“I'm telling you, Manuel.”
“The time will come when you won't be there and I will be there. I'll go to see her.”
Around me, the sounds, the lights are gone, air seems to blow out of my lungs. My sight is fading.
I'll. Kill. Him.
I no longer think, no longer argue and I jump on him, trapping him under me and clinging my hands to his neck. This time he rebels and strikes me with a hook at my hip that kills the last reserve of breath. I pull his collar and bang his head on the floor. He punches me again, this time into the stomach. I cannot breathe, but I don’t care. I'll kill him and then I can die.
At the moment I’m not able to think, I see only Manuel and his accusation, his threat.
“What's going on here?”
A voice behind us attracts my attention, distracting me just enough to receive another punch on my stomach. It doesn’t stop me from jamming an elbow in Manuel's face, now bleeding.
I feel pulled by my jacket and I stand up. The ancient mirror on the wall reflects my face, red with anger. My eyes are full of blood, my jaw is contracted, my teeth are really grinding and are about to fall out.
“What’s going on?” Oscar shouts.
I’m out of breath, I try to gain control quickly, as I usually do. I burst, vent and then relax.
“This piece of shit put his eyes on Ambra!”
Oscar fixes Manuel with disappointment.
“He does it just to make you angry,” he justifies him. “You have always been like dogs and cats since childhood. Don’t you understand that he's doing it only to provoke you?” he tells me.
“No, he does it on purpose, I know him,” I yell.
“Fuck you, Krum,” Manuel whispers suffering to get up. “You've exaggerated this time. You'll see!”
“Are you still threatening?”
I go to him to replicate the previous scene, but Oscar stops me. Oscar is strong and calm, he knows how to treat me, unfortunately, he can restrain me. So I stop, because I cannot and I don’t want to ruin Leonardo’s party.
“Krum, stop it now,” Oscar looks for my eyes, I look at him. I'm coming back into myself, slowly. “Go back there, but first clean yourself up.”
I see my bloody hand; On the knuckles there are two cuts. I don’t care at all.
I ignore them and short of breath I leave the room, running to the bathroom to repair these red spots. Fortunately, my clothes didn’t get dirty, unlike what happened to Manuel, who will now be forced to take refuge in his room not to show the effects of my anger on his face.
I'll kill him.
When I go back into the room, my first thought is to look for Ambra to be sure she is fine and far from Manuel. I look for her in the crowd but I don’t find her, I start to feel a strange agitation and I realize I’ve totally lost control of my actions because of her.
The hatred I feel for this woman increases in proportion to the intensity with which she is overcoming me. Everything is paradoxically balanced: she takes over my mind and I increase my hatred for her. The farther I feel her, the better I feel.
But I'm incoherent and I want to postpone her expulsion from my head, because now the only thing I want is to find her and make sure she's okay.
And then I see her.
I'm fucked up.
She is drinking something, her damn lips kiss the edge of the champagne glass. She looks around with curiosity. She's alone and it makes me relieved, even though all these damned guests don't do anything else but undress her with their eyes. I told her that her beauty was more annoying than people’s eyes on her. Instead no... it's utterly more annoying to see that someone wants her.
No one must desire her.
She sees she is at the center of everyone's attention, except for mine. She never notices me. It annoys me, burns, makes me nervous. I’d like to shout her name and force her to look at me, I’d like to say, "I'm here for you," adding a curse word that would make her jump. Then she intercepts my gaze and I am immobilized. Let's see what she does.
What a slut. She ignores me. She pretends not to see me.
I know you saw me, princess.
I don’t stop staring at her, I want to see how long she can be so strong not to fall into my gaze.
Here she is. Got her!
She looked at me. I’ve never wanted eyes on me so continually as I want it to happen with hers.
I go around the room. The guests become obstacles, poles that hide and reveal her.
She is also walking. We are a bit distant, but space is not too much and I can see her eyes looking for me; her head rising up to look over the crowd. I do the same.
We move in sync, towards the same side. It's as if we were in front of a mirror and we were responding to each other's movements.
I see Leonardo discussing with a group of businessmen. If he becomes free, he could approach her and interrupt this strange situation. It gave me an unjustified discomfort to see how he looked at her. I know him well and I didn’t like to imagine what he was thinking.
They’ve just raised the volume of the music. Some guests are about to dance in the center of the room, I take advantage of it to move.
I decide to act and make my move. I must do something or I'll go crazy, I can’t stay away. I prefer that she insults me, that she spits her anger on me, and – thanks to that – becomes stronger. I want to see her angry with me, for me.
Iskam da e moya. I want her to be mine.
At a quick pace I go through people and she sees me. She looks disoriented, fearful of seeing me in front of her from one moment to the next. She massages her neck, as I understood she usually does when something embarrasses or frightens her.
She sees I'm coming to her, but she turns away.
I freeze.
She turned around, doesn’t want me to reach her. She doesn’t want me.
She doesn't want you.
Go to hell, she must want me, whether she wants it or not. I'll take her. What the fuck!
