“On my time. Not yours.” Now what does that mean? He just caresses my cheek gently with his free hand, looking into my eyes with a frightening, predatory hunger.
“You’ve been talking to my father for months. So you saw a picture of me or something and…what…you’re obsessed with me now?” I demand angrily. “Some kind of sick, perverted stalker?”
“Again, I’m the one who asks the questions. If I want you to know something, I’ll tell you.” He’s as handsome as sin, but his supreme arrogance makes me want to slap him.
He leans down and brushes his lips against my forehead. “You smell sweet, Bailey.” His voice caresses me like warm velvet. There’s a forced intimacy to his tone that feels obscene, like fingers spreading me open and probing my secret places. I’m pressed up so close to him that I can feel the thickness of his erection against my stomach.
“Please,” I beg, “won’t you just leave me alone? I don’t want this.”
His eyes go cold and hard. “Your desires are unimportant.”
“What do you want from me?” I’m in despair.
“I told you what I want. So far. Remain a virgin. Speak to me with respect. You’ve failed on one of those points tonight. There will be consequences.” His velvety voice slides inside me and fans shameful flames of arousal, even as his words make my heart stutter with fear.
And abruptly, he releases me and walks away. Oddly, I miss his warmth. Without the muscular certainty of his body holding me up, I suddenly feel weak, unsure. How do knees work? How do legs work? I stumble as I slowly follow him back into the garden room. He is standing with his back to me, commanding all the attention in the room.
He ignores me completely for the rest of the night. He sits next to my father, chatting away, laughing at my father’s dumb jokes, pretending not to notice Lauren’s desperate attempts to flirt with him.
I sit there picking at my food and trying not to look at him. This is like something out of a horror movie, and I have no idea what to do about it. I already know what my family’s reaction will be. They’ll be furious – with me. They’ll question my story. They’ll make it all about my father’s campaign and how I’m hurting it.
Lauren, who’s starving and who hates being ignored when she tries to flirt, grows more and more sullen as the night goes on, and she deliberately stomps on my foot as we we’re walking through the parking lot, jamming her heel into it so hard I cry out in pain.
“Bailey!” my mother snaps at me.
“What?” I say furiously. “She just deliberately stepped on my foot, and it really hurt!”
“She tried to trip me! On purpose!” Lauren glares at me. “I’m not the one who freaked out and ran off in front of all Dad’s friends!”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t bring you to the next dinner,” my mother says coldly.
“For the love of God, please don’t.” As soon as I say the words, I wish I could take them back. I’ll be iced out for days now, my mother addressing only Lauren when she walks into the room.
For the entire ride back, I have to sit in the back seat next to Lauren as she viciously pinches me, and when I finally elbow her back, she screams in pain like I stabbed her, and my mother spins around and looks at me like she hates me.
“I do not know what is wrong with you these days, Bailey, but you will stop it, or your father and I will make you very sorry.”
Lauren sniggers quietly and pinches me again, twisting the skin between my bony fingers
I sit there wishing she were dead.
I really regret those thoughts when a car T-bones her Lexus the next day and she suffers a shattered pelvis and two broken legs.
Chapter 4
Bailey
The day after the accident, my parents are both at the hospital and I’m alone in the house. Lauren told them that she didn’t want me there. I’m surprised that hurts my feelings, but it actually does. My mother just snaps at me to try to stay out of trouble, and not embarrass the family while they’re gone, and meekly, I agree.
I want to make them happy. It’s on my mind from the minute I wake up in the morning. It’s just that a lot of the time, I don’t know what I’m doing that’s so wrong. For a smart girl, apparently I’m very stupid.
I force myself to eat breakfast, sitting there in broad daylight with the alarm turned on. Every noise makes me start.
Being in the house alone is terrifying. I have a stalker, he enjoys hurting me and also forcing me to feel turned on by him, and I’m completely outmatched by him. He’s handsome and wealthy and smooth, and when I report him, he’s going to make me sound like a lunatic. But I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering when he’s going to appear next and what he’s going to do to me. I’m going to have to go to the police, and it will be horrible. My parents won’t back me up.
For once in my life I’ve lost my appetite. I can barely choke down a piece of toast.
To take my mind off things, I go to take a shower. When I’m finished, as I walk into my room, wrapped in a towel, I’m just starting to calm down a little bit – until I’m grabbed from behind and thrown against the wall. I scream in fright, and of course it’s Steven, pressing up against me.
He’s looming over me, his hot breath in my ear. My head is turned to the side, cheek squished against the wall, wet hair streaming down my back. I clutch the towel desperately, a thin barrier between us that offers no real protection. I can feel the thickness of his arousal pressing into my back. Are they all that big? He’s frighteningly huge. Could he really fit that thing inside a woman? And why am I thinking like that?
“You were going to meet with Reg tomorrow night.” The controlled rage in his voice burns my ear as his lips brush against it. It sends chills through me.
How could he know that? He’s hacked into my phone. He’s reading my texts.
“I was just going to have coffee with him! That’s it! There’s nothing between us, nothing!”
If he doesn’t believe that, he’ll kill Reg. I’m sure of it.
