My eyes snap open, and I jolt upright, dragging in desperate breaths to smother the suffocation. With trembling hands, I reach for the tumbler on my bedside table, lift it to my lips, anddrink. The nightmare still plays in my head. I try to chase it away, wipe the tears from my face, and take more sips of cold water.
I can’t fall asleep at night, and whenever I do, all I see are nightmares of him dying, sometimes in a hospital, sometimes in my arms. I wake up like this every single night. It’s been this way for the past week.
One week has passed. One week since I came back from that forest. One week since Hunter nearly lost his life, and it was all because of me.
The men who attacked us were sent by Chris. Hunter never told me that the very reason he and Logan got close to my family was to help Chris kill my dad, my uncle, Leo, and Zo. All of this came out during the investigation my family conducted over the past few days, with Salvario’s help. He knew more about Chris because Chris had held him captive to use his hacking knowledge.
Now Hunter is under my family’s watch, and Logan is missing.
It’s possible he got close to me with the intention of harming my family. Hunter told me that wasn’t true, but I can’t fully trust him. Maybe his memory was never gone either, and he’s been lying all along. The truth can only be dragged out of him through torture. A cold shiver snakes across my skin, raising every hair on my arms.
They’ll torture him once he’s recovered from his wound. My father promised me he wouldn’t kill him, but I can’t stop him from torturing him.
That night, after he lost consciousness, I called Logan and told him about the attack. Within twenty minutes, their men arrived and took us to the hospital. There, I dialed my dad’s number from Hunter’s phone and called him, telling himwhere I was, since he couldn’t trace Hunter’s phone to find the location.
It took Dad’s men three hours to reach us. I spent those three hours sitting outside the operating theatre, staring at the red light. Those hours have haunted me every day since. My mind drags me away from reality and back to them, even when I’m not asleep.
My therapist said it’s PTSD. She advised me to stay on medication for a few days to make it easier to cope. It isn’t a long-term trauma response but a reaction to a single event, and the environment I’m in now is conducive to healing. A few days of medication, followed by therapy, should help me recover completely.
The only flaw in her calculation is that my environment isn’t as perfect as it seems. My head is completely screwed, and the trauma of watching Hunter nearly die isn’t the only reason, there’s another way he has fucked me over.
I can’t move on from him.
Salvario is here, taking care of me, and yet all I can think about is Hunter. The guilt it brings is insufferable.
My mind compares every one of Salvario’s actions to Hunter’s without my permission, and whenever it does, I want to reach into my skull and gouge my sick brain out.
There are these voices that whisper his name every time Salvario stands before me. Every time I hear his voice—which is slightly different from Hunter’s because of his Italian accent—Hunter’s voice echoes in my head. Every time Salvario tries to touch me, my fucked-up mind reminds me that it was Hunter in his place just a few weeks ago.
I want to convince myself it’s because of guilt. I left him there, struggling between life and death.
I know he’s alive, but it changes nothing.
I left him in that operating room and came to San Diego with Dad’s men. The next day, Salvario told me he survived. Salvario is happy about it, because now he can kill him in the most painful way imaginable.
I lie down on my bed, turn my head toward the glass window, and stare absently at the bright moon until it blurs from my vision. Silent tears slide from my eyes, soaking into the pillow beneath my head.
The bed dips as Bruno climbs onto it. I’m not sobbing, but he must have sensed me crying and left his bed, where he was sleeping snuggled up with Rosie, to come here.
He licks the tears from the bridge of my nose and curls up against my chest. I hug him close, kissing his nose.
“Thank you, baby,” I whisper.
Dad had someone bring Rosie and Bruno from Naples to San Diego the day after I was kidnapped. After I came back, Dad, Mom, Ma, and Pa came here too. Mom and Dad left after three days, once I’d assured them I was perfectly fine. Ma and Pa left this evening.
The act of pretending to be normal comes naturally to me now. My family isn’t easily convinced, but somehow I still make them believe I’m fine. No one knows about the wrist-cutting incident, or they wouldn’t have bought any of it. Even Salvario doesn’t know, Hunter knocked him unconscious right before he found me in my bathroom. When they saw the wound on my wrist, I lied and told them I’d gotten it while fighting Hunter. That intensifies their hatred for him. It’s better than them knowing how pathetic their daughter is.
Bruno licks my jaw with the tip of his tongue. I pat his head. “Are you missing him?”
He isn’t the same with Salvario as he was with Hunter. He doesn’t like Salvario, which is strange, because dogs are supposed to never forget their masters. He can’t be confusingthem like I am. With Hunter, he and Rosie used to train for hours. Now, he won’t even go near Salvario. Most of the time, he doesn’t react, but when Salvario sits on my bed, he turns fierce and lunges at him. I’ve used that as an excuse to keep Salvario in another room.
Salvario had been staying in a hotel in San Diego. After I came here, he moved into Leo’s mansion. Since his dissociative identity is no longer present, my family no longer sees him as a threat.
During the weeks I was missing, they worked with him to find me, and now Dad and Leo regard him as a reliable, intelligent man. I don’t think they’ll bring him fully into their inner circle just yet, but I can see it happening over the months.
He stayed in my room one night, and then Bruno came in. Now he’s in the room beside mine. It’s better this way. With him so close, I live under a constant weight of guilt and self-loathing. These tiresome emotions can lead me toward severe self-destruction, and then the worry of what my family will have to go through will add to my misery.
“Do you want to see him?”
