by Mj Fields
When I step out of the shower, I dry off and dress. When I walk out to the lobby, I see that Melyssa has messaged about losing a prescription she needs. She thinks maybe it’s in the couch cushions.
I phone Valentina. When she answers, she sounds winded, but not depressed. Why then does she hide in there? I ask myself.
“Franco?” she says my name again.
“Melyssa has lost some antibiotic. She thinks it’s possibly in your couch cushions. I can come look.”
“No,” she says immediately.
“No?” I ask.
“I would have seen them. Just tell her … tell her that she must have dropped it somewhere else—I don’t care. Just tell her not to come over. I’ll look between the couch cushions later.” Then she hangs up.
I try to phone her again because she pisses me off. I don’t care that she doesn’t give a damn about me, but this girl is sick. She needs her medicine.
She denies my call.
She has come leaps and bounds with her brother and Laney. She’s had friends, actual friends, here. I will not allow her to lose all humanity again.
I look at the message Melyssa sent then send her a text, telling her to feel free to come and have a look, that Valentina is home. Then I pace the lobby for the next twenty minutes until I see Melyssa pull up.
I open the door and smile. “I’ll take you to her.”
She covers her mouth with a scarf and coughs. It’s deep and from her chest.
Opening the cargo door to the elevator, I look back. “Let’s hope we find them.”
She smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry to bother you all.”
Melyssa is a beautiful woman. She’s petite, blonde, and fair-skinned. She’s also very sweet and seems kind. I hope that it will rub off on Valentina. I also hope this visit brings her out of her damn apartment.
When we get to her door, the music is loud, so knocking is of no use.
“I don’t want to be a bother.” Melyssa coughs again.
“It’s no bother,” I tell her, pulling the keys from my pocket.
Entering the apartment, I see the mess in the kitchen. Pots and pans everywhere.
I look at Melyssa. “I’ll get her. Feel free to look.”
As I walk toward Valentina’s room, I turn the volume down on the stereo and hear a noise coming from the bathroom.
It’s her.
“Again!”
Then I hear a loud slap.
“More,” she begs.
I am almost embarrassed for her. My assumption is she’s masturbating.
I look over my shoulder and see Melyssa blushing furiously.
She whispers, “I don’t see them. I’m going to go.”
Then I hear a man, a fucking man, groan loudly.
She is not alone.
That little bitch.
I try the doorknob as Melyssa says, “Please don’t bother her. I’m fine.”
Then I hear Valentina scream in release and my boiling blood overflows in anger.
I open the door and see him, Sabato Efisto, jump back.
“Leave us!” Valentina screams at me.
Shocked, pissed, angry, really fucking angry, I reach for her wrist. “He is wanted for shooting his father!”
“He is hurt!” she screams at me, moving away from my grasping hand.
When I reach for her again, I feel a fist to my face. I stumble back then lunge toward him.
“No!” Valentina cries, stepping in my way.
I nearly strike her, but hit the wall instead.
She looks terrified, crouched down in a ball, like she did in the vineyards when she was sad.
“What the fuck are you doing here!” I hear him yell at Melyssa from outside the bathroom.
I start to go toward him.
“Just leave him alone!” Valentina cries. “Just go! I hate you! I hate you so fucking much!”
I hear Melyssa stammering, “M-my medicine. I came back for …” She stops, and I fear he has hurt her.
I leave Valentina and run toward the kitchen. The apartment door is open and so is the one to the balcony.
“What have you done!” Valentina cries from behind me, stopping me from going after Melyssa who left the apartment in a hurry.
“What have I done!” I roar. “What the fuck have I done? What have you done?”
“I was helping him. He could have died!”
“Helping him? Is that why you were bent over the sink? Is your little cunt somehow a fucking cure-all for murderers!” I scream.
“I was helping him!” she screams back.
“You’ve never fucking helped a person in your life! You’re nothing but a self-serving little bitch.” I push past her and into the bathroom where I grab the Melyssa’s medicine off the counter. “Your friend”—I hold up the bottle with Melyssa’s name on it—“she is sick, and these are hers.”
“She’s not my friend. She’s Laney’s!” she screams at me.
“That’s right, because a girl like you doesn’t deserve friends,” I snarl as I walk toward the door, hoping to catch up with Melyssa. “You leave this apartment, I will fucking tie you up, you hear me!”
“You have no friends, either. You have nothing! Nothing but me.”
“Not for long, Valentina, not for fucking long.”
Capitolo Undici
Two days. She has been in her room for two days. I haven’t allowed her to lock the fucking doors, either. And I have screwed the balcony doors shut.
She is fucking done. House arrest. You bet your ass. Because, as I told her, if she pulls the Dominic card, I will spill all her fucking secrets. Every damn one.
Melyssa is missing. No one has heard from her. I know Sabato’s got her I saw a man in her car when I tried to catch up with her to give her the medication. It’s odd. I didn’t think they knew each other until Vincent looked into it and apparently they met at a dinner before Valentina and I came to town.
