Dante watches her glide around. He watches the careful way she moves her feet, and the sensual way she touches everything. She has her back to him intentionally, keen to have him observe her, and not the other way round. Like this, she has the illusion of being in control. Dante knows his stepsister well, but more than that, he knows about control and how best to achieve it.
Sash turns to face him. The measured spin of a seasoned professional. Several meters split them, but even from here Sash can feel herself being pulled back towards him. Never underestimate how dangerous the game is you’re playing. The words an internal memo, Sash takes a moment to tell herself.
The silence is palpable, almost alive. Like gunslingers locked in a wild west duel at high noon, they face each other down, each one looking for a sign to pick up their weapon and shoot. Three years in the wilderness and suddenly back in the same room. Nothing has changed.
“It’s been a while, Sash”, Dante says eventually, the tension between them too big not to break.
“Has it been long enough?” Sash asks enigmatically, unsure who the question is really meant for. Immediately embarrassed, she looks away.
“You tell me”, Dante begins. “You were the one that couldn’t -”
He can’t finish the sentence, partly because he knows he doesn’t need to. Sash shrugs her shoulders, the skin there exposed by the cut of her dress. Her bone structure light, poised, elegant.
“It could have been different”, she says, lost in the memory, almost too lightly for Dante to hear. “If you’d. It doesn’t matter anyway, that’s not why I came here.”
She brushes it off and looks at him again. “There isn’t any point going back over-.”
Now she’s the one who can’t finish her sentence. Lost in his beautiful stormy blue eyes, that familiar look that turns somersaults in her stomach, her heart can’t help but yearn.
“You look good”, Dante says, quick to take advantage. “I’ve missed you.”
“Don’t Dante”, she warns him, at the very edge of letting herself go. “I didn’t come for that. You know I didn’t.”
She turns away, making for the leather sofas in the corner of the room. Climbing into the single armchair, she kicks off her shoes and folds her bare feet up to the side of her.
“Do I?” Dante says, turning to watch her. He wants to reach for his stepsister again. He wants to go back to that earlier embrace, to that buried time, much further in the past, and pull her out of it. He will, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
“Please”, Sash says softly. “I came here to ask for your help.”
Dante takes the half a dozen or so paces across the room to join her, and as Sash watches her stepbrother advance, unable to take her eyes off him, she can’t help but find herself spellbound by the natural sexiness he effortlessly exudes, in an action so unquestionably simple. In the few seconds in takes him to get to his chair, he knows he’s already won her over.
As he leans back into the sofa, it gathers him like an old friend. He stretches his legs, smooths down the pleat of his bespoke suit trousers and steals a brief but necessary moment ,to admire his beautiful stepsister. He shifts his gaze across her face, lingering just long enough to remind himself of her huge, chocolate brown eyes, the cute button nose that she’s always hated, and the plump, perfectly proportioned lips that bring forgotten memories floating back to the surface of his mind.
He continues, across the petiteness of her frame, the awkward fragility of her collarbones, that stick out to make dimples across her upper torso in which he fought at one time to leave secret kisses, past an ample bosom she always complained was never enough, and onward, deep into the crevices of a dress tucked neatly between her legs, that follows the shape of the perfect, athletic body she hides below it.
“I was surprised when you called me”, he says finally. “I thought you didn’t ever want to see me again.”
Sash is about to contradict him, but she thinks better of it. Again she reminds herself that digging up the past and playing the blame game is not the reason she’s come here.
“I’m in trouble”, Sash says, leveling her eyes at his. “I wouldn’t have come at all if I wasn’t desperate. You know I wouldn’t. The last thing I want to do is open up the past.”
Dante regards her, aware he’ll need to select his words carefully.
“I’m done with that”, she continues. “Done, completely. As far as I’m concerned it’s over.”
If she’s looking for agreement, she doesn’t get it, principally because Dante knows she’s lying. He would be too if he’d been the one to say it.
