“Move on? You think I haven’t tried? You think I don’t make myself look in the mirror every single day? Make myself count every single line on my back every single fucking day? I was raped!” She chokes on that word. “I was raped by five men. Five men my brother arranged to rape me while he watched. While he took fucking photos. I’m not sure there’s anything sicker than that, and you think I should move the fuck on?”
Her face crumples as she says it, and I wonder if that last seam isn’t coming apart now. That final thread finally ripping.
“Do you have any idea how hard—how fucking impossible—it is for me to get up out of bed every morning? Do you think you know what it’s like to be betrayed like I was?” She’s talking through sobs. “And yet you want me to trust you, but it’s not like you tell me anything, is it? Not like you tell me anything when I ask. You just tell me I have to trust you. How can I?”
“I didn’t rape Angelica. I didn’t impregnate her then abandon her. My father did that. And when she reached out to me for help, I wasn’t there because he made sure I never heard her cry.” I stalk to her, take her by the arms, and shake her hard. “You asked me if I wanted to save you because I couldn’t save her and I don’t know. Maybe I do. I don’t fucking know. But you fucking sit here and tell me you still don’t trust me. Let me ask you this. How many times do I have to save you for you to learn? For you to see that you can trust me? How many times do I have to come after you for you to see that I’m not going to let you go? That I won’t let you drown? How. Many. Times.”
“Why?” she asks, her voice small, her face that of the frightened, lost, little girl again. “Why do you keep doing it?”
“Because…” Fuck. I can’t finish.
“Why do you keep bothering with me? I’m broken. There’s nothing left to break. You said it yourself. Why fucking bother? I’m damaged goods. How can you want that?”
It’s quiet for a second. Just the sound of a sniffle from her.
“Because as fucked-up as it is, maybe I want to fix you.” I let her go, feel her slip from my grasp. “Unbreak you.”
She lets out a choked sob. “You can’t unbreak something. It doesn’t work that way.” Her voice cracks. She wipes the back of her hand across her face. “But you’re wrong about one thing, you know that?” She collapses onto the bed like her knees can’t support her anymore.
I look down at her. She’s quieter. Tears slide down her cheeks and turn her eyes and the tip of her nose red and she’s licking them from her lips.
“You’re wrong,” she says again. “There is more to break. And I’m scared you’re going to be the one to do it. To shatter what’s left of me.”
I watch her, her pretty green eyes so sad now.
No, not just now. Always. Always sad.
She bows her head, and I see tears fall and land on the bed. Emilia, small and alone in my bed.
21
Emilia
I must look so pathetic to him. So weak. I half expect him to walk away, walk out the door. Leave me here, a sad, miserable mess.
But then he does something that surprises me. He crouches down and wraps one arm around me. I feel his warmth, his strength. Giovanni pulls me into him, and I let him. I let myself fall into him. My head is in the crook of his neck and my tears are wet on his skin and I feel myself tremble. Hear myself sob. And it’s different than before. Different than any other time. This time, I’m giving my pain. Letting someone else carry it for a little while.
He holds me like this for a long time, and when I quiet, he says my name, turns my face up to his. He kisses me, and I wonder if he tastes the salt of my tears on my lips when he does. I kiss him back. He lifts me in his arms and lays me on the bed, and I cling to him. I don’t want to be apart from him. I can’t get close enough to him
My hands slip from his neck because I want more. I need more. I undo his pants and push them down and he’s between my legs and then he’s filling me up. He’s inside me, and it’s all that matters. This. Right now. Us. Him and me. Him inside me.
“I don’t want to hurt you. Break you. I fucking love you,” he says. It’s a whisper, and the words sound so strange on his tongue.
I put my hands on his face. I want to see him, see his eyes, and I know in that instant, I can’t ever be without him. I don’t close my eyes when I kiss him, and he moves inside me, fucking me, his breath coming shorter as I cling to him, wrap my legs around him, want him deeper still. I know he feels me come. He was waiting for that because I feel him throb inside me then. I look at him, and his face is just inches from mine. We come together, and I think neither of us wants it to end.
He holds me afterward. I think about what he said. About fixing me. Unbreaking me.
It’s like he reads my mind. “I want to amend what I said,” he pauses. “I don’t want to fix you. I’ll take you exactly as you are. All the broken pieces of you.”
I smile a little. “I didn’t believe all that about you. I don’t even know why I asked you. I should have told you your father came to see me.”
He just gives a short nod, but his eyes harden at the mention of the old man.
“You aren’t going to follow through with your threat?” I suddenly remember it.
“That business is between me and my father.”
“Giovanni, don’t. It’s not worth it. He’s not worth it.”
He doesn’t answer. I relax again, realizing I had tensed up when the conversation had taken that turn. I change the subject.
“Can I ask you something?”
“I don’t want to talk about my father.”
“It’s not about that.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“When we were at that safe house, where my father was. Did I…say it out loud?”
A smile spreads across his face. “You mean did you tell me you loved me?”
I open my mouth to speak, to tell him to wipe that grin off his face, but just then, there’s an urgent knock on the door and Vincent calls out. Giovanni’s smile vanishes in an instant.