“This is your fucking fault. Yours!” I tell Valentina after informing her of the Melyssa situation.
“He won’t hurt her!” she screams back.
“No, but he’ll fuck her like a little whore, won’t he?” I spat.
“If she’s lucky!” she yelled to my back.
I turn on my heels and storm toward her, grabbing her arms that are up as if she can fucking stop me. I pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and then toss her on the bed.
“You don’t fucking move until your brother gets here.”
“You called him!” she screams.
“I will now!” I taunt.
“No, Franco, no.” I hear her coming up quickly behind me before she shoves me.
I turn around and grab her again, throwing her over my shoulder and again tossing her ass back onto the bed.
“I’m done! He needs to know who you are when he’s not around. I will not tolerate you anymore!”
“She’s pregnant!” she cries. “She’s pregnant, and they don’t need me to make things harder for them. She’s pregnant, and he gets to have the family he deserves. He gets everything he never had. She’s pregnant, and you will not ruin this for them!”
“I won’t ruin a fucking thing for them. That’s all you, Valentina. You act like you give a damn about him, her?” I laugh. “You care about no one but yourself. You’re a fucking little brat who doesn’t really have any meaning in life but to make mine hell!”
When she doesn’t say a thing back, I look at her, prepared for war. I don’t get war. I get shock, I get tears, and I get something worse than that.
“Then why live?” she cries. “Why?”
“Don’t you fucking say shit like that to me, Valentina,” I sneer. “I have to put up with your love-sick ways for that fucker Sabato. The one probably raping and killing your supposed friend. I will not tolerate suicidal bullshit.”
“Maybe she had the right idea,” she says. “Maybe she didn’t want to hurt anymore.”
She rolls to her side so I cannot see her face, but
her body shakes uncontrollably.
I can’t even look at her right now.
I sit inside her room that she hasn’t left in ten hours. She’s a fucking mess, and although it’s of her own making, I will not leave her unprotected when she is like this.
Vincent left. He will be gone for the next five days, a family emergency, so I am without respite from her.
I open up my bag to grab my charger when I see one of my sister’s journals. My chest tightens as I pull it out.
Drawings of my photos are throughout, and drawings of her own.
If I close my eyes, I can imagine where she would have taken the inspiration from. All but the last one that was drawn a week before she took her own life. The one of a dagger through a heart, with six drops of blood.
I stare at it, saddened because, if I had seen it, I may have asked her about it. She may have trusted me with her hurt, and maybe, just maybe, her talking about it would have relieved her pain.
I think back to the days, shit, years I uttered not a sound and become angry at her. I lived through those times. I lived and she could have, as well. Yet, she wasn’t strong enough.
In the dark, I awake to the muffled cries of Valentina. I awake to words, clear words.
“No, Benito, no.”
It’s possible that the lack of sleep has softened me, or feeling the journal still on my lap. Or was it the fact that, when I can’t see her, I still think of her as that little girl who cried by herself in the vineyards. That little girl who men looked at in a way that made me feel uneasy when she was not around her family. That little girl who had me force myself to overcome my disgust for humanity and the inability to be affected by the pain of others, to overcome my desire to be invisible because that’s what we all are, anyway. To push myself to walk near her, past her when all those men looked at her in that way, in the way that told me they wanted to break a young girl’s heart, like the man I only saw in the dark, fleeing like a coward from my sister’s bedroom window the week before she died.
“No, no, no, no!” She sits up crying, sobbing.
The pain in her voice causes me to go to her.
“Valentina,” I say loud enough in hopes she will hear me, even in the incoherent moments of just waking.
“No!” Her cry is now blood-curdling.
In the moonlight, I can barely see her, but I can make out her shape.
I grab her shoulders. “Valentina, wake up.”
“Oh, God! Please, please, Franco, please come,” she pleads. “Per favor.”
“Valentina,” I say as she grips my shirt and pulls it to her face.
“Make him go. Just make him go,” she cries into my shirt.
I try to calm her, but she isn’t easily calmed.
I sit on the edge of her bed as she shakes, silently sobbing into my shirt. Then I lean back against the headboard and she lays her head on my lap. I close my eyes and take comfort that she is calming down.
Stroking her hair, I soothe, “Shhh … shhh … shhh… Dormire. Sleep. I’m here to protect you, Valentina, even in your sleep.”
I awake to the sun and her scent. Opening my eyes, I look down. Her eyes are wide and confused as she looks up at me.
“Bad dream?” she asks.
I nod. “You said the name Benito.”
Her face is filled with fear and concern.
“He’s in jail,” I tell her.
She starts to sit up. “I know.”
“Maybe you need to speak to someone about your fear.” I release my grip on her shirt, a grip I didn’t realize I had, and she stops and looks at me.
After an awkward moment, she clears her throat. “My fear of what?”
“Him. Why now are you afraid of a man who is in jail?”
Her face turns bright red, and I see guilt wash over her.
