With a tight chest, I take a moment to scan the grounds below. The old trellis that clung to the wall is now rotten, the drain pipe several feet away. Bruno waves a hand as he paces the lawn, smoking a cigarette. Not even Spiderman could penetrate these walls tonight.
I place the book on my nightstand, then shrug my cardigan from my shoulders and lay it over the back of mydressing table chair. Not much has changed in here. It’s still the same decor it was when I was eighteen. All my happy memories tainted by the massacre from the angel of death, a nickname for the silent killer who picked off my father’s men one by one in the run-up to his murder. I’d heard them talk about it. All the while, unbeknown to me, I was meeting him in the Villa Borghese, my father and brother too busy to even notice what I was up to. The irony isn’t missed on me.
I woke up to bloodstained sheets and went downstairs to bloodstained walls and a pool of blood in my father’s room. I shake the thoughts away. No amount of therapy can remove the image or the guilt that it was my fault.
There was no love lost with my father and I remember a sense of relief, knowing he couldn’t hurt my mother anymore, but Elio paid the price, having to step up and take on the family business.
Deep breaths. It’s a different time. I inhale for five and then exhale for five. “I have nothing to be afraid of,” I say out loud, reciting my daily affirmations that used to calm me down.
“Except me,” a familiar voice says in the shadows.
I lunge to the door, but cold hands wrap around my waist, his palm silencing my mouth as he whispers into my ear. “You left me, fiore mio.”
His body holds me hostage against the wood, his heart beating against my back at the same ferocious pace as mine. “There isn’t a place on earth you could go where I won’t find you.” With one hand over my mouth, his other hand grips my throat. “Do I need to remind you that you belong to me?”
I shake my head, my voice muffled behind his hand.
“I think I do. I think I need to show you.” He removes his hand from my mouth but holds my throat in a viselike grip.
Metal clinks as he tugs at his belt.
I claw his hand around my neck. I could shout, scream, bang against the door, but I don’t because my body wants him despite my mind screaming and my heart bleeding on the inside from where his betrayal slashed it to smithereens.
Instead of crying out, I pant heavily, waiting for him to turn me around and kiss me, but he holds me against the wood, tugging the fabric of my t-shirt.
“I want you stripped bare. No fucking dressing gown,” he growls in my ear as he tears the cotton at my back.
The sound of fabric tearing rips through me. “Please don’t.” I fight, my body thrashing against his, but I keep my voice quiet.
Don’t wake the baby.
Memories ripple and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s in the past.
More sounds of fabric shredding fill the room, along with my panting breaths as I struggle against him. “Not like this.”
“Yes. Like this, Rose. You’ll never leave me again. You want to change your identity and disappear? I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’ll forget your own damn name.”
The sound of the fabric tearing slices through the fog of desire, sharp as a whip.
And just like that, I’m not here anymore.
I’m back in London. Back in that prison, disguised as a home…
The bedroom spins, colour leeching from the walls until all I see is white. White bedding, splattered with red. My blood.
Magnus’s voice drips like acid into my ear. “Scream for me.” His weight bears down on me as he tears the cotton nightdress from my back. A burning sting slices through my skin. I grit my teeth and clench the duvet as more blood splatters against the white bedding. Another bedspread ruined, but that’s the least of my worries.
“Scream like a stuffed pig,” he says, but I won’t wake thebaby. I won’t have my son grow up in a house where he sees his mother get beaten to a pulp like I did. That is not the life I want for my son, so I stay silent. Another laceration burns as his knife cuts deep. A whimper leaves my lips, but I refuse to cry.
In my mind’s eye, I clutch the bedframe, feel the jagged pain of the blade slicing my skin. My breath comes shallow, ragged. My heart slamming against my ribs like a caged animal.
No. No. It’s not him. Not now. Not real.
But my body doesn’t understand. My body only knows the sharp burn at my back, the metallic sting of old fear flooding my veins.
Don’t wake the baby. Don’t wake the baby.
The mantra echoes in my mind, a helpless loop. I bite down on my lip until I taste blood, the same as I did all those years ago.
