Matteo wants me to prove I would never hurt him.
But I’m not giving him anything ever again.He’s already taken too much from me.
And with that newfound strength and resolve I leap out of bed and walk to the balcony.That door’s not locked, and the wide balcony stretches over the whole length of the vast bedroom.And the lush garden around the house stretches so far that the first house I see looks tiny by comparison.And then there’s the ocean.It stretches all around, its soft waves brushed by the pale golden light of the rising sun.Everything is so big here.So vast.Like it never ends.
I don’t hear the door unlock, or his footsteps as he joins me on the balcony.But I feel the heat of his presence.It’s like another sun has risen.This one behind my back.
“Sleep well?”he asks mockingly.
“Not a wink.”
“Good, I should think you wouldn’t sleep well after you tried to kill me.”
I turn to him, ready to tell him he’s a murderer too, that he murdered first.Killed all my dreams.But something in his eyes stops me.It’s just as vast as the view of the ocean before us.But much more empty.Like a sad desert plain that has no end.
I sweep my hand across the view instead.“You have all this.Why do you need me too?Why do you need to continue putting our family in danger?Why can’t you just let me go be with them?”
“Is that what you really want?”
I should shout yes.But I can’t because it’d be a lie.What I want is something I can’t have—him as he was when I first fell in love with him.Before he betrayed me.So I don’t say anything.I just scoff.Let him take that as he will.
He shrugs and walks to the railing and grips it so tightly that his knuckles turn white.“I may possess this place, but now I have to defend it.And it’s not mine yet.Not until I kill my enemy and take everything from him.Just like he took everything from me.”
“He didn’t take this, clearly,” I say, standing beside him and looking out over the garden.
“Not yet.”
“You talk of being cursed and your family always losing everything,” I say.“But if this is what ruin looks like then I don’t know what isn’t.”
He looks at me out the sides of his eyes, the gaze sharp and hotter than any sun.“Ruin comes in many ways.Money, possessions, and pretty houses aren’t everything.”
I pout at him.“How shallow do you think I am?”
He doesn’t answer, and it’s a good thing, because if his words were anything like the sharp, mocking sarcasm in his eyes, I just might attack him again.
He turns from the railing.“Come on, we’ll call the hospital and find out how your sister is doing.And then I’m taking you shopping.”
I can’t believe I’m excited by both those things almost equally.
I’ve tried not to think of my sister dying all night.But now that fear is front and center in my mind, making my legs wobbly and totally rigid at the same time as I follow him back into the bedroom.
He’s already talking on the phone and hands it to me when I reach him.
“Good luck,” he says.
“Thank you,” I whisper as I take the phone and press it to my ear.
I’m about to find out if the nightmare he brought can still get much darker.I’m about to find out if my sister is still alive or had died alone in a hospital in New Jersey, while I lay in a huge, soft bed in a house as big as a castle, trying to decide how much I love the man who is partly responsible for getting her shot.
Only one of those answers will let me keep my mind intact.
But I will have to live with either answer.
Locked up in another golden cage.
At the mercy of the man who gave me everything and took more.
I’m not sure I’m ready to know.