“Are you sure? Your parents think otherwise.”
How does he know what my parents think? Why is he obsessed with me – and so angry with me? He’s a shockingly handsome man, the kind of man women would melt for. Even more attractive than his looks is the air of brutality that lurks just under that sophisticated surface. He could have anyone he wanted. What is making him fixate on me, of all people?
“Reg is gay! He just can’t tell anybody! What do you want with me?” I cry out.
“I told you, that’s my business. You’ll find out when the time is right.”
No! I can’t live like this, never knowing where he is or when he’s going to jump out at me – or what my future holds. Tears fill my eyes. “Damn it, I have the right to know!”
His fingers close around my neck, and he squeezes so hard that red pinpricks of light explode in front of my eyes. I claw at his hands in panic. He slowly eases up on the pressure, and I gasp for breath.
“The only rights you have are the ones I give you.”
I swallow a hopeless sob. This is insane. He’s a perfect stranger and he thinks he controls my entire life now?
If I went to the film college, would he follow me there? Is there anywhere I’d be safe from him?
I’m sinking into a bottomless pit of terror.
He slides his hand around my throat and spins me around. He slams his hands against the wall on either side of my head, caging me in. “You’re thinking about going to the police, about telling your friends, about trying to get help. Aren’t you?”
He’s staring down at me, and I don’t dare lie to him. His eyes pierce me to my soul, and I’m sure he’d be able to tell.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“You don’t want your family to have any more accidents, do you?”
I suck in a horrified gasp. Oh my God.
My sister’s accident. He was responsible.
“No,” I say, glaring at him with utter hatred. For some sick reason, that mak
es him smile briefly. Then he releases me.
“Lie down on the bed. On your back. I want to look at you.”
“After what you just told me? Hell no!”
The flare of rage in his eyes is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. He grabs me by the throat and forces me, staggering, over to the bed, where he throws me face down. My towel rides up and my butt is exposed. When I struggle to get up, he pins me down by twisting my arm up behind my back.
“You don’t disobey me, Bailey. Ever.”
I hear the rustling of cloth, and for a moment I think he’s going to rape me.
Then I feel a blaze of pain across my butt, and I realize he’s just hit me with his belt. A scream tears from my throat as the belt comes whistling down and another stripe of agony crisscrosses the first.
“Say you’re sorry.”
His voice is terrifyingly calm. That’s the scariest thing of all. He’s hitting me with the force of a hurricane, like he wants to break my skin, like he wants the belt to rip my flesh from my body, but he sounds like he’s saying “good morning”.
“Sorry!” I sob.
The belt comes down again, so hard I shriek.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“I’m sorry!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
“Then do what you were told.” He lets go of my arm. I’m in so much pain and so frightened that it takes me a moment to remember what he wanted – for me to lie down on my back on the bed. I scramble to obey, tears streaming down my face.
He yanks the towel open, and I flinch and try to cover myself with my arms. He grabs them and pins them down on the bed, leaning over me.
“I’m glad that you’re a modest girl, but I can look at you whenever I want.” And he does just that, his heated gaze sweeping slowly down from my collarbones, over my breasts, along my stomach, lingering at the triangle of blonde hair that I keep neatly trimmed. He reaches out and gently brushes his hand over my pubic hair, and I shiver with fear and shameful desire.
“I like that. You will keep it that way for me, nice and neat but not shaved.”
He looks into my eyes for confirmation. My face is hot from crying and from embarrassment, and despite everything, despite how much I hate him, that makes me feel bad because I don’t want him to see me looking so ugly. Miserably, I nod.
“Very good. I know you can be a good girl for me, Bailey.” His entire face transforms into something beautiful. The light of affection and approval shining from his eyes makes me want to weep, because I’m so afraid of it vanishing and leaving me in the dark.
And he releases me and walks out of the room.
I sit up, in shock. That’s it? What the hell is going on here? What are these sick mind-games he’s playing with me?
All day long, I am in a daze. I send Reg a text telling him that something’s come up and I can’t meet him tomorrow. The text that I get back is huffy and offended, and I know I’m driving him away, one of my only true friends. My mother texts me to tell me that she and my father will be spending the night at the hospital. They don’t invite me to come.
I barely sleep that night. The splashes of pain on my backside are a constant reminder of my stalker and of my utter powerlessness. I turn on the alarm system, but what’s the point? Steven can walk through walls, it seems. Nothing will keep him out.
In the morning, I see that I have dark red stripes across my butt. And I realize I have physical evidence to show to the police. I have to talk to them. Steven tried to kill my sister. Yes, I don’t like Lauren, not even a little bit, but I don’t want her dead. And what if my parents are next on his list?
I get dressed, wincing as I pull my underwear and then a pair of dress slacks over my sore skin. I dress up like a preppy college student, trying to go for an “I’m from a nice family and not crazy at all” vibe. I wear modest pearl earrings, a twinset pale pink shell and cotton sweater, and low-heeled flats.
I’m shaking as I drive to the police station. At the last second, I chicken out and pull over a few blocks away, trying to shore up my courage.
