“And couldn't he hire people by paying them a salary?”
“He wanted trusted people to educate, who would grow up with the Sect's ideology. He extracted us from a cruel fate and gave us a home, that's it. If you go on asking about me, I'll really get mad. Change question.”
“Please,” she says, leaving the quotes in the air, “would be nice at the end of your statements.”
“Are you trying to tell me how I must talk to you?”
“Do you have any objections?”
“Do you want me to fulfill your curiosity or do we have to talk about this bullshit?”
“Good manners are not bullshit.”
“You're exasperating, princess.” I put my hands on my face and rub my eyes, but I decide to please her. “Could you avoid asking about my past, please?” I emphasize please and she smiles as if I had given her a piece of the moon. I'll repeat it more often.
“Why did you kidnap me seven years ago?” My beautiful girl is really curious.
“Your father…”
“What does my father have to do with it?” she yells.
She springs up and covers her breasts with one arm. The topic is difficult and I realize it, it's too hard to separate what I can say from what I cannot say. A word would be enough to make her world fall apart.
“If you be quiet, I'll tell you.” She leaves the bed and begins to wander around the room in search of her clothes. “Ambra…”
“I want to get dressed.”
As time passes, I feel I'm losing a bit of her.
“Here we go,” I hand her the panties she was looking for, she pulls them out of my hands and turns again. I don’t like her to turn her back on me, so I stand in front of her, still naked, but nervous. “Can I know what the problem is?”
“I'm afraid to know what you're about to tell me."
She has already put on her jeans and now fiddles with her bra, is nervous and I help her to hook it behind her back. But when she gets what she wants, she moves away from me again.
Another piece of her has gone.
“Do you want me to go on?” I ask calmly, putting my legs in my jeans.
“Yes, Krum,” she cries. “Break my heart again, but do it quickly.”
I wear my shirt and leave it open. She is already dressed and ready to flee. She sits on the edge of the bed and I sit by her, but I don’t try to put a hand on her because she holds hers between her legs, as if she wanted to trap and keep them away from me.
“Your dad was about to abandon the Sect, but the rules he himself contributed to write down, didn’t allow it. The members met and decided to kidnap you to blackmail him and to remind him that the Sect's power is absolute in the lives of the members.”
Ambra's eyes gaze into space, shining with emotion and a tear appears, so clear and enchanting.
“My dad knew everything. He knew you had kidnapped me.”
She whispers it into space, talking to herself, but I am here and try to comfort her, to distract her from the idea that her dad agreed.
“Yes, he knew, Ambra, but he didn’t agree if that's what you're thinking. He couldn't do anything because we had you and he was terrified of what we could do to you. So he decided to stay in the Sect and abandoned the idea of leaving it. When he communicated it to Leonardo and the other members, I brought you back home. I took you to your room, laid you on the bed, covered you to be sure that you were warm and then I walked away from you forever, swearing that I wouldn't look for you anymore.”
She turns her face to mine, now even the other eye is covered in tears. If it's possible, she's even more beautiful invaded by sadness, more sweet and desirable in a situation like this, where I can be all for her.
“So there was no ransom?”
“No. We'd only kidnapped you to make you father reason.”
“My father needed a month to reason?” She yells. “To reason about what?” She gets up and pulls her hair back with her hands. She is upset and desperate, because she believes her father didn't make her a priority and he didn’t think about her, wasting too much time. If she knew there are fathers worse than hers, maybe she wouldn't think that. “He shouldn't have had any doubt. He should have chosen me right away and not after a month. One month, Krum.” She cries and shouts and I don’t know what to do. I feel her farther and farther away. “I spent a month in the dark, in the cold, with no food and water, I risked being raped, you put your hands on me for days…”
“I didn’t hurt you!” Now I'm shouting too. Eh, no, damnit, I didn’t hurt her. “I protected you!”
“Did you protect me?” Her tone is cruel, her mind is invaded by sorrow. I keep repeating it in my head, to avoid that her words hurt me. “And how would you have protected me, tell me? That beast of your friend challenged you to bet and you accepted it. You served me on a silver platter; later you realized that he was exaggerating. Who knows why!”
“Don’t talk this way, you don’t know a fuck!”
“Because you don’t you tell me a fuck!”
“What do you want to hear, huh?” My voice overwhelms hers, I'm black with rage. “I don’t allow you to judge me, you don’t know what I felt at that time when I saw you there, helpless, in danger…”
“And you don’t know what I felt at that time while I was kneeling in front of that naked man who wanted…”
“I know!” I shout. “I know what you felt.” My voice fades. She stops yelling at me and now I almost hear the soft sound of her tears rolling down over her cheeks. “I know because… I've felt the same.”
“What?”
Slowly I go close to her and I take her face in my hands, look at her eyes and noticing she does the same comforts me.
“When I realized what Manuel was about to do to you, I saw me in you. I wished my father had done what I did shortly afterwards, that he would have taken me away from that monster and threw him out, freeing me from the horror that he himself had forced me to do. I needed to protect you the same way I had needed it as a child. You had become me in that moment and everything changed. I understood right away that I would protect you forever. So I reacted. I defended you because it was right because I wanted to do it for you and because, in some ways, I was doing it to the boy I used to be.”
