Slowly, carefully, I get out of bed and begin searching the room. Maybe he’s hiding. Maybe he heard Mama coming and found somewhere to conceal himself until she left. Maybe he’s waiting for me to find him so we can figure out what went wrong with our beautiful plan.
But there’s nothing. No sign of him under the bed or in the bathroom, the kitchen, the spare room. Nothing to indicate he was ever here at all.
It’s only when I return to the kitchen that I find it. A folded piece of paper, my own expensive stationary, sitting prominently on the counter where I couldn’t possibly miss it.
My hands are shaking as I unfold it, my heart hammering with desperate hope. Maybe it’s a love note. Maybe it explains where he’s gone, when he’s coming back, why our perfect ending didn’t work the way it was supposed to.
The handwriting is definitely Carlo’s, strong and masculine and heartbreakingly familiar.
My beautiful Menace, wait for me. I will come back for you. I promise. This isn’t goodbye. This is me saving us both. I love you. C
I read it three times before the words sink in. Then I crumple the paper in my fist and sink to the kitchen floor, sobs tearing from my throat like something being ripped apart.
It’s a beautiful lie. Every word of it.
Carlo is gone, and he’s not coming back. He escaped while I was unconscious, while I was drugged by my own stupid romantic gesture. He got free and ran back to his real life, his normal life, his life without the crazy boy who kidnapped him and tried to kill him.
Wait for me. I love you.
Such beautiful lies wrapped up in pretty words. The kind of thing you tell someone when you don’t want their actions weighing on your conscience.
He doesn’t love me. How could he? I’m exactly what Mama said I am. Broken and desperate and too damaged to love. I’m the kind of person who kidnaps someone and calls it romance. The kind of person who drugs their perfect dinner and calls it salvation.
I’m a lost soul who mistook captivity for love and madness for happiness.
And now I’m exactly where I started. Alone in my basement, unloved and unwanted, with nothing but beautiful lies to keep me company.
The only difference is that now I know what love could have felt like, if I’d been worthy of it. Now I know what I’m missing, what I’ll never have, what I destroyed with my own undeserving hands.
I clutch the crumpled note to my chest and cry until there’s nothing left inside me but emptiness.
Beautiful lies are still lies, no matter how much you want to believe them.
Chapter thirty-three
Carlo
The law offices of Holdan, Drake & Associates occupy the top three floors of a glass tower in Canary Wharf, all chrome and marble and the kind of understated elegance that screams expensive discretion. I’ve never needed their services before, but they come highly recommended for sensitive matters that require absolute confidentiality.
The kind of matters that respectable men don’t want traced back to them. So much so that they can’t use their usual people.
“Mr. Benedetti,” the receptionist says with professional warmth, “Mr. Holdan will see you now.”
I follow her down a hallway lined with original art, my footsteps muted by carpet thick enough to muffle secrets. Everything about this place is designed to make wealthy clients feel safe sharing their most embarrassing problems. Divorces, paternity disputes, blackmail situations that need to disappear quietly.
Annulments of marriages that should never have happened.
Holdan himself is exactly what I expected. Mid-fifties, silver hair, Savile Row suit, the kind of man who’s spent decades cleaning up the messes of people with more money than sense. He doesn’t bat an eye when I explain my situation, though I edit heavily. A brief ceremony in a moment of... poor judgment. No consummation. Obvious grounds for annulment.
None of it is true. My judgment wasn’t involved. Ginni decided we were getting married, and that was that. As for consummation… well, that happened several times and it was the best sex of my life.
But none of that is this man’s business. He doesn’t need to know. He just needs to do his job.
“These situations are more common than you might think,” Holdan says, making notes in careful script. “Particularly among men of your... background. The important thing is acting quickly before any legal complications arise.”
Legal complications. They can’t be as bad as the kind of complications that might emerge if anyone discovered Carlo Benedetti spent two weeks chained to a bed playing house with his femboy captor.
“How quickly?” I ask.