I come up behind her . I already smell her damn scent of vanilla. I near the lobe of her ear and order her: “Dance with Me!”
16
AMBRA
If I could punish myself for the extraordinary feelings I'm experiencing, I’d do it. My body is crying out. I hear it; it’s screaming. It begs to be abandoned to this insane call. Krum is always able to take my breath away with a glance, with a gesture and now, with his smell that is flooding me completely. I don’t want to turn around. What I feel in my stomach, is already too much without him catching my glance. I try to ignore him, he should get tired of me sooner or later. I can’t believe he has so much energy to waste on me.
“Did you hear what I told you?” Here he is, he seemed normal. Now the real Krum is back: authoritarian, irritating, hard and at the same time he shows such a thrilling cold heartedness. God, no. I can’t admit that I thought he’s exciting.
That's what your body thinks.
My body, not my head. The head always comes first. Logic, that's normal. He and I aren’t normal, we could never be. We are a continuous clash, two strings of the same rope; now broken.
I gather the courage I own when I'm in his presence. At least I have to recognize it, he pulls out the most undaunted part of me and makes me feel like a woman.
You're complicating things with your thoughts.
I turn and pant, annoyed, hoping that my behavior gives him the answer he is waiting for.
“I am not dancing with you.”
His eyes are always full of a penetrating darkness. Sometimes I'm afraid that by looking at him too much, I can be sucked in by his brutality. But I like to run the risk and I don’t avoid his eyes.
His fingers run over his uncultured beard and I imagine them still on my hair as he was caressing me out there and confusing me leading me to believe he was a comfort.
“What did you do to your hand?” I ask, noting he has new cuts. They weren’t there earlier.
“Nothing,” he answers, hiding his hand
in his pocket. “I’m asking you for the last time, actually no, I am not asking you at all,” he bursts out and takes me by hand. By hand? Why not my hair or my wrist? “You’re dancing with me.”
“Hey, I don’t…”
I try to resist, but his fingers win this strange tangle. He drags me to the center of the room, carefully dodging the people around. I see men’s eyes on me, but then they look down suddenly and something tells me that Krum is showing his destructive strength. That's it He is stunning everyone who looks at me and I, automatically, relax and feel protected.
We reach a less crowded area and, with his usual tactlessness, turns me and drags me to his body. I literally hit him. I bumped his hard chest, I hope not to feel it again as it happened out there, or I'll stop controlling myself and I'll show him that I'm just an emotional young girl.
His hand continues to hold mine, I feel the other on my back, demanding, dominant, icy. He pulls on me more, as if it was possible to unite us.
I feel sick.
“It wasn’t difficult, was it? You're not so bad when you aren’t naughty.” I feel his breath on my forehead, he's too close, it's all too much.
“You're stepping on my toes,” I reproach him. If he does it again, I think I'll lose a big toe.
“I don’t know how to dance.”
I noticed that he never apologizes, even when it should be automatic and informal.
“If you can’t dance, why did you force me to do it?”
“I don’t know. And I didn’t force you.”
Eh?
He takes his hand from my back and gently puts his fingers on my chin, pulling it up and forcing me to look at him. These little gestures, so apparently normal, are extraordinary actions, miracles if made by Krum. I am always afraid he'll hurt me.
I fulfil his request and not because he expects it. I'm more determined to examine this new way of acting than to avoid it.
He puts his hand behind my back and pulls me again, exerting an even more firm pressure than before. I feel something inside me exploding like an electric shock that invades me internally, right down there.
I don’t want to experience these feelings and I don’t want to call them by their name.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“I don’t understand you.”
“There is nothing to understand. I always do what I want, That's all.”
“Without considering what others want?”
We don’t take our eyes off of each other for one second.
I like it.
“I never care about others.” Now he looks at my lips and I look down embarrassed. I feel his fingers touching my chin again bringing me back to him.
“I want you to look at me.”
He started with his want again. If he repeats this word, I'll leave him right here. We spin round ourselves simulating dance steps. Well, more than a dance it’s a sort of swaying out of pace. It’s just... to feel each other.
I am deeply embarrassed because every movement causes a random rubbing of my body on his. He notices the blush that invades my cheeks and the triumphant smile printed on his face makes me feel defeated. He realizes that I'm going to protest, fleeing away and he anticipates me by holding me back. His hand moves up my back, stinging every fragment of uncovered skin that shivers at his touch. I hope he doesn’t realize it.
I feel his fingers surround my neck and pull on it, to draw my face to his chest.
I cannot believe I'm dancing a slow dance with my kidnapper, with the man who has excited my nights, with the same man who says he hates me, who maltreats me and then looks for me and keeps me close to him as if I were the most precious thing in this world.
That's how he makes me feel: precious.
I feel his jaw rubbing on my hair, I guess he is smelling me. I do the same and I am inebriated by his strong scent, so intense and exciting.
