Chapter 34
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ANASTASIA
Running is a discipline only the strong minded are capable of pursuing. It takes power and strength to exert your body until exhaustion, forcing your muscles to move even as your mind cripples at the idea,
I hated it at first but then again, there’s nothing I love more than overcoming a challenge.
When I reached 6 miles after a month of training, I began to see the other side. The enjoyment that can be found in pushing yourself to your limits, achieving personal bests and aspiring to reach more.
Just a few more steps. You can do it. Just a few more .
I keep the mantra running in my head as I race through the trails. Ten miles down, another 3 to go.
Even through my earbuds that blast a Ted Talk, I can hear Declan’s thundering steps behind me, struggling to keep up as I increase my pace. Sweat invades my vision and I raise my arm up to wipe it away, desperate for a cool shower when I get back to the apartment.
It’s funny — I’ve lived alone there for four years and now without Enzo, it doesn’t even feel like home anymore.
Instead, I’ve thrown myself into work which has left me sleeping at the office most nights and indulging in some of less legal work to blow off some steam.
Still, he always comes back to haunt me. Whether it’s the mass of calls and texts he delivers to my phone, the stalkers he has on my trail or the fact that whenever I close my eyes all I can see is him
I shake my body, stretching my aching limbs for a second before sprinting faster through the forest. The sun begins to rise on the horizon, shades of pink and orange expand across the sky and light filters in through the gaps between the leaves, their warmth spreading across my bare skin.
Finally, I reach the end of the trail and hold onto a tree, breathing hard and fast with my muscles aching from the joints. Straightening up, I turn back towards the trail and laugh, cupping my hands around my mouth. “I thought you said you were going to beat me this time!”
My smile fades as silence stretches across the landscape. A few birds chirp high above and there’s the distant buzz of cars on the freeway but other than that…
I take a few steps forward, wondering if Delcan maybe got lost or he stopped further back. I try to remember when I stopped hearing those loud footsteps, but my mind was stupidly consumed with thoughts of Enzo instead.
“Declan!” Nothing but silence. “Declan if this is your idea of a fucking joke then you’re fired.” I was bluffing but if it was a joke then he would pay the price. “Declan! Dec—”
A crunch echoes to my left. My eyes shoot towards it, finding nothing but bushes and trees. I step closer, hesitating since I don’t have my gun on me. I still can’t see anything.
It was probably a squirrel or…
I gasp as something sharp jabs into my throat. Not a knife. Too thin and it would probably hurt a lot more.
My muscles begin to seize up and I stumble, losing my footing. I think I’m going to hit the ground hard until something wraps around my waist, pulling me back up.
Then I feel it. A rush of air against my cheek, like the brush of a gentle breeze .
“You’ll forgive me one day.” I want to scream, shout, fight but I feel so light…almost like I’m floating. I fight to keep my eyes awake but they’re fluttering shut, my muscles rebelling against my mind and forcing me to give in to the abyss of darkness that I can’t escape.
***
I groan, the sound ricocheting violently inside of my head. My body dips as I move, constrained to something soft and plush. Forcing myself upright, my throat burns at the intense need for water. I reach towards my bedside table but my body is forced back.
Something loud jingles besides my ear and I blink my eyes open fully, panic seizing my body as I take the handcuffs fixed around each of my wrists that shackles me to the headboard. Glancing to my right, there’s no bedside table and the walls aren’t a soft gray.
This is not my bedroom.
There’s a distant roar in the background and I shuffle as far as I can towards the tiny oval window embedded into the wall.
All I can see are blue skies, spanning on for miles and miles.
No, no, no .
Frustration builds inside of me as I attempt to clutch my chest, the rapid beating of my heart so loud I’m scared it might explode.
Who the fuck would be stupid enough to kidnap me?
Killian comes to mind but I doubt he’d have the balls to do it, especially after I threatened him. Seamus then…I mean Enzo’s Uncle — but how the fuck would he know where I run?
Declan is the only person who accompanies me and not even Calista knows about the trails.
I choose to keep it secret. To keep the quiet oasis all to myself so how could anyone else…
The knob on the door begins to slowly turn. I shuffle myself all the way back on the bed until I hit the headboard and frantically scan the room for anything I could use as a weapon. The lamp is the only thing that comes close.
Reaching across the bed, I grab the handle and quickly stuff it behind my back just as the door clicks open. A manic laugh rises in my throat.
It’s better to make them fear you —- that’s what my dad always said.