Her tears become rain on my fingers. I catch the drops with my mouth and swallow them, removing drop after drop. She falls into my arms and I grab her quickly, drag her to the bed where I sit down and let her sit on me, holding her in my arms.
“Your father loved you, he did the right thing,” I reassure her.
“Your dad instead…”
“Let's not talk about me.”
“Krum, I have no words. It's awful!”
She holds me tight and weeps on my chest. I try to comfort her, but now she's caressing me and is giving comfort to my body. I'm trembling anxiously because I'm afraid to lose her and to feel rejected.
“Now stop crying.” I caress her wet face and read in her eyes the pity she feels for me. I don’t want her to look at me as if I was an abandoned stray on the edge of a road. I don’t want her to consider me as a man broken by a terrible past, I want her to see only what I am today: a man who hopes to be better and to do well, but only by her. Nothing else matters. “Don’t cry anymore, Ambra.”
“I'm not crying for me,” she kisses my forehead and caresses my neck.
“You don’t have to cry for me either.”
“I'm sorry, it wasn't my intention to force you to talk about your past.”
“It 'doesn’t matter. Maybe I needed to tell you, it's just that…”
I look down, but she pulls my chin up and forces me to look at her amber eyes.
“All this doesn’t change what I feel.” She reassures me, she understands my thoughts even before I express my fears. It is something that astonishes me.
“Do you feel something for me?”
“Krum, would I be here with you if I didn't feel anything?”
“S-so… you do… feel somethi
ng for me?”
I can't believe it, I've never felt so much amazement and joy at the same time.
She hugs me, I'm motionless and unable to react. Okay, she has been with me several times. She has always surrendered. Now she is in my arms, but I know she hates me, I know she's never forgiven me and I also know she cannot feel anything for the most problematic man on the earth.
She looks at my eyes and with incredible sweetness and says:
“Why do you consider it weird that someone can appreciate you? I'm not like him, not all people are like your dad. I would never hurt you.”
“But I've hurt you so much and I've never apologized. You'll never forgive me, you can't feel anything for me.”
“Krum,” her lips touch mine. “I'd never have been with you if I hadn't already forgiven you.”
“You forgave me?”
Her answer is a kiss, a kiss that takes my breath away. If that God, to whom I am starting to believe in, hadn't taken all the tears from my body, I would now be crying out of joy. I've never felt my skin as I feel it now. It shakes and absorbs particles of fire that warm me all over. My chest is a chamber where the screams of my heart resound. All my senses are totally focused on my lips chewing hers. I love feeling like this; I adore knowing that I am someone to someone else. I feel something that was lost again; something that was part of a distant childhood, in which I see smiles and ingenuity. I feel a pure joy, clean, almost childish, pervading me and turning something in my stomach.
If I felt dead inside, I now know I'm alive, linked to this woman whose presence is becoming essential.
“I'm sorry,” I whisper. It's a difficult word. I feel it coming out of my throat as if I'm spitting out a pin stuck in me for too long. “Forgive me.”
“I already did.”
"Ti si moyata lyubov.” I whisper on her lips: you are my love.
“What did you say?” She smiles at me.
“That you are…” I swallow, the word love which seems to have become worse than sorry. “You are beautiful,” I lie. She hugs me and I repeat it. “Lyubov.”
Love.
She is my love.
30
AMBRA
When he leads me back to my room and greets me, I'm already missing him. Krum was summoned by Leonardo and I had to please him promising to stay in my room until his return. I don’t mind staying a bit by myself, as the latest events have given me no peace and my mind hasn't had time to assimilate what's been going on. Krum I and have been living between heaven and hell for days. At the moment I'm floating on sparkling clouds and I am fully aware of the effect that this man has on me. He helped to put everything else behind me. The incomprehensible feeling that binds me to Krum is stronger than anything that life is giving me. There is no darkness if darkness itself is holding me by hand. It isn't so difficult to slip into Krum's soul, finding out that in the end he is just a man shaken by a terrifying past. If I think about what he has told me, I feel I am just a woman ungrateful of the life granted to me. If I first thought that I had suffered so much pain, now my pains seem very small if compared to the existence of my Krum. He asked me not to leave him, to stay by his side and now I understand his fear; the fear of being abandoned and rejected, as he was when he was a child. Who knows how you feel to be sold by your family for a bit of money, exploited by the people that should protect you, by those who should love you unconditionally. Krum doesn’t know love or respect for the others and I now understand why, even though this doesn’t justify his often excessive behaviors. Or maybe it does?
I massage my temple in search of clarity. Maybe, it is true that a passion can make you weak and consume you internally as it can make you strong and indestructible. Now I feel that my passion for Krum is molding my armor and is giving me courage and determination. I suffer no pain anymore, I'm only aware of my past, of what was needed to bring me here and I feel strong and confident, because if there is one thing that Krum brought in my life, that is certainly courage. He made me strong, gave me the determination I needed to face him and so he erased all my weaknesses.
