Eighteen
Ava
I twist around, wearing just a bra and panties, peering over my shoulder at my ass in the full-length mirror.
A faint mark from Maxim’s leather belt still lingers on my skin.
My lips press together. That stupid bastard.
Two weeks later, and I’m still furious enough to kill him.
How dare he beat me like some defenseless child?
No matter what I did, he had no right to treat my body that way.
The fitting room curtain slides open, and before I can cover up, Emily steps in. She mutters an apology under her breath at the sight of me half-naked and starts to back out, but her eyes catch the belt mark, and she freezes, eyes widening.
“My God, Ava. What happened?”
I bend down, rummaging through the pile of clothes I tried on, and quickly pull on my own. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened, and the embarrassment of Emily knowing Maxim whipped me hits me so hard that words escape me.
Emily closes the gap between us, standing right in front of me, gently stroking my arm. “Did Maxim do this?”
I just nod. She exhales sharply, full of fury, then takes my hand and pulls me out of the fitting room. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I know a cozy restaurant where we can grab lunch and talk.”
“But you haven’t finished shopping yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. Even if I show up to tonight’s date with Carlo in a sack, he won’t care. He’s only thinking about how to rip it off me anyway.”
Her playful tone draws a laugh from me. She called me this morning, begging me to go shopping with her for the romantic evening she has planned with her terrifying husband. I figured it’d distract me from Maxim, so I decided to shop for myself too, and now this happened.
The restaurant Emily mentioned really is a cozy, beautiful place. The air’s a bit chilly, so we chose a small round table by the window. Emily’s guards and Alex took a table nearby.
Emily’s face is unmistakably shadowed now, the vibrant energy from hours ago completely gone.
“I’m sorry for upsetting you too,” I murmur.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and gives me a faint smile. “After years of living among these stubborn, old-fashioned men, nothing they do surprises me anymore. It doesn’t hurt, but it still pisses me off. No matter what you did, Maxim had no right to lay a hand on you.”
Her blunt mention of the beating tightens the knot of embarrassment in my stomach. She takes my hand, her voice laced with raw anger.
“Sweetheart, you’re not the one who should be ashamed. That Neanderthal ought to be choking on regret for how he treated you.”
“He thinks that just because he’s a man, he can do whatever the hell he wants and get away with it.”
She scoffs. “They all do. Being a woman around men like them, or worse, being their woman, isn’t easy. Making them understand that you’re a person too, that you deserve respect, takes strength and a hell of a lot of fight. I managed it. And you can too.”
My eyebrow arches on its own. “You went through this with Carlo?”
She lets out a low chuckle. “Hell yeah. Compared to me and Carlo, Maxim’s given you a lot more freedom than I ever had. For the first few months, I wasn’t just trapped in the house, I was locked in a room.”
I freeze. I know nothing about how Emily and Carlo first met, but I can’t imagine a man as obsessively devoted to her as Carlo ever treating her that way. I take a sip of my lemonade to hide my shock.
“That’s hard to believe. You two seem so…unbreakable together.”
The waiter slides our plates in front of us. Emily twirls her fork into the pasta, her smile turning soft and genuine.
“Yeah, we’re in love. But getting here wasn’t easy for either of us. We’ve had our share of fights and sacrifices, still do. Marriage, if you ask me, is the art of compromise.”
“Maxim isn’t the kind of man who wants to compromise with me on anything.”
A sly smile curves on her lips. “Don’t give him too much credit, sweetheart. He’s still a man. As long as you let him think he’s in control, you can hold the strings and make him dance any way you want.”
I hope Emily’s right, but right now, more than making Maxim lose control, I want to make him suffer. I want to prove that just like he has this terrifying amount of power over me and my life, I can still slip out of his grasp whenever I want.
That’s why the idea I’ve been obsessing over for the past few days creeps back into my head.
Maxim needs to learn a real lesson.
So after lunch, once Emily and I part ways, I tell Alex I need to do some shopping and deliberately pick a place where I know I can sneak out through the restroom window.
I leave my phone behind in the bathroom so Alex can’t track me, and after withdrawing some cash from an ATM, I buy myself a new phone and SIM card.
I don’t even fully understand why I’m doing it.
I just feel like I’m finally taking back a small piece of the control I lost over my own life.
I tuck the phone into my bra and make it back home before dark.
Alex is waiting for me with a thunderous look on his face.
Without saying a word, he pulls out his phone, dials a number, then hands it to me.
I already know who’s on the other end, so instead of arguing, I press the phone to my ear.
“Hello.”
“Where the fuck were you?”
Maxim’s furious voice tears through the line.
Even though part of me is genuinely scared of what I just did, I force my tone to stay calm.
“Out. Walking around like a free woman and proving to you that I’m not as helpless as you think I am. And next time you put your hands on me, I’m grabbing my daughter and disappearing.”
I don’t wait for a response. I toss the phone back into Alex’s arms.
***
A