“You’re so dead motherfucker—” My face falls as he walks into the room .
Confident and arrogant without a hint of remorse or regret in his eyes. Something ugly twists within my chest and without thinking I launch the lamp at him. He narrowly ducks and it smashes against the wall instead, glass shards sprinkling all over the floor.
Anger channels itself through my veins like a drug overpowering all my rational senses. It heightens as he inches towards me like a hunter circling their prey.
Well fuck him.
If some twisted part of him honestly believes this is a romantic gesture, then he seriously needs committing to an asylum.
“Why?” My voice must sound hoarse and cracked because he crosses the room, filling a cup with water from a cool jug, before bringing it to my lips.
I press my lips close, turning my head away from him. There’s no way I’m letting him treat me like some kind of pet.
“Please,” Desperation seeps from his tone and when I look at him, I finally catch a glimpse of humanity beneath his hardened exterior.
Well, my throat does hurt.
Leaning forward I part my lips for him, allowing him to pour the cool liquid down my throat. Each drop increases the need to satiate the intense thirst and I gulp it all down, refusing to meet his gaze.
“Better?” I nod, the pain in my head beginning to dull.
Then I remember that he drugged me. “What did you do to me?”
He sets his palm on my cheek, brushing away the stray hairs that fall into my face. I try to shrug him away but it’s no use. “Just gave you a mild paralytic. You’ve been out for a few hours.”
“And Declan? If you hurt him then—”
“He’s fine. Dom is keeping him company until we land and by then it’ll be too late for him to call anyone to stop us. Anyways, I’m banking on the fact that when we land, you’ll call him and your family to tell them that we’re on our honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon?” My tone darkens, remembering the very argument we had about not going on one. There was no time for a honeymoon with all the work we had to do and besides, a honeymoon was for real married couples that were in love and wished for nothing more than to spend hours alone together.
“I’m taking you to my hometown. You love Sicily, but you’ve never seen it in the way I have.”
When we were teenagers, I wanted nothing more than to travel home with him. — to see Italy through his eyes and let him show me everything that made him into the boy I was in love with.
My hand moves, jostling the handcuffs and reminding me of all his lies and secrets again. “You kidnapped me.”
He cocks his head, a smirk playing on his lips as though he’s actually enjoying himself. “Is it really kidnapping if I’m your husband?”
“Uh, yes! Are you insane, Enzo? The moment you let me out I’ll be calling my parents to send the jet so I can fly back to New York and prepare the paperwork to divorce your ass.”
Something dark clouds in his gaze and he reaches out, cupping his hand around my throat. I gasp but he captures it with a kiss so brutal and passionate I can’t think of anything other than his tongue in my mouth.
When he pulls back, I’m short of breath, only noticing now that he’s squeezing my throat. “You’re not leaving me, Anastasia. This, us? It’s forever. There’s no-one else for me and I know there’s no-one that can challenge you the way I do, claim you the way I do, make you feel so hot and angry and desperate with the need to be filled all at the same time. We’re two dark souls that have finally found a little light in each other. Don’t snuff it out just yet.”
I match his intense gaze, ignoring the way his words begin to fill the lonely cracks inside of my blackened heart. “You know you never told me that you loved me. I just accepted it back then. I never really questioned it because your actions were enough but when you left, it haunted me for so long. It forced me to wonder if you knew that you would end up leaving one day and you didn’t want to break me further by whispering false truths whilst I let you slip your dick inside of me.”
The pain is still there. Coiling and burying itself into my heart, creating more fissures that can’t be fixed by broken promises.
Enzo cups my cheek, his fingers drifting over the skin. “I was a coward, Anastasia. I could only murmur it that night I left. I broke into your room, you were sleeping so peacefully and I realized I had never seen something so beautiful before. You don’t know how much I longed to wrap you in my arms, wondering that if I did, would it finally put an end to the nightmares. I decided there and then that I would come back to you. I would get my mother somewhere safe, let my father’s legacy crumble and come back to you because there was nowhere in the world that felt like home. Nowhere except being in your arms, kissing you, holding you until you fall fast asleep every night.”
“But you didn’t come back! You left, you can’t rewrite our past now!”
I’m angry. I’m not upset, I’m not hurt…I can’t let him do that to me anymore .
I can only be angry.
“I wanted to come back more than anything and I’m sorry that everything happened the way it did, but I’m not sorry for taking you now. I need you to understand everything.”
