is death. The death of freedom. The death of hope.

  When I get to the confession box, it is empty. A welcome reality. I don't want to wait around for this, and I definitely don't want to confess later, not after what I'm about to do.

  Better to get my sins out before I commit more.

  I close the little door behind me and open the screen that separates me and the priest. He makes a noise motioning that he is there ready to listen. I take a deep breath, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been one week since my last confession. Since then I have committed mortal sin.”

  “Go on.”

  "Well," I say. “There are a few."

  "God absolves all of his children who repent,” the priest says. "Tell me, what would you like to share today?"

  “I planned to commit adultery.”

  The priest clears his throat. “Did you go through with your plan?”

  “No,” I reply. “I’m not married yet. I’m not even engaged.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m thinking about killing my unborn children. Isn’t that a mortal sin?”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  My hand goes to my belly again, before I even notice. “No.” Not yet.

  “Then there is no mortal sin.”

  "I lied. I lied a lot."

  "Yes, child. God will forgive you all your sins. Is there anything else?"

  I lean back, letting my head rest against the back of the confessional booth. "I thought about murdering somebody this afternoon.” Several people, if we’re to be honest. Starting with Joshua.

  "Did you actually murder somebody?” the priest asks.

  "No, of course not. That would be terrible."

  "Is there anything else you would like to confess?"

  "I had pre-marital sex in my family’s mausoleum last week after confession. I liked it a lot."

  A stunned pause. “Anything else?"

  "No. I think that about covers it for now."

  "Fine," he says, his voice dripping with disapproval. “I absolve you of your sin. Do ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers, and next time, Avery, get a room. The Lord knows you have enough."

  I grin as I exit the confessional booth. Maybe I should get a room, but I won’t. It’s better this way, hiding amongst the dead.

  The children have stopped singing. The church is suddenly quiet. The space is cavernous, and when I walk back outside, my high heels echo in the large space like machine gun fire. I make it outside, and then I take my time walking through the grounds of Holy Cross toward the graves. The oldest ones are first. Individual plots, some with headstones, some unmarked.

  I remember my father telling me about how hundreds of thousands of bodies were buried here in mass graves after the real estate in the city became too valuable to waste on graveyards, and San Francisco banned any new burials in the city limits. I think of how many dead people I'm walking over as I make my way to possibly the only other living person in this entire three-hundred-acre cemetery.

  The Capulet mausoleum, a giant marble monolith that houses the dead members of my family, is locked. It's always locked, but that's not a problem. I have a key.

  I unlock the heavy, gold-plated doors, pushing them open with an eerie creak. I like to think it's not the smell of death that greets me, but who am I kidding, what else could it be? A damp, musty smell invades my
nostrils mixed with something sharper, something like formaldehyde.

  I close the doors behind me. It's really fucking dark in here, as dark as I imagine hell would be if the devil extinguished all the flames.

  I use my iPhone torch to illuminate the room. It's nothing elaborate really, not when you're used to living in mansions like mine. But I suppose for a dead person, it is quite grand. It's one long rectangular room with spaces built in on three walls to house the dead.

  We inter our dead here. We don't cremate them.

  We're Catholic, and we're filthy fucking rich. We can easily afford the real estate for an entire coffin. Or twenty. I've lost count of how many people are buried here.

  But I suppose they're not really buried.

  They're sealed into the walls.

  "Hey." Normally a voice in a space reserved for the dead would spook somebody, but I've been expecting this one. A lighter sparks to life, lighting a candle.

  "Hey, yourself," I say, kicking off my shoes, feeling the cold of the old marble tiles on the floor as I make my way toward the voice.

  "I thought you were never going to get here," he says.

  "Well, I'm glad you waited for me. I had a lot of things to confess."

  Another candle is lit, and this time, I reach my hand out for it. We've done this a thousand times before. We have our whole ritual down pat now. But today … today will be different. Today will be final.

