“You slept in his bedroom?” Mattia clarified, gingerly moving back, again, to the sleeping arrangements. She knew why.
“Yes. On a single bed he’d had put in for me. He didn’t trust me not to try to escape, so kept me with him at all times.”
“Atalltimes?”
“I was allowed to use the bathroom alone. All sharp objects and anything I could use as a weapon had been removed from it.” She should have slept in there, she thought. The bath was big enough for her to snuggle down in.
“And you slept in that single bed?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
Fed up of all the pussy-footing around, wanting nothing more than for her family to just leave her alone, Francesca folded her arms over her chest. “If you’re trying to bring yourself to ask if he raped me, then the answer is no. He didn’t. I slept in that bed alone.” It was Gino’s bed she’d shared.
Her cousins exchanged significant glances, and she felt a stab of anger that those glances were less about her physical and emotional welfare than what they perceived her lack of being sexually assaulted to mean for them.
“However, just because he didn’t rape me doesn’t mean you can marry me off to that Elio Ranieri.” She had the brief satisfaction of watching her all-powerful cousins stiffen. “I know you all know my kidnapper told me, and I...”
Mattia raised his hand to silence her. “This is something for us to discuss with you another day. You’ve been through a traumatic ordeal, and now you need to rest and recover.”
“I won’t marry him,” she stated.
Siena leaned over the table and covered her hand. “No one will make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Good. Because I would sooner kill myself than marry someone against my wishes.”
Her over-dramatic but flatly delivered declaration resulted in more significant glances being exchanged. Good. She might not have the energy to fight her corner at that moment in time, but she wanted them to know – all of them – that she wasn’t going to be the pushover they all expected her to be. The pushover she’d spent her whole life being.
Withdrawing her hand from her cousin’s, Francesca got to her feet. “I thank you all for everything you’ve done in obtaining my release, but if you will excuse me, I want to go to bed.”
No one tried to stop her. They could see the exhaustion on her face as well as she could every time she caught a glimpse of her face on a reflective surface.
At the door, she paused and looked at Mattia. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“What plans do you have for him?”
There was no need to explain who she was talking about.
He held her stare, weighing up what he could share with her. Only a week ago, Francesca had been the naivest member of their family, the cousin who lived in dream clouds longing for a future that was her own for the making, but doing nothing to make it happen other than ask.
For all that she’d always believed she’d fought for every scrap of freedom, she’d never once forced an issue, simply relied on the hope her constant requests would wear her parents down.
Look where that had got her. Twenty-two years old and with only two weeks of employment history.
It was possible Mattia caught something in her stare he’d never seen in her before, because his tone changed, going from the voice of someone talking to a small, fragile child to the voice of someone conversing with an adult. “We need to bide our time, but the day will come soon when we exact our vengeance for what that man did to you.”
She refused to show a hint of emotion. With a sharp nod of her head, she left the room.
It was three in the morning. Gino’s celebration party was winding down. It had been an impromptu party, a sheerfuck itmoment.
His apartment was trashed. It was a small price to pay for the gamble of his life paying off so handsomely. Now all he had to decide was which of the beauties sprawled over his apartment he would take to his bedroom and use to screw away the last remnants of Francesca from his memories.
Francesca’s bedside clock read 03.31. She was back in the bedroom she’d spent her whole life in, but still no closer to sleep.
She closed her eyes and tried to close her mind. The voices in it were growing louder. A cacophony of noise coming close to deafening her.
