Luna found me a minute later. My sweet girl licked my tears and made her soft purring noises to calm me down. I clutched her to my chest and spent the rest of the evening muffling my sobs in my pillow.
The next day, Franco was gone, having surreptitiously boarded a plane to New York.
I never forgave him for all the jabs he’d thrown my way.
I never would either, my blood concocted from my mamma’s grudgeful nature and my papà’s burning temper.
Franco would find more penance from the devil than me.
Even after two years, his egregious words were imprinted on my soul. Though I tried my best not to let that uncouth moment define me, some days it was harder than others. Unfortunately, it had affected all my forthcoming romantic relationships and flings. I didn’t know how to make it stop. It was like a merry-go-round with a shattered console, no stop button in sight.
“Gabriela?” Anna’s gentle voice belayed me back to reality and far away from my innerving musings.
I cleared my throat, glancing at both my friends with faux ennui. “Yes?”
They both exchanged a worried look that scored me. “You zoned out. Are you okay?”
“Oh.” My fingers were still holding the spoonful of rice, halfway to my mouth as that horrid memory plagued me. “I’m fine. Just thinking.”
Taking a bite, I tried to focus on the delicious spicy flavours on my palate and not the way both girls’ faces fragmented with deep concern.
After an eternity of silence that caused my stomach to churn, Layla finally spoke up, “You didn’t deserve what he did to you.”
I knew it, but it was still nice to hear it out loud again.
“Anything you need, you let us know, all right?” Anna reached forward to squeeze my wrist in a gentle,we’re-here-for-youmanner.
I swallowed the lump around my throat, mustering a curt nod.
I hated thinking and talking about Franco, which was why I avoided telling Anna and Layla for two days. But these were my soul sisters. I couldn’t hide my emotions from them. Nor did I want to. We told each other everything, no matter how trivial or crucial, and worked through it together. It was the beauty of knowing each other since childhood. We were one another’s ride or dies.
“Also,” Anna started somberly. “How are you doing with the whole break-in stuff, Gabby?”
I’d texted the girls this past weekend, letting them know what happened to me. Right away, they both stepped up to take turns driving me to school when my guard couldn’t and promised to spend their free time with me so I was never alone, extremely worried for my well-being. So far, Papà and the Remingtons had looked into the situation but found nothing that would help them get to the bottom of this mystery.
“Physically, I’m okay. Mentally? I’m feeling disturbed. There have been no updates whatsoever, even after Papà rummaged through the security footage with the Remingtons. The only thing they know is that it was an unidentifiable man wearing all black—hoodie, jeans, face mask—who entered the building when the security guard was away, around the same time wewere having brunch. The last thing the cameras captured was him entering the stairwell. No doubt, it was him who broke into my place. All the personnel have been interrogated. Papà said it wasn’t any of them, so we’re back to square one.” I sighed, frustrated. “I also don’t know who could hate me enough to do something like this.”
Layla and Anna exchanged a glance, and the latter mumbled to me, “You don’t think it’s Franco, right?”
I blinked, the wheels in my mind turning.
I hadn’t considered that possibility.
“It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume,” Layla insisted. “Someone broke into your place four days ago and your ex-boyfriend, who loathes you, suddenly makes a reappearance after being out of the picture for years. That’s extremely suspicious.”
Fuck.
They did have a point.
“Despite the bad blood between us, do we really think he’d go as far as to taunt me like that?” I chewed my bottom lip. “That’s too crazy, even for him, right?”
Their matching frowns spoke volumes.
Though Franco hadn’t been physically abusive, he was proficient at wielding insults to strike me down. It would be just like him to use a Shakespearean quote to spite my intelligence, since I wasn’t a classics reader. He’d hated the fact that all I ever read was contemporary romance books. Once when we were seventeen, he’d been ranting about the fact that he missed a game-winning goal and I made the mistake of telling him to calm down…so he retaliated by angrily cracking all the spines of my paperback novels to get back at me. I remembered becoming a blubbering, crying mess. And he replied that he was doing me a favour—that I was an airhead for reading books with unrealistic expectations for men.
God, I hated him.
It was a plausible theory that Franco was behind this—after all, it would be very diabolical and fitting for him to call me a bitch—but I wasn’t fully convinced.