Giovanni moves fast, getting up, pulling on a pair of jeans, and opening the door in mere seconds. He steps into the hallway but doesn’t close the door all the way.
“What is it?”
“We got him on camera. He was just at her apartment.”
“What? Where are the men I put there?”
I sit up, holding the blanket to myself.
Vincent shakes his head, shrugs.
“Fuck! Get more men out there. I’ll be right down.”
Vincent nods and leaves. Giovanni is pulling on a T-shirt he snagged off the back of a chair and disappears into his closet.
“Is it Alessandro?”
He returns, loading a cartridge into a pistol. He looks at me. Nods.
I get out of the bed, go to him. “Don’t kill him, okay?” I don’t know why I ask that.
He just looks at me, doesn’t answer my question. And I know he will kill him. “I have to go.”
“Be careful. He’s got nothing to lose.”
“I know.” He pulls me close, studies my face for a long moment like he’s memorizing it, like it may be the last time he sees me, and worry settles into my belly. But then he lets me go. “Stay here, Emilia.”
I nod. He’s gone an instant later.
“No one touches him but me, understood?” he calls out in the hallway.
He’s gone. I’m still trying to register what’s happened. I sit back down on the bed and pull the covers up to my lap. I’m thinking.
Alessandro is here. He was in my apartment. I knew Giovanni was watching it. I think it’s strange my brother didn’t realize that he would be. Alessandro is more devious than that. More cunning. He should have known.
I feel anxious. Alessandro so close. In my apartment. What if I’d been there? I’m glad now that Giovanni wouldn’t let me go home earlier. I do wish he’d taken me with him now, though. I could help, and, if it came to it, protect Giovanni from Alessandro. Not that I
think he needs protecting. Giovanni will crush my brother.
But something isn’t sitting right with me.
The bed is still warm from our lovemaking. What happened just now, I need time to process it. I think about that night at the safehouse, when Giovanni was there, when he came for me. He confronted me about it then. Fearlessly. I thought that was it. That my secret was out, that it was over. But tonight, me saying the word. Saying out loud that terrible word—I think that may have been the first real step I’ve taken in moving forward, in taking control of this rather than letting it control me. Letting it define me. Own me.
“I don’t want to fix you. I’ll take you exactly as you are. All the broken pieces of you.”
I push the covers back and get out of bed. I can’t lose myself in his words. This isn’t a fairy tale. People like us, we don’t get happily-ever-after.
I go into the bathroom, switch on the shower. Something keeps nagging at me about Alessandro having gone to my apartment. I assume he got word about me from one of the men from the other night at the club. I assume they told him Giovanni had me. Or did they say that I was on Giovanni’s arm? It certainly would have appeared so. It wouldn’t have looked like I was there against my will, not like them. If they got word to Alessandro, he would come for me. I wonder if his hate for me is greater than his sense of self-preservation?
When the water begins to steam, I step under the flow. I use Giovanni’s shampoo, his soap, and I can smell him around me. On me.
After the shower, I get dressed and go downstairs. I’m looking for my bag. My phone is inside, and I want to call Nan. I know it’s late, but I want her to know Alessandro is here, that Giovanni will pick him up tonight, and that she and dad are safe. That soon we won’t need to hide anymore.
After checking in the kitchen, I go to his study, where I find the door ajar. I push it open all the way and spot the book his father had given me on his desk. Blood betrayal. It’s the worst kind.
I shift my gaze away from it. I was right in my initial reaction to the old man. There is something vile about him.
My tote is sitting beside the desk on the floor. I pick it up, dig through it to find my phone, which is switched off. It must have run out of batteries. I look around for a charger. It’s an iPhone, although it’s an older one, so I think Giovanni must have a charger that fits. The unlocked drawers don’t contain one, though. I don’t try the one that was locked the other day. I know what’s inside that one.
I go into the kitchen and start to look through the drawers there. Everyone has a catch-all drawer. I try several before I find his and inside it, a charger that will work. I plug it in and wait until I can turn it on. And I see a blinking light go on right away, telling me I have a voice message.
My heartbeat picks up because no one knows this number. Only Nan. Did I miss her call again? Did something happen to dad?
I push the message button, and it takes three tries for me to remember my password. There’s silence for a long time, so long that I almost delete the message, thinking it was a mistake. But something tells me not to. Maybe it’s that background noise because there’s something familiar about it. Something that makes every hair on my body stand on end.
“I moved daddy,” the low, mocking voice finally says. There’s a slow chuckle. “You got that one by me, I’ll admit.” Silence. No, not silence. That noise again. It’s louder this time. And I go rigid, my hand trembling so badly I almost drop the phone. Because that sound, it’s me. It’s familiar because it’s me.
It cuts out, then starts again and I know he’s moved the recording forward. Because I was still screaming in the initial part. Still fighting. Now I’m not. Now I’m whimpering. He moves it again, and the sound of leather breaking flesh makes me jump. The scream that follows makes my blood run cold.