“What are you not telling me? What have you not told Dominic?” I’m angry again.
“Not told Dominic?” She laughs. “It was a dream. It’s fine. You should have just left me alone.” She stands up off the bed, grabs her red silk robe, and puts it over her body.
“I tried.” I get up and walk in front of her. “Now tell me.”
“There is nothing to tell,” she snaps then starts to turn away.
I grab her chin, stopping her. “Tell me what you’re hiding. What doesn’t your brother know? So help me God, Valentina, if you fuck this up for him—”
“If I fuck this up for him, he’ll just send me away.” As her voice cracks, I lessen my grip, but don’t let go. “He knows, Franco. He’s always known. So just leave it alone.”
“He knows what?”
She pulls my hand from her face and walks to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
I wait until she comes back out.
“Valentina,” I begin. “Did he—”
“Touch me? Fuck me? Do unspeakable things to me?”
I hold my hand over my stomach when I feel a violent cramp inside me.
“You know the answers, Franco. You did when you were young. You knew what him and his friends wanted from me.”
I shake my head.
“You used to like me,” she says, walking past me and getting back into bed. “You used to, but then you stopped.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“All those years ago, when Dominic wasn’t there, you were. You cared. Then he sent me away, and you weren’t there.” She lies down, not saying another word.
I storm to the side of her bed and make her look at me. I can’t tell her I was. She didn’t know. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I want you to leave. I want you to just walk away and never look back. I have …” She stops and her eyes fill with tears.
“Valentina …” I shake my head.
“I felt protected by you.” Her look is one of disgust.
“You were,” I remind her. “Still are.”
“Four years of hell at boarding school. Then four years of thinking I would once again feel …” She stops again.
“Feel what?” I ask. “Feel what, Valentina?”
She rolls to her other side so she is no longer facing me. “Loved.”
“You are making no sense.”
“Just go! Jesus, Franco, just leave me alone!”
I grab her and pull her so she has to look at me. “Tell me what the fuck you’re talking about!” I shake her. “Tell me now!”
“When you were fourteen, you spoke to no one, but you were always there. He couldn’t touch me. He just said disgusting things to me, him and his friends. But you, you and Dominic made him go away! When Dominic sent me away …” She stops yet again.
“He did that to protect you from him.”
“I know he did!” she cries. “I know, but it didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t work?”
She forces a laugh through her tears. “You know me, Franco, a spoiled, little, selfish bitch. When no one else was around, he was. When he told me that no one wanted to be bothered with me, he said he did. When I got pregnant at fifteen, after I believed his lies and wanted to feel like someone cared, because Dominic wasn’t there and neither were you”—she pokes me in the chest hard then turns away—“he made that go away, and then, so did he.”
I feel numb, completely and totally numb.
“And so did Grandmother. It was erased. Gone. Taken care of before anyone would know,” she whispers. “Her will was changed after that. Her way of making him pay I suppose. And then, then you were there again.”
I still can’t say anything, not a word.
She turns and looks at me. “There, Franco, there is the story of the spoiled, little rich girl who should have no reason in the world to sometimes be angry, hurt, needy. There is the story of the little bitch who …” She stops herself, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Just go.”
Her back is to me again.
“I love my brother, and he doesn’t need to know that Benito did get to me. I
t would hurt him. I won’t do that. Benito is paying for his wrongs. Grandmother is dead, and she, too, lost a child—two children—so I hold nothing against her. And you, Franco, I thought I loved you for all my life. I just thought someday you’d love me, too.”
“Valentina,” I whisper. “I was your protector.”
“I know that.” She sniffs. “But you were also the person most consistent in my life.”
“As hired help,” I tell her.
“I know that, too. Now, just please … just go. I want to be alone.”
I walk to the door.
“Franco?”
I look back.
“You need to move on. You may think you don’t feel something for me, but you do. You’ve proven that by the way you so vehemently despise Sabato Efisto.”
“He’s shit,” I growl.
She rolls to the other side, back to me again. “He made me feel, just like those women did you.” She looks back over her shoulder, “Just like I nearly begged for you so many times. Now, Franco, just go.”
“Valentina …” I start then stop, not having a clue as to what to say. She isn’t wrong.
“Leave me now,” she says on a sigh.
I do.
Capitolo Dodici
I leave her alone all day while trying to calm myself. One minute, I want to kill Benito, and dig up Isabelle Segretti-DeLuca’s rotting corpse up and piss all over her for not doing something, anything to help Valentina through her living nightmare and not seeing that fucker Benito dead before she died. The next minute, I think of the things she told me, the things she believed about me, the way she felt.
Valentina opened herself up to me today in the rawest way one can, and then dismissed me.
I stay outside her room tonight because, regardless of my feelings, I am still her protector.
When I hear her cries, I walk quickly to her room. When I see her thrashing, I walk in. When she cries out, “No,” I can’t let her continue. I can’t let her relive her nightmare, so I don’t.
“Valentina, wake up,” I say, grabbing her shoulders.
“No, no—”