I recognize the notes of the song playing. It's Salted Wound by Sia. Part of the text couldn’t be more appropriate for the moment. It seems sung specifically for him:
Tell her on how you feel,
Give her every say she needs to hear
Give your heart, and say come take it
And she will see you're a good man
And then it seems to continue for me:
Yes, you can do it
Don't break
Yeah, you'll pull through it,
You're safe
He drags my hand to his chest and keeps it imprisoned there, as he looks for my eyes again and I look back at him.
“This dress looks good on you,” he breaks the silence.
“Apparently everyone likes it.”
“The idea was that I had to be the one who liked it.”
I feel like I'm burning up. Something flows down, deep down.
“I cannot accept these gifts." I bow my head and I again find his fingers requiring visual contact, lifting my chin.
“Is it important that I always look at you?”
“It’s necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because I need it.”
I sigh and my chest presses on his. I let go of his hand and I bring it to his chest, then I do the same with the other. He is breathing energetically. He opens his lips, I feel him stiffening up against me. I put both hands on his pectorals and coddle them, going under his jacket and searching for his shirt.
I imagine his muscular and perfect body, but what I want to do is to make him believe that all that is happening is only the result of his many desires.
“You know…” I try to be sensual and malicious at the same time. “You are a handsome man, you have a great body.” His eyes are bright, shining and they’re the nicest thing I've ever seen. I'm going to give him one of my shots and I hope to put him out. “But you are not my type. I wouldn’t stay with a man like you even under torture.” I hold his head with one hand and I get on my tip toes to reach his ear. “You said you hate me, well, that's reciprocal. You may give gifts, you may be kind, you may play the real man, but in my eyes you’ll always be darkness in person and you’ll never have my respect, you’ll never get my consideration but only contempt and the grudge I have nurtured for you all these years.”
His head escapes from my grip and he looks at me incredulous. His eyes have lost the shine they had. He grinds his jaw and holds my hip tight, grabbing my flesh in a furious pinch.
“You're hurting me,” I say calmly. Oh, gosh, I must have exaggerated and now he will be angry.
“You are hurting me,” he bursts out so loud that the people in our vicinity look at us on the track. He doesn’t seem to care. He also clasps my other hand. My hips are burning under his grip. I will get more bruises.
“I'm starting to get my revenge then,” I say evilly. “I want to hurt you, too!”
He blinks his eyes incredulous. I'm really enjoying to see him disoriented by my words. It's powerful to hurt with a sentence and it's cowardly to do it by force.
“What are you doing?” he asks chanting. He is incredulous.
“What do you mean?”
“What are you doing to me? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you like this?”
He suddenly drops the hold of my hand and rejects me; I stumble back. He looks like one who has just seen a ghost. He leaves and disappears in the crowd.
I feel deprived of a fundamental part of my body. I could never have thought I would have felt so guilty. Just with him.
You hurt him, he deserved it.
I stand in the middle of the room like an idiot for an undefined period of time. I wonder why my considerations are so important for him. Maybe…
He wants your forgiveness.
He’ll never have it.
I don’t have the time to understand how stupid I am, when I hear Leonardo's voice breaking into my thoughts.
“Dinner is ready, Will you sit with me?” His tone is mischievous. My eyes are looking for Krum. I don’t want to be alone with him. I prefer Krum.
You're sick!
“Sure, I'm starving.” I follow him. He’s holding his hand on my back, at the same point where Krum's hand had been until recently. I feel violated and forced, again.
We reach the big table where a few people are sitting. It’s clear the tables were organized according to the importance of the guests. The fact that I have to sit next to Leonardo, makes me uncomfortable. Before I sit down I realize Krum has come back. He has the usual rigid posture and his eyes are two black balls full of hatred that I feel in the air; hatred totally turned on me.
Our eyes meet and he moves away proudly, sitting at another table, where I see Oscar and other men. I don’t know why, but I try to be sure Ivanka isn’t there.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Leonardo says before settling down, “this is Ambra Livori, the daughter of one of our most esteemed friends, Alberto Livori.”
At the table astonishing comments are said. People present here compliment me for my father's fame, for his impeccable correctness. I want to laugh with bitterness, but I just nod and thank them for the praise.
Dinner goes on normally, every now and then someone asks me how family affairs are going and I realize I'm totally extraneous to the background of the empire that my father has created. Some ladies know my mother and I'm not surprised, just as Leonardo's continuous clarifications begin to send me clear signals.
“Ambra is still very young, but soon she is going to lead the Livori’s industries. Don’t you think that new generations are a breath of fresh air in the obsolete mechanisms of the old economic theories?”
A very boring debate on industrial theories begins. Only now I am realizing why my father insisted that I study economics instead of art history. I try to nod, hoping not to look stupid. I say my opinion about the subjects I'm not ignorant in and I see Leonardo brightening up when I make my considerations on the concept of power.
“I think power is not in the hands of the person who says he has it, but who uses it being unnoticed. Power is in the hands of the person who leads the mechanisms of our market as he pleases, breaking into the system as a ghost that contaminates everything, absorbs it, and simply gets what he wants. Power is in the hands of the person who conquers it. Keeping power is certainly more challenging than entering a system. Power is in the hands of the person who becomes the system.”
He wants it all Page 16