He starts walking back to the house and I follow.The spray from the crashing waves makes it feel like it’s raining, like one of those magnificent storms is already here, even though there isn’t a single cloud in the bright blue sky.I should take some of my own advice right about now.
Soldier on.Be dead inside.Do what you’re told and keep your hopes and plans close to the heart, but always in your sight.
It’s just too bad that one of my bigger hopes is walking down this beach with my arm around Goldie’s shoulders.Because that’s also one of the more impossible ones.
But I’m good with handling one problem at a time and it seems the Nico problem is handled for now.
And a fast ride in his Lambo should help clear my head too.Maybe even blow all the impossible plans for Goldie and me out.Because it’s time I start facing the new reality too.The one in which she hates me to the core.
Chapter9
GIANNA
Good thingI spent most of my life locked up in one apartment or another.Sometimes it was a house.Otherwise, I’d probably be crawling up the wall worse than I am.The sun is setting outside.Gold, just like the last couple of days.For a while it drove me crazy, thinking how so much can change and yet nothing changed.Then it drove me crazy that no one’s even brought me anything to eat all day.Not since someone—probably Matteo—left a couple of protein bars and a bottle of water on the bed.
I took a shower after he left.Spent so long under the jets that the water turned cold.
Then I found some clean black clothes in the closet—a pair of slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, the sort that was fashionable more than ten years ago.
Then I spent some time trying to open the door.I broke three of my nails trying to unscrew the doorknob.I finally gave up, since the screws are probably all rusted shut and have been painted over a bunch of times besides.
Then I spent some time wondering what my odds would be if I smacked whoever came in next over the head with one of the heavy crystal vases in this room.Or that green marble paperweight on the writing desk.Or simply one of the legs of the desk.Or the chair.But I couldn’t even lift the heavy wooden chair and I doubt I’d have the strength to take anyone out with the other things.
Besides, how far would I even get?
They’d catch me before I even cleared the garden.
But that wouldn’t even matter.
I just want to find my sister and make sure she’s all right.But how can she be all right?Neither of us will ever be all right again.
The blackness of that realization just swallowed me up.So I spent the rest of the day staring out the window, for a time wondering if a fall to the lawn below would kill me and deciding that yes, most likely it would.But it would solve nothing.My father would still be shot, my family still hunted, and my sister still married to the man who tore our family apart.
I have to stay alive and fight.
A woman’s place is at home, taking care of the family.You will learn to accept that.
My great-grandmother told me that once, when I complained about being locked up all the time and having no freedom at all.
She was old.Raised in a different time.I never took her seriously.Now the very walls of this house seem to whisper those words to me.Probably because it’s such standard advice for women in our world that all our homes are imbued with it.We can dream about fighting our lot in life, but we never win.
My great-grandmother was a strong woman, and she also said,You must let the men think they are leading, but it is your advice they must follow.Make sure they do.
I don’t think I have any other way out of this than that.I have to convince Matteo to release me and my sister.Her marriage to that monster won’t hold up in the real world.And once we are free, we will find our family and get everything back.
But first I have to persuade Matteo to let me see her.
As much as it makes me want to throw up, I have to act like I still love him.Shouldn’t be all that hard, because a part of me still does.And yet, it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Chapter10
MATTEO
There’sfast rides that clear your head and then there’s fast rides that make you believe you’re moments from death.My ride with Nico to pick up his drugs was the second kind.More than once I believed I would not be making it back to the Ferro mansion unless it was in ghost form.Especially after Nico sampled some of the drugs we went to pick up.
And my biggest concern about all that was… What will happen to Goldie if I die?
She hates me.I don’t even know why I’m protecting her as hard as I am, since she’s a total hinderance to my own plans.Yet here I am, seeing her face right before I think I’m about to die.Over and over.
