“He’s not imaginary!” The words tear from my throat with more force than I intended. “His name is Carlo Benedetti, and he’s going to come for me!”
“Carlo Benedetti,” the guard repeats slowly, like he’s savoring each syllable. “Never heard of him. And trust me, if he was as important as you think, I’d know the name.”
“He owns a nightclub,” I insist desperately. “He’s powerful. He’s…” I stutter to a stop. I can’t tell a prison guard that Carlo Benedetti is a capo in the mafia. The trusted right-hand man of the Ajello heir. “He… He’ll be here soon, you’ll see.” I finish lamely.
“I don’t see him anywhere, do you?” The guard looks around the empty cell with exaggerated confusion. “Where is this powerful husband of yours? Why hasn’t he gotten you out of here already if he cares so much?”
The questions hit like physical blows because they’re the same ones I’ve been trying not to ask myself. Why isn’t Carlo here yet? How long have I been in this place? Hours? Days? Time has no meaning in this lightless box, but surely it’s been long enough for him to have done something.
“He’ll be here soon,” I repeat, but my voice sounds hollow even to my own ears.
The guard shakes his head, his expression shifting from cruel amusement to something almost pitying. “Oh, pretty boy. They were right about you. You are fucking mental, aren’t you?”
The casual cruelty of the words, the dismissive way he says them, makes something inside my chest crack and bleed.
“Nobody is coming to save you,” he continues, his voice gentle now in the way people use with the very sick or very stupid. “And I can do whatever I like to you because nobody believes little psychos. Who’s going to take your word over mine? A delusional prisoner with a history of violence, against a respected prison guard?”
He takes another step forward, close enough that I can smell the stale cigarettes on his breath and see the predatory gleam in his small, dark eyes.
“So here’s how this is going to work,” he says softly. “You’re going to be very, very nice to me. And in return, I’m going to make sure your time in solitary isn’t completely miserable. Refuse, and I’ll make sure every day you spend in here is worse than the last.”
I stare at him, my mind struggling to process what’s happening. This can’t be real. This can’t be how the story goes. Carlo is supposed to save me. Love is supposed to triumph over everything else. Beautiful stories are supposed to have beautiful endings. That’s how it works. That’s how it always works. In movies. In books. In my visions.
But as the guard reaches for me again, his intentions written clearly across his leering face, I finally understand the truth that’s been staring at me all along.
He’s right. I am crazy. I’m wrong about everything.
My vision stutters and flickers. A nauseating dance between truth and delusion. Like a candle burning out, my carefully constructed fantasy dies in one last splutter of light. Leaving only cold, stark, horrifying reality behind.
The real world is a crushing weight on my chest. I’d scream if I could breathe. It’s too much. Too awful. Too real.
Carlo doesn’t love me. If he did, he’d be here by now. He’d have moved heaven and earth to get me out of this place insteadof leaving me to rot in a concrete cell where guards can do whatever they want to me.
The note was a lie. A pretty fiction to make me feel better about being abandoned. A cunning trick to stop me from taking more sleeping pills on my own, so Carlo wouldn’t feel bad. The kind of thing you tell a child to stop them from crying, not a promise you actually intend to keep.
Nobody is coming to save me because nobody loves me enough to risk anything for me. Nobody ever has. Not my family, not any friends, and certainly not the man I was stupid enough to think of as my husband.
The man I abducted and chained to my bed. The man I did things to that he didn’t want, at least not at first. The man I nearly killed because I thought it was romantic.
Of course he escaped the first moment he could. He’s probably celebrating his freedom right now. He doesn’t love me. He is just my brother’s best friend. A man whose only crime was to be nice to me. To show an interest in me.
It’s not his fault I latched onto it. Twisted it into something false. Wove a beautiful fantasy out of scraps of off-handed kindness.
Carlo had no idea what I would turn his casual, polite attention into. He didn’t know he was the only person to be nice to me. Or that I would make such a big deal out of something so small.
He didn’t foresee that he would be imprisoned and violated simply because he tolerated his best friend’s crazy little brother.
He’s just nice to everyone. I’m not special. Our love and our marriage exist only in my hallucinations. It’s not real.
The only thing that’s real is this cell. This cold, this darkness, this guard who’s about to take things from me that I wanted to share only with the one man who deserves them.
This is my life now. This is what I actually deserve. I abducted and abused the only person who ever treated me well. So it is only fair that I pay the price.
The beautiful dream is over, and I’m finally awake.
Chapter thirty-nine
Carlo
