Page 106 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
“But the Hulk is the only one that seems mean and dumb yet still makes a positive impact on the world,” Walcott pointed out and I had a surreal moment of wondering how my life had come to this, philosophical discussions of superheroes in gothic mansions with an actual manservant.
“That’s fair,” Brando decided. “Anca, can we watchHulktonight before bed?”
“Sure, Brandy Boy.”
“You wanna join us?” he asked Walcott next.
The older man blinked, caught off guard as we stopped at a black door with a little plaque on it that read, “Mr. Brandon Belcante.”
It caught me off-guard to see such a permanent proclamation of our residency here. It made me realize some silly part of me had been clinging to the idea that this was only temporary. But this wasn’t a fairytale, it was real life, and there would be no prince charming to save us from the villain who had decided to take us into his haunted home. A shivered slithered down my spine.
“If you’d like,” Walcott finally decided, “I could make time to watch a movie.”
“Cool!” That settled, Brando bounced on his toes and indicated the door. “This is my room? It even has mynameon it. That’s so cool.”
Without another word, Walcott opened the door to reveal the room within. It was large, too big for a little boy, and filled with old, heavy furniture that gleamed with care and wealth. Brando immediately ran to the four-poster bed and jumped on the thick, soft covers, rolling over the grey sheets and moaning at their softness.
“This room is bigger than our whole house,” he declared, going into a crunch to look at me from where he lay. “We just have to set up my comic book collection and get some superhero sheets and then it’ll be like…the best roomever.”
I grinned at him, moving over to ruffle his soft head of hair. “We can do that. Why don’t you read some comics in here while I go check out my room, okay? I’ll be back.”
He nodded, rolling over to pull off the little backpack he wore. When he pulled out the latest edition of Spiderman, Walcott and I were immediately forgotten.
I pressed a kiss to his head, my fingers feathering over the pulse point in his neck compulsively. It was a habit I was developing that I didn’t know how to break.
Done, I followed Walcott out of the room and back down the hall.
“I think you’ll like your rooms,” Walcott said with a little smile as he led me through the old, creaking house. “They were once Tiernan’s mother’s.”
I shivered a little at the idea of what Tiernan’s mother might have been like. If her son was anything to go off of, she was probably incredibly intimidating.
But when Walcott opened the door with a small gold plaque labeled with my name, the interior wasn’t cold or bleak at all. The darkness of the rest of the house was absent from the feminine room. Tiny blue flowers peppered the cream wallpaper, the color repeated in the lush silk bedding and the massive Persian carpet over the dark parquet flooring. The rest was all in shades of white and gold, from the quilted headboard to the tufted chair at the gorgeous vanity set in front of the curved turret window.
It was a room out of a fairy tale, a calm, feminine oasis in the otherwise masculine doom and gloom of the larger house.
Despite myself, I loved it.
Walcott laughed lightly at my slack-jawed reaction. “I’m glad it meets with your approval. I aired it out the last few days, but a bit of that unused musk might remain, so feel free to open the window over there by the vanity. The hinge sticks a bit, but most things in this pile of rocks need a little tender loving care, so don’t be alarmed. Just give it a little jostle and it will open right up.”
As he spoke, I shucked my stained Converse and walked over the pale blue, gold, and cream carpet, wiggling my toes in the plush ply. My fingers found the velvet of the footboard, rubbing the softness between my fingers.
A lump formed in my throat, surprising me. It was strange to get emotional about a carpet or a headboard, but they represented so much more than material items.
When I was little, I’d known luxury. Mom had been obsessed with labels and Dad filled our home with them from the clothes in our closets to the car in our driveway. We had a big house with a big yard in a posh neighborhood filled with commuters to the city and their trophy wives.
When I’d asked my dad for a pony for Christmas when I was four, one had appeared in our driveway with a great pink bow around its neck.
Then, they’d found us.
The Morellis.
The family that hated Dad with every fiber of their being.
And they would stop at nothing to end each other.
Even if it meant targeting Dad’s bastard children.
I could still remember the cold, triumphant grin on the Morelli thug’s face when he’d cornered me on the playground at my elementary school and tried to convince me he was a friend of my father’s and that I should go with him.