“How can I help?” he offers, reaching forwards to pour them both a glass of water from the jug that sits permanently on the hand crafted cherry wood coffee table. Sat forwards like this, their knees are almost touching. Sash shifts in her seat, suddenly feeling vulnerable.
“I need money”, she says, gathering up her glass and pausing to drink. “My rent. I’ve got no food. Then there’s University. I’ve got bills, Dante. The fucking door won’t open properly.”
Dante sits back again. He sips his water and contemplates his stepsister, his mind turning over.
“Can you help me?” she says, pleadingly.
“How much do you need?” Dante asks her evenly.
“A lot”, Sash says. “I don’t know how much, but a lot. I’m looking for work, but no one wants to hire me. This city fucking sucks.”
Dante places his glass back on the coffee table, trying to match it as perfectly as possible to the semi-circular water mark that indicates where he lifted it from. Once satisfied, he turns it a quarter turn to the right and leans back into the sofa again.
“What kind of work?”, he asks, his hands coming together to rest under his chin.
“Anything”, Sash says, “It doesn’t matter, they won’t hire me anyway. I’m too young or too eager or too shy, or who knows? Just not what they’re looking for. There are a million excuses and I feel like I’ve been given every single one of them. I’m sick of looking. I’m going to get kicked out of my apartment, Dante. If I don’t find a way to pay my landlord he’s going to get the police to evict me. I haven’t got anywhere else to go. I kept turning it over and over in my mind and even this morning I wasn’t going to come. Is there anything that you can do? I know we haven’t seen each other for a long time, and I know-”
She pauses, the reality of what she is about to say almost too difficult for her to continue with it.
“We both know what happened, but that’s in the past now. I’m over it. I need you, Dante. I need your help.”
A long moment passes while Dante lets the reality of the situation sink in. Her phone call in the first place was a pleasant surprise, her desperation now unexpected.
She’s come back to him finally and she needs his help. Not only that, she needs him too.
“I may have something that I can offer you”, he says finally, his furtive mind already rich with possibilities. “Something that might suit us both perfectly.”
Chapter 3
It takes her a while to find it. A door hidden in shadow, at the bottom of a wide but shallow staircase, in an almost-too-narrow alleyway between two forgotten hotels. Outside, perched on a plastic chair chained to an iron railing, a well dressed guard with a lazy eye smokes the stub of what was once a large cigar, smoke climbing in thick pulses from his lips, disappearing against the brick work of the hotel opposite, or escaping plainly into the night.
Broken by his foot, a puddle attempts to reflect the neon lights from the small sign above, so most of the word ‘Wonder’ runs across it in bright, backwards green lettering, trapped and wobbling as though caught in a dream.
While she waits for the door to open, he eyes her greedily from the shadow cast by the peak of his hat, careful not to be spotted. Sash hugs herself against the cold, pulling her winter coat tight around her fragile frame, her lips curled into a thin, ironic smile.
Inside, deep shades of burgundy red
throb out across the fixtures and fittings. On stage, a young woman sings against a light piano backdrop, the hem of her skirt sweeping the floor as she sashays around it. A bright eyed girl with pigtails takes her coat, and Isabella, who will be responsible for managing her, takes her arm. Her smile is comforting, her touch familiar, her eyelids awash with glitter.
“So you’re Dante’s little sister”, she says affectionately, holding Sash out at arms length as though to check the girl herself more closely. “He always told us you were beautiful.”
The girl with the pigtails nods. “Beautiful”, she agrees, a chipped front tooth digging into her lower lip when she closes her mouth.
Sash touches her hair self-consciously. “Thanks”, she says, although beautiful is far from what she feels.
Isabella disappears through a plush red curtain to the left of the reception desk, into the nervous system of ‘Wonderland’, one of several members only clubs that Dante owns, motioning for Sash to come with her. Here a collection of internal pipes cling to the white walls like veins and arteries, humming and clicking with vibrant life as they pass. As she walks, deeper into the beast that she is here to offer herself to, Sash can hear the audience clap and cheer, as though delighted by her progress.