Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Sergio stands in the large entryway of The Castle, his expression as serious as I’ve ever seen. I chew my lip and try hard not to look at Timeo. He’s the one I always go to during times of uncertainty, when I need some reassurance, but he won’t even make eye contact with me right now.
Why?
Just when I think we’re getting somewhere…maybe making a little progress, remembering who we were and picking up where we left off… he gets like this. Withdrawn. Aloof. Not really here at all.
“Why Bella Notte?” I ask.
“It’s the safest place for us all to be until we know the next plan,” Sergio explains.
“It’s a little creepy that it’s my brother-in-law’s sex club,” I mutter. Tosca coughs and Ricco snorts.
“Only part of it’s the sex club, Starla, and we don’t need to talk about that,” Ricco says, his eyes crinkling around the edges.
Tosca smiles and moves the conversation along. “I’m going to pack to head to Orlando’s. How long before The Castle is secured again?”
“No more than forty-eight hours,” Romeo promises. “We’ll make sure it’s secure while we investigate to find out who was behind it.”
I’m in the back of a large, armored SUV when we’re heading back to Boston. This time of day, the traffic into the city’s thick, every highway backed up. I’m by myself, alone in the back. I don’t even know where Timeo is. He disappeared right before we left. I close my eyes, wondering if I’ve only ever imagined any kind of intimacy or interest from him at all.
I don’t want to think about it. I can’t.
I pull out my phone and scroll through the notifications. I snap a few discreet pictures of myself not showing my face, the black interior of the SUV almost anonymous in its starkness.
“Hello, hello!” I say cheerfully into the camera, starting video. “I’m so sorry I’ve been MIA. Thank you for all the comments and messages wondering how I’m doing. I promise I’m totally fine and will be back soon, just had a bit of a family emergency come up. I know you understand. All my love!” I angle the lens so it shows only the lower half of my face, blow a kiss at the camera, and scroll through the clip. I quickly edit it, add a filter and adjust the lighting, then hit post.
I lean back against the seat and close my eyes.
Five years earlier
“I don’t want to do this.”
I sat outside the courtroom staring at the clock. Only ten minutes until the trial began and I’d be forced to sit there where my tormentors sat. I barely slept the night before, tortured with memories of the pain I’d been through and the abuse I’d suffered.
Eden was already in the courtroom with Sergio, in a discussion with the lawyer. I was in the anteroom with Timeo and my other guards.
Timeo stood and crossed the small distance between us. Sitting beside me, he reached for my hand and nestled it in both of his larger, warm ones.
“Talk to me. Tell me what it was like.”
Tears welled in my eyes as memory after memory surfaced. My mother, slapping my face when I talked back to an elder. My father, wielding one of his many implements of choice, punishing me for my transgressions.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” I whispered.
“I know,” he whispered back. “I don’t like to, either. But if you start with me, it might be easier to talk in the courtroom.”
I nodded because this made good sense.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I said softly, fighting against the flood of memories.
“Don’t start at the beginning, like they always say,” Timeo suggested. “Tell me the first memory that comes to mind.”
I closed my eyes and let the tears flow freely. I didn’t bother to check them, because I was a little girl again, alone in my bed. Eden was in the kitchen, while my father sat at a table and watched her. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them.
“You’re brave, Starla,” Timeo encouraged. “So brave.”
Eden was scrubbing the floor. I couldn’t remember why or how I’d gotten into the state I was in, but I remembered hearing his merciless voice, her small one in return. The welts all over my body from the beating he gave me had been throbbing. My mother was out again, as she often was, at some Bible study or quilting circle or something else approved and encouraged by the elders. It didn’t matter though. If she were home, she wouldn’t soothe me or comfort me when my father punished me.
If anything, she was worse than he was.
“I remember lying in my bed,” I whispered, as suddenly more memories came back to me, like frames of a movie sliding into place. “I remember now. I told my father a boy at school called me a bad name. I don’t even remember the name he said, but my father punished me for saying it out loud. And when I dared to question why I was the one in the wrong and the boy didn’t get punished, my father slapped me across the face.”