  Something cold settles in my chest as I think of the conversation that I had with my father and my uncle about how differently I thought tonight was going to turn out, but how I'm not surprised at all by the turn of events.

  "Happy birthday, baby,” Will says. His face is illuminated by the candle he holds, his perpetually messy dirty blond hair hanging in his eyes..

  “Did you just wake up?” I ask, running my fingers through his hair. He jerks his head back, using his free hand to mess it up again. “It takes hours of my time to get this happening,” he smirks. “But I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here for hairstyling tips.”

  All of a sudden, my boyfriend — the one I’m not allowed to marry — pulls me toward him, wraps me in a giant bear hug, almost lighting my hair on fire.

  "Hey. Whoa," I say, getting my balance, holding my candle as far away as my outstretched arm can. "We're going to burn this place down if we're not careful," I say. Will ignores my concerns. He smiles as he bends down to kiss me, the knuckles of his free hand tipping my chin up, his tongue meeting mine. I let out a little sigh as the tension in my body melts a fraction, chased away by the tongue-sex we’re having. Will’s kiss is long and deep, and it takes my breath away. It distracts me for a few seconds from everything that's about to happen, and for that, I am grateful.

  "You're quiet," he says, pulling away, taking my candle from me, placing both candles on the altar at the end of the room. “Pussycat got your tongue?”

  "I've got a lot going on in this head," I say, looking at the floor.

  "Well," he says, wrapping a hand around my waist and pulling me towards him again, "let's see if we can get rid of some of those thoughts for a while. Huh?"

  I nod, closing my eyes as he presses his lips to my forehead, then my cheek, and finally, over my mouth. "Yeah,” I breathe between kisses. “I’d like that.”

  He palms my breasts through the black fabric of my dress, then tugs. The dress is tight, but the straps are wide enough that he manages to shove them down my shoulders, letting my tits spill out of the top. My nipples stiffen against the cold, and I groan when he sucks my right nipple into his mouth and bites ever-so-gently, repeating the action on the left one.

  He grins, his blue eyes full of desire. “Lift up your dress.”

  A thrill of lust pulses through my body and settles in my core, a steady throb that demands attention. I take the hem of my dress and drag it up my thighs, slowly, savoring the way Will watches me, as if he’s a lion and I’m the prey he’s going to sink his teeth into. His hands go to my panties, pulling them down my thighs, unhooking them from my feet, holding them up to his mouth.

  “Jesus fuck,” he mutters into my soaked panties, and somehow the words sound so much worse because of where we are. I watch, mesmerized, as he sucks on the fabric that was against my pussy just seconds ago. He shoves them in his pocket; they belong to him, now. My heart sinks as I realize this is probably the last time he’s going to steal my panties from me.

  Will unbuttons his pants with one hand, releasing his cock. It bounces out, hard and thick and pointed straight at me.

  “Come here,” he says, his voice strangled. He pumps his cock, a bead of precum appearing on the tip. I lick my lips, watching as he swipes the tip with his thumb and brings it up to my mouth.

  “Suck,” he murmurs.

  I take his thumb into my mouth, the salty taste of him a tease of what’s to come. I suck hard enough to make him groan. “Avery, you’re fucking killing me.”

  No, but I’m about to. I release his thumb from my mouth with a wet pop, sinking to my knees. The marble floors are hard and cold, but I barely feel them as I wrap my fingers around Will and guide him into my hungry mouth. I moan around him as he threads his fingers into my hair and pulls, bottoming out when he hits the back of my throat.

  I gag, my eyes watering as Will pulls out of my mouth, strings of saliva glistening like tiny webs between his cock and my lips. I take a shuddering breath before he pushes into my mouth again, the back of my head braced against the side of the altar as Will fucks my face. I wrap my hands around the back of Will’s knees to hold myself steady, my clit throbbing, begging for stimulation.

