Marguerite leaves with one last look over her shoulder, and I find the strength I need to stand as Vincent comes into the room.
He closes the door and takes in the mess I am.
I won’t lie there in my grief and not find whatever strength I need to thank him.
Dad is dead… and there’s no reason to keep me here.
I’m supposed to leave in a few days. We’re supposed to end, yet there was no part of today that felt like that. He came for me and saved me.
He’s injured. I can see it on his face. There’s a massive bruise on the side of his cheek and a cut by the corner of his eye. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and all along the side of his arm is battered with bruises so deep it distorts his tattoos.
I suck in a sharp breath, holding the tears back as he walks up to me.
Vincent takes me into his arms. I sink into the warmth of the embrace. He rests his chin on top of my head while I hold him too.
“I can’t thank you enough,” I whisper. My voice sounds hoarse and raspy.
He runs his hand over my head and cups the back while he looks down at me.
“You’re mine… remember? I take care of my things. No need to thank me.” He seems to be trying for lighthearted. I wish I could try too, but I can’t. There are too many dead faces in my head. “I’m sorry about your father, Bellezza.”
I start shaking again as another bout of tears takes me. “They killed him, Vincent. They killed him… because of me.”
“No… please don’t say that. How can it be?”
If I answer that question, I’m going to have to tell him more. I don’t have the strength for that.
I don’t have the strength for anything.
“Ava… it wasn’t your fault. That’s the first thing you need to know. I’ll be straight up with you because if you want to cast blame, then it’s my fault too. I took you to the party. That’s where you saw them. I accepted your offer and brought you into my world, where you don’t belong.”
I clutch his shirt and wish his words away. We might have started out the way we did, but I never felt like I didn’t belong with him when I was with him.
“Please don’t say that to me,” I answer.
“It’s true, Ava. A better man than me would have let you go.”
“Look what you did for me today…” I say, trying to get the words out. “I don’t have anybody who would have done what you did for me today.”
When I think of the elaborate setup to save me and the way everyone moved around to clear the way for Vincent to get me out of danger, it was amazing.
He was amazing and pushed the limits. My God, did he ever push the limits. I would have been dead in that apartment. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. I wouldn’t have gotten out.
“Well… maybe I can remember that as something good. Ava… we don’t have time for guilt and blame. I am going to be straight with you, and I hope that you can trust me.” He takes a breath and continues. “We were approached by the Ivanezh Bratva a few weeks back to form an alliance. The last few weeks has seen me battling in my head the question on whether or not to do it. That’s how I came to know them.”
I listen, taking his words in, knowing what he’s expecting me to do next if he’s talking business with me.
He’s a mafia boss. He’s not supposed to be talking business with me, not like this.
“It was weeks ago?” My voice shakes.
“Yes. It was complete coincidence. It all just happened. I didn’t trust them from the outset, and I was going to say no to any business relationship with them.” He cups my face. “I had no idea they knew you, or… had any kind of link to you. I would never put you in danger. Not ever. I need you to believe me when I say that. There’s no way I would have taken you to that party if I had any idea who they were to you.”
His words…
He’s talking like he knows something. He’s talking like someone’s filled in the blanks and pieced together some parts of the puzzle.
“Vincent… I …” I begin.
“Ava… I understand you’re scared. These are dangerous men. So, I understand why you didn’t want to talk to me about it. What I need to know is why… why do they want you dead?”
I shake harder hearing that. I shake so much my thoughts rattle in my mind. He’s holding me, and I can’t bare it. I can’t breathe.
They want me dead. They’ve always wanted me dead. But first, they wanted to make sure they played with me and messed up my mind. Tortured me. Torture me and make me worry if I just had hours to live, minutes, seconds.
It’s not just what I know. It’s what they did to me.
I back away from Vincent, out of his grasp, and shake my head.
“Ava, tell me what happened to you. What did they do to you?”
“I can’t… I can’t talk about it. I can’t say it outside my head.” I never have.
I never needed to tell Dad. He knew. He knew what men like them did to girls like me. He didn’t need to be told.
I had to have therapy for three years just to get me back on track to some level of normalcy. All the while I spoke to my psychiatrist, I never gave details. I never said the words. Said the names I was supposed to, to acknowledge what happened to me.
I think if Ilya didn’t hate Ma as much as he did, she would have suffered the same fate.
Sometimes, I wished they had just burned me alive the way they killed her.
Throw gasoline on my skin and set me on fire. It would have been over quickly. I wish they’d done that because what they did was so much worse.
“Ava… to help me fight these guys, I need to know. I need to know what happened,” Vincent says.
“I can’t,” I cry. Feeling trapped suddenly, I rush over to the window. He comes up to me and reaches for my arm. “I can’t, Vincent… Please don’t make me.” I try to pry the window open, but either it’s stuck or my hands are shaking so damn much that I can’t grip the latch to open it.
He tightens his grip on my arm.
“Juliette,” he says, and I stop. I just stop.
I stop, and my lips part. Hearing that name, being called that name, reaches me deep inside. It reaches that girl I used to be. I might be here, but she’s still locked away in that room with the monsters. She’s still watching for the shadows. She’s still hiding.
But that can’t be me.
Such a terrible thing couldn’t have happened to me.
“Is that your name?” Vincent asks, and I turn to face him. “Juliette?”
Hearing it again makes something snap in my brain. Something cracks around the edges, and I start shaking my head.
“No… that can’t be me. I can’t be that girl, Vincent.” I shake my head harder. “She is not me. I can’t be that girl who watched her uncle cut off her father’s head and burn her mother alive. I can’t be her. That couldn’t have happened. It wasn’t me. I can’t be that girl who was raped by her uncle over and over again.” Rape… I said it. I actually said it. His eyes bore into me like daggers. I’m on a roll, and now that the secrets are starting to spill out, I might as well drop them all. He won’t want me now. “I can’t be her… I can’t be that girl who was raped by all her uncle’s men. They raped and tortured me. Burned me when I tried to fight back. Why didn’t they just kill me then?”
When his hand drops to his side, I fall to the ground and scream. I scream the way I did back then, scream all the pain from my being. I unleash it and let it out, feeling like surely this must be it. I’m going to die from this.
Those arms that surrounded me earlier when I found Dad surround me now. They take me now and hold me.
Through the blindness of tears that blur my vision, I see tears stream down Vincent’s cheeks too.
He scoops me up and holds me to him, holding me as close as he can, and I let him.
“I got you,” he whispers. “I got you.”
I continue to cry, letting the pain drain from my body while his words soothe me, like balm on my weary soul.