Chapter22
GIANNA
I didn’t expectMatteo to just walk off, leaving with me with his sister and her biker friends right after introducing us.But that’s what he did.
She’s still holding my hand, looking into my eyes like she wants to read my mind or something.Or like she wants answers that she’s not sure I would give her willingly.
She’s so pretty.Beautiful really.Long brown hair, big brown eyes, lips that are the dream of every woman looking for help from plastic surgeons and curves in all the right places.Even in ripped black jeans and an oversized T-shirt she looks like a queen.
“Come on, let’s get a drink,” she says.“I’m so glad to meet you.”
She takes my hand and practically pulls me through the door Matteo had just disappeared through.It’s a lot cooler inside, a lot darker, but it’s filled with so many people all staring at us that I think I’d prefer to just stand out in the parking lot alone.
She leads me to a sofa in the corner and asks what I’d like to drink.I almost say a vodka, neat.But then remember I don’t need to be drunk to function anymore.And that I might be pregnant.
“I’ll just have a soda or something,” I say, and she smiles widely and leaves.
Luckily, she’s back before the looks I’ve been getting grow hot enough to scorch.
She sits down next to me, handing me a wonderfully cool bottle and a glass.I resist the urge to rub it on my temples.But by now, the rest of the people in here have stopped glaring at me so openly.Maybe Nico and Francesco standing just behind the sofa had something to do with that.
Though at least Nico isn’t paying me much attention.One of the pretty ladies by the bar, wearing only a pair of distressed jean short shorts and a pink bikini top is exchanging very lustful looks with him.
“I don’t know what my brother has told you about me, but I’m so glad to finally see him with someone,” Isabella says.“And happy.It’s good to see him happy.”
I take a sip of my soda straight from the bottle.She looks so earnest, her words so full of actual feeling that my throat suddenly turned as dry as a desert.She clearly knows nothing about why and how I came to be here.
“He has been in a very dark place for a long time, hasn’t he?”I say and drink some more.
“Because of me,” she says, darkness falling over her face.Not unlike the darkness that follows him always too.
“It’s not my place to make that judgement,” I tell her.“But you wanted to be free, and I can understand that.My father would never have let me leave with a man I chose.He’d have done everything and anything to stop me too.”
She runs her hand thought her thick hair and nods.“But you probably wouldn’t have let it come to that, right?”
I have no idea where Matteo disappeared to, but I look at a door at the back of the bar, because I’m sure he’s somewhere beyond it.
“Honestly, I probably would have.”
I fell in love with Matteo on the night he first saved my life, and that love just grew and grew, and would continue to grow even after I gave myself to him.I was sure.
“But we’ll never know now,” I add and drink some more.“But tell me more about this place.It looks so much different than the world we come from, and that gorgeous house you grew up in.”
A sadness washes over her eyes, but then she smiles.“You’re staying at the house?I haven’t been back there in ages.And when I still lived there, I couldn’t wait to get away.”
She makes a gesture with her arms to encompass the whole of the room we’re in.“And this might not be a palace, and maybe even not the first place I’d choose as my home.But I’m free here and Blade is here, and I can finally live the fairytale I dreamed about while I was still trapped in that palace that was my family home.”
Her happiness and contentment are palpable in the air around her and beaming out through her smile.Will I ever get there?Will I ever feel this free?
“I guess that’s something I can understand,” I say after taking another sip of my soda.“I used to dream of being free, while I still lived with my parents in New York.A golden cage, I used to call it.But I don’t know if this here is any better.”
I take another sip of my soda and avoid her eyes.I shouldn’t tell her about the full circumstances of how I ended up with Matteo.My loyalty is still to him, it has to be, because I don’t actually have anyone else.
She is nodding knowingly when I glance at her again, her eyes hard.“I know a little about what happened in New York.You’re not with my brother of your own free will, are you?”
The night we spent together at the beach flashes before my eyes in vivid color and in perfect realism.It was the last night of my old life, and I thought it was also the first night of my new life.It’s just that the new life I got was not at all what I pictured it would be.But it is the life I imagined, wished for, craved.Only it’s a very twisted version of it.
“Do you need help?”she asks quietly for only me to hear.