  My father’s words come back to haunt me as I shiver in the cold darkness: You can be married to one man and in love with another. If there’s one thing I know about Will, it’s that he’s too proud to be somebody’s dirty secret. The only reason he’s my dirty secret now is because I’ve promised him things in the dark that I’ll never be able to give him in the light of day.

  Things he deserves. A wife who loves him. Babies, made with love, in a bed in a house, not made in a fucking cemetery or during a secret tryst. Emotion threatens to consume me, to turn my lustful pants into full-on sobs, but I push my tears down. If he sees me losing my mind, the gig is up. Not yet. We need more time.

  “Fuck me,” I pant when he pulls out of my mouth.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Will deadpans, letting go of my hair and putting his hands under my shoulders, yanking me to my feet. His cock is a rod of molten steel pressed between us as he molds his hips to mine. He fuses my mouth with his, his body covering mine, and he tastes so fucking good, I can’t bear it.

  Am I ever going to kiss him again?

  He fumbles in his pocket, producing a foil packet that he rips open with his teeth. I watch as he rolls the condom on, pressing my thighs together to try and ease the throb between them a little, when I grab Will’s wrist.

  “No condom,” I blurt out. “Just us.”

  Will laughs. “Don’t joke.”

  His smile disappears as he sees I’m serious. I take my hand from his wrist and start to pull the condom from his cock, breathing nervously. I’ve never had sex without protection before. It was something drilled into my head when I was twelve years old, the day I got my first period. My father sat me down and explained the birds and the bees — in all it’s clinical, anatomically correct, sometimes horrifying detail for a child to understand.

  I remember sitting on my hands in the chair across his desk, my stomach cramping painfully from my first ever bleed, wishing my mother were alive to soften the blow of becoming a woman. I’ll never forget Daddy sliding a carton of condoms across the table as he told me he knew he couldn’t stop me from having sex — but if I ever came home pregnant, I would have to have surgery to get rid of the baby.

  He told me all about that, too.

  Girls in our family who get pregnant before they’re supposed to, or to boys they’re not going to marry, get abortions and are never allowed t
o leave the house again.

  Will knows this. He got the same talk from my father when we started dating. We hadn’t even held hands and my father was threatening to cut his dick off if he ever put it in me without a rubber firmly wrapped around it.

  There really are no boundaries the men in my family won’t cross to keep decorum.

  Will and I have done just about everything. He’s a filthy boy, and I’m a dirty girl. But we’ve never, ever, not even for a second, been skin on skin like that. This, despite the fact that I have an IUD fitted that prevents pregnancy. But nothing is one hundred percent. Nothing is guaranteed. And we’ve just always been overly cautious.

  Until now. I just want to feel him inside me, with nothing to separate us. The thought of him coming inside me makes my whole body flush with anticipation, with rebellious lust. And he’s angry. He’ll be rough. Good.

  Before I can get the condom all the way off, Will grabs my wrist, moving my hand away from him. I reach for him again and he smacks my hand away. The next thing I know, his fingers are sliding along my drenched pussy, and then he’s pushing them inside, three fingers, all the way to the knuckle. I gasp at the unexpected penetration, my hands clutching at the edge of the altar, a moan escaping my lips. A moment later he presses his thumb against my clit and starts to rub it, rough and insistent, as he fucks me with his hand.

  “Wider,” he says, kicking the inside of my foot with his, forcing my legs farther apart so he can go deeper.

  “Will—”

  “No talking,” he cuts me off, pumping his fingers harder. I can hear how wet I am, because my arousal makes an audible noise every time he moves his fingers inside me. “There are only two reasons you would let me fuck you bare,” he continues, his thumb so insistent against my clit that I’m almost coming on his hand. I’m struggling to catch up. Will’s an excellent lover, but he’s not usually like this.

  “Reason one,” he grinds out. “Your father finally decided to let you marry my dumb ass.”

  “Will, please,” I beg. I’m not even sure what I’m begging for — him to let me talk, or let me have my orgasm, or for him to fuck me?