“Which is?” I murmur, hating the coldness that creeps over me as he pulls away.
Swallowing hard, he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a picture. It’s creased and blurred but I can make out Angelica’s smile as a blushing bride. “Your parents?”
He shakes his head. “My Uncle Aldo and Ma. They were married when she was barely sixteen. He was twenty-three and I guess she thought she was in love. He abused her, twisted love into something ugly and she blamed herself for it. Then my father came back from serving duty. He was two years older than my mom and she told me it was love at first sight. She realized the love Aldo was giving her wasn’t pure and honest but corrupt. Aldo was the oldest, so he was in line to inherit everything but then he saw what was happening between my parents and plotted to kill my father. He failed and my grandfather disowned him, forced him to divorce my mother and everything fell into my father’s lap. They lived peacefully for almost a decade, and we were happy, but when I was nine, some men broke into the house. It was Aldo — I recognized his face from the pictures my father would show me. I hid in a closet while he beat my father into a coma and then… he raped my mother. My Ma kept the lie that my father was alive and well going for years until eventually he passed away when I was seventeen, and well…you know the rest. Aldo broke my family and then rebuilt himself as Seamus O’Connell.
My revenge took over when I thought I lost you for good. I made it my mission to destroy him and everything he holds close.”
Every part of me aches for him. For the nine-year-old in the closet and the boy at seventeen forced to become a man far too soon.
“I don’t want your pity, Anastasia. I just need your understanding. To know my reasons for marrying you at first, but now it’s all changed. I don’t care about him anymore or getting my revenge. All I want is you.”
He’s breaking down every fortress I spent years cultivating to protect myself from ever being hurt again. Vulnerability is a tricky feeling and I hate it.
I hate the tears it springs to my eyes and the rawness it spreads across my soul.
Panic flares in his gaze as he draws my forehead to his, casting a connection between us that I never want to end. “It could never be anyone else, Anastasia. I was prepared to die alone, content with only knowing the touch of your warm flesh, because to me, nothing and nobody could ever compare to you. I love you, so take it and run or accept it and stay but that truth has been cemented into our history for nine years.”
What? “So in the limo, that was your…”
“First time in nine years.” I don't know what to feel. I don’t know what to do. “And it was worth the wait, trust me.”
My tongue peeks out, catching the saltiness of tears I didn’t even know had begun to fall. Closing my eyes for a moment, I picture a gun in my hand and pressing the trigger. I try to imagine gaining a sense of sick satisfaction in watching his brains blow all over the place.
But I can’t.
A huge part of me is glad that the lamp didn’t hit him because hurting him only hurts me and that’s the pain and misfortune of falling in love with someone who, with every fiber of your being you wish you could hate.
Yet no matter how much they hurt you, burn you, screw you over…you simply can’t exist without them by your side.
I open my eyes again, finding him watching me with curiosity and patience but beneath it lies fear of rejection.
Fear of losing me.
Enzo is different now. He’s evolved into a man I can trust. A man who shares his secrets no matter how depraved they may be and a man that I can finally admit to myself that I love .
“I love you too. I’m stupidly, blindly in love with you. I live my life based on reason, Enzo. But this…this is completely idiotic of me. To love a man who has hurt me and yet I can’t stop loving you. One more promise. Don’t hurt me again, don’t lie, don’t let go. I can only give so many second chances and this is the last one.”
Cupping my cheek, his amber eyes bore into mine, filled with the same intensity as when he first looked at me in that library. “I love you Anastasia and I promise that I will never betray you again.”
Kissing him, I moan as he flicks his tongue against mine, my tears leaving their stain on his skin as I pull away. His grin pulls a smile onto my face as he leans in again. I sink my fingers into his hair, tugging on the soft strands whilst my back hits the bed.
The handcuffs noisily clink, breaking the spell he’s enraptured me in. I hold my wrists before his face and shake the cuffs. “Can you take these off now?”
A wicked smirk spreads across his lips and I scowl as he shakes his head, forcing my hands up until they’re clutching the headboard. He dips down, nipping at my neck. “Hold on, mi amore. I have a lot of apologizing to do and we still have…” He glances at his watch. “Five hours until we land. ”
I shift beneath him, curiosity bubbling excitement within my stomach as he kisses his way down my body. “I expect an orgasm for kidnapping me.”
He smiles against my stomach, yanking my shorts down. “Just one? You underestimate me, mi amore.”
And he makes good on that promise.
Again. And again. And again.