He recorded it too. I didn’t know. Photos weren’t enough for him. I wonder if he’s replayed this over the years. Relived my suffering. My breaking.
“But Nan,” his voice says. “Poor Nan. She’d gotten old, huh? I’m sorry to say she didn’t make it, Sis.”
“What?”
No one answers. It’s just a recording.
“Now, dad’s not looking so good, is he?” I hear the sound of machine’s beeping. My father’s machines. “Crazy. I can stick a pin right into his eye, and he doesn’t even flinch.”
“Stop!”
“You have one hour to get your ass here. One hour, and you’d better be alone, or I’ll be putting more than pins in his eyes.” There’s rage in his tone. It combats the violence of his words. But when he speaks again, it’s in that laid-back, mocking tone. “You can figure out where, I suppose?” He turns up the recording. Leather on flesh. Screams. The laughter of men.
Then, abruptly, a woman comes on. It takes me a minute to realize what it is. “If you’d like to delete the message, press…”
I hang up and immediately dial Nan’s number. There’s no answer. Did I expect there to be one? But how did Alessandro get past Giovanni’s men?
Same way he got past them at my apartment, I guess.
I open the door that leads to the garage. It’s unlocked, but I guess Giovanni isn’t expecting I’ll leave, not after tonight.
God. Tonight. How can something so perfect turn into the worst night of my life?
No, not the worst. I lived those nights. This isn’t the worst.
But maybe by the time it’s over, it will be.
I don’t know if I’m expecting to find a car in the garage, but I don’t. Giovanni took it, obviously. I go back into the kitchen and through the hallway to the front door. It’s locked, and I need a key to open it. Shit! I walk to the French doors that lead out to the garden, but I can see already that he’s secured the door I shot out.
“Think. Damn it, think!” I try Nan’s number again. Again there’s no answer. I go back into the kitchen, lose ten minutes looking through every drawer for a key, finding none. I try the garage and realize I can manually open the door.
It takes me a few minutes to figure out how to do it, but then the door starts to go up. Once it’s halfway, I run underneath it and hail a taxi. Remarkably, one stops right away. I get in and give him the address of the house, the one I never wanted to go back to. Never wanted to see. But I have no choice.
The driver stops, turns back to me, then glances at the house I just stepped out of. “You sure you want to go to that neighborhood, lady? I don’t think—”
“Please go as fast as you can!”
“All right. Suit yourself. Try to help someone out…”
I block him out and try to call Nan again. She can’t be dead. He can’t have killed her. “Oh, God, Nan, answer. Please answer.”
But she doesn’t and I hang up and think about the fact that I should have grabbed a kitchen knife, looked for a gun, fuck, something. I stupidly came with nothing. No weapon. I should call Giovanni. Tell him where I’m going. Where to find Alessandro, because he’s on the wrong path. Alessandro isn’t at my apartment. Alessandro only sent him there to separate us because he knows I’ll come, and he knows Giovanni would never let me come alone. My brother has nothing to lose now. His days are numbered; they have been since he decided to double cross Giovanni. And I know he’s going to try to take Nan, my father, and me with him.
The night seems darker as we near the neighborhood, and I know why the taxi driver was warning me. I do know this neighborhood well.
“Here. Stop here.”
He stops down the street from the house. My eyes are locked on it. It’s dark, like no one is home. Like no one has been home for years. Is this where Alessandro was holed up?
I open the car door as soon as the taxi stops, and the cabbie catches my wrist. “Whoa, hold on there, lady.” He points to the fare machine.
“Shit. I forgot my wallet.”
He gives me an incredulous look. I have an idea. “Go back to the house where you picked me up. Keep the meter running. They’ll pay you. Ask for Giovanni. He’ll
be looking for me. Give him this address.”
“Are you sending me on some wild-goose chase?”
“No, I swear. I have to go. Please, just do this. I promise you’ll be paid for all your trouble. Please.”
“What’s your name?”
“Emilia. Emilia Estrella.”
He studies me, narrows his eyes. “You sure you should be here?”
I nod. I have to be.
He releases me. “All right, Emilia. But if this Giovanni don’t pay up, I’m coming for you,” he says, any concern or kindness for me gone from his tone.
I step out into the night and close the door while he mutters something under his breath. I watch the taxi disappear down the road, and I’m truly alone. I make my way down the broken sidewalk to that broken house where four years ago, a broken girl emerged from a cracked basement window, her body and spirit as fractured as the sidewalk of this forgotten neighborhood.
22
Emilia
My steps slow as I near the property. I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to be here. But I have no choice. I wonder if the taxi driver will get word to Giovanni in time.
In time.
Before my brother finishes the job he started four years ago. Before he kills me.
I finally stand before the run-down house. I stop and stare at the front door, eye each of the dark windows. The lawn is overrun with weeds, and they’re creeping up through the cracks of the walkway too. I take the first step, then another. My heart is racing, and I realize I’m saying a prayer.
When I reach the door, I simply stand there and wait. He knows I’m here.
A moment later, the lock turns and the door opens. The remembered smell of the house overwhelms me. Makes me take a step back.
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