I pace back and forth in this room that no longer feels like a prison. If I stay, I have to deal with unscrupulous people, who have established their dictatorship; dictatorship that my father helped to create. After all, I have no proof of the illegality of this secret society. As far as I know it could really be a group of people that stay together in order to preserve its wealth. But if seven years ago, they acted like they did with me, I certainly cannot trust these people and their future intentions.
I have Krum, so I feel strong and protected, I can face the Father and spit in his face my “I have no intention of becoming a member of the Sect.”
Krum says I cannot refuse and if I cannot exempt myself from this obligation, what are the consequences? One time they kidnapped me, when my father tried to rebel. Today, what would they do?
There is only one way to find out and I decide to leave my room to assert my voice in front of Leonardo. Nobody can force me to do anything and repeating it is the only way I have to turn the page on this whole story.
I serenely go down the stairs, for the first time I don’t feel someone's eyes on me. It's as if everyone knew I would stay, as if it was obvious. I know where to find the Father and go straight to his office, hoping not to be intimidated by his pretentious look. This time, I will be the one expecting something, even if expecting to have the right to do what I want is a pretty absurd concept.
I come to the door of the Father's office and see that it's not completely closed, I can hear voices. Two voices: his and Krum's. I'm about to knock when my fist stops in the air and my ear tends to listen better.
“She only knows that she was kidnapped to keep Livori under control,” Krum says.
“Never, Krum, she must never know of that night. If she finds out that the Sect decided about her father's life…”
“She'll never find out.”
I take a breath and it sticks in my throat, choking me. I'm petrified, stunned by a single sentence said by that man, who I know, with certainty, is the Devil in person.
“Let her have a bit of fun, take her out if you want.”
“Okay.”
I hear Krum's steps beating on the marble. My feet automatically run away alarmed, as if they already knew they could catch the Devil.
I start running. I don’t know where to. Tears cover my face and run across my skin driven by speed. I cry silently, staring at the space in front of me, I don’t have a destination and I don’t want to have one, I just want to disappear and plunge into an infinite hole so I don't feel this smell of death on me anymore. My father… my dad! It was not enough to kidnap me, no, they had to eliminate him. My life was all a staging, played by this Sect that has had decided everything.
I cannot stay here a minute longer, I cannot tolerate the presence of my father's murderers, and I’ll never be part of them, even if they threaten to take my own life.
My mind is a mess, thoughts intertwine over each other. I see Krum in that damn garage, his hands pulling my hair, his furious and evil eyes. He is like this: he is cruel, there is no other explanation. Life has taken everything from him and he wants to take everything from others. That's why he wants everything, to destroy anything touched by his hands.
He's destroying me.
He has already destroyed me, rebuilt me and destroyed me again. It will never end.
There is no redemption for such a man and I also deserve to burn in hell to have thought for a moment to justify him. He's wicked. That's it.
I run through these halls, looking for a small place where I can cry by myself, where I can scream without being heard. I hear voices coming from the kitchen and recognize in them a source of salvation. When I go in, I see a man setting boxes of food on the marble shelf. He says that the requested food has arrived and that he's unloading the van.
My mind suddenly activates, logic reappears and the spirit of survival prevails in me; putting aside the pain t
hat has pushed me here. I dry the tears and introduce myself, drawing everyone's attention. Some housekeepers are arranging food in the cupboards. I look at the big open window facing the courtyard and my eyes light up when I see the delivery van.
“Do you need anything, Miss Livori?” The usual woman, the one who seems more vigilant than the others, blocks my way. The other housekeeper has left the kitchen and we are just me and her. The delivery man salutes and is about to leave, about to get in the van and leave, taking with him the only chance I have to leave the Temple without being noticed.
“Oh, yes, well…” I stutter. “Mr. Andolfi has asked for you.”
She should rush to him, I think. My hands are sweating.
“What does he need?” With the tail of my eye, I see the vendor closing the van's doors. I have to hurry.
“I don’t know, he asked for you personally.”
She looks at me skeptical, but then she goes and runs toward the kitchen exit. I'm alone and I move, I run to the outside porch and I call the delivery man who leans out of the window right away.
“H-hi, can you… can you do me a favor?”
“Tell me, Miss.”
“I need to go to town and there is no one who can accompany me, can you give me a lift?”
I have my heart hammering my poor chest. Sooner or later it will break irreparably.
“Of course, jump in.”
My God, thank you.
I jump in fast and sit beside the delivery man who is unaware of who I am. The trembling decreases as I sink into the seat. Only when the gates of the Temple close behind us, I take a breath of relief and I think I have succeeded. I look at the Temple from the rearview mirror, thinking of what I've lost, of what I've left and I feel I have forgotten a part of me there, though maybe I didn’t bring it with me deliberately.
Krum has wounded me in inconceivable ways and if I was able to forgive what he did to me, I’ll never forgive him now that I know they killed my father.
Forgiveness no longer exists. It cannot be forgotten.
He wants it all Page 32