I send a text to my mother. “Mom, I have something really important to tell you. I’ll come by the hospital later.”
Several minutes tick by. No answer. Either her phone is turned off or nothing that I have to say would be that important to her.
A large, dark Hummer with dark rear windows pulls up behind mine and parks. For a moment of panic, I think it’s Steven, but then I see a man approaching me who looks to be in his late forties with dark blond hair.
There’s a dark-haired thirty-something woman and a young man who looks close to my age trailing behind him, and a little blonde girl with a solemn face. I climb out of the car as they approach, and as they get close to me, something about them confuses me. They look weirdly familiar. When they reach me, it hits me like a tidal wave. The man and the children all look like me. The shape of their eyebrows and nose and jaw, their strong cheekbones, even the shade of their hair… They have to be related to me. Closely related. And yet I’ve never met them before.
We stand there in silence for a moment, staring at each other. They’re dressed in tasteful, conservative, Ralph Lauren-style clothing – like “our kind of people”, as my mother would say, but somehow a little different. When you’re raised in the country club set, you immediately pick up on a whole range of cues, everything from clothing and accessories to body language, that identify people who belong in your social stratum.
These people don’t entirely match their clothing, although I couldn’t quite say how yet.
“Who are you?” I blurt out, forgetting my usual tact. I was raised much better than that, but I’m under more strain than ever before.
“Bailey Millhouse,” the man says, with a trace of an accent I can’t place. There are tears in his eyes. “My name is Grigor Dubrova. I’m your father. Your real father.” The little girl huddles by the woman who must be her mother, staring at me.
“My father?” My mouth gapes open like a fish’s. “Are you saying…I was adopted?” A traitorous thought flashes through my head. No way would my parents have kept that from the press.
“Not adopted, no.” His lips twist in a sad smile. “It’s a complicated story, and I hate to have to just spring it on you like this. Your mother was mentally ill, so I was given full custody of you when you were a newborn. She kidnapped you and ran away, then she swapped you for another baby at a hospital nursery. The real Bailey Millhouse.”
His words steal the breath from my lungs. I’m not the real Bailey Millhouse. All my life, I’ve felt like an outsider, an imposter just pretending to be one of them – because I am.
“Another baby?” I choke out. “Where…where is she?”
“We don’t know. Your mother jumped off a bridge when she was cornered by police a few weeks after she ran off with you. She was alone – there was no baby with her. She was in California.”
They’re all looking at me expectantly now.
“I…I don’t know what to say.” My voice is so faint I can hardly hear myself.
It explains so much. Why I don’t look like my family, why I have such a different personality, why I’m the only one who can eat whatever I want. And it breaks my heart. Will my parents be relieved that I’m not really theirs? I’m afraid they will.
“Of course, poor girl.” The dark-haired woman nods understandingly. “What a shock this must be.” Her accent is much stronger than his, definitely Russian.
“There’s so much I’d like to tell you. Would you like to go for a ride with us?” my real father asks, gesturing at their enormous, flashy Hummer. The vehicle doesn’t fit their clothing; it’s like a gangster car, a show-off car.
I don’t know why I’m focusing on that, of all things. It’s just that everything in my life feels off-kilter now. None of the pieces fit together properly, leaving big jagged holes in my world. I’m afraid to take a single step, afraid I might fall off the edge of eternity and never hit bottom.
“I wo
uld love to take you out for coffee and we can talk about how you can break this to your parents. I know we just met, but…I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. Natasha.” A sad look drifts across his face. “That was your name.”
I stand there dumbly, feet rooted to the spot. I still need to go to the police station. But this is huge. My entire life just changed.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“We’ve never stopped looking for you.” His blue eyes mist over. “Recently a colleague of mine saw a political advertisement of your father’s and mentioned to me how much you look like us.” He looks a little sheepish. “A couple of weeks ago, when you went to a coffee shop, I had a private investigator grab your cup after you threw it out, and we tested it for DNA to be sure. I didn’t want to come here and blow up your entire life for nothing. And I had to know.”
“I’m Nikita. I’m your brother.” The young man thrusts his hands out at me eagerly. “I’ve always wanted to meet you.”
The little girl stares up at me, as solemn as a statue. “I’m Marya.”
I chew my lip. Maybe this family could help me with my stalker. Maybe they’d believe me where my mother and father – or rather the people who raised me – wouldn’t. And I have so many questions.
“All right. There’s somewhere I have to be right after, but we can have coffee first.”
I walk over, and Nikita opens the door for me. I climb up into the huge vehicle, and he climbs in after me and slams the door shut.
As my father gets in, his sleeve slides up, and I see that his arm is tattooed right down to his wrist. There’s a tattoo of a knife on his arm, and a gun. Crude-looking tattoos, with blue-green ink, like prison tattoos.
The gangster-style tattoos go with the big flashy car, but not with the clothing. It’s so out of character with his drab, correct suit that I suck in my breath. And Nikita sees it. Something flashes in his eyes for a microsecond, and all of a sudden I am afraid.
“I need to call my parents,” I say quickly. “I told my mom I’d call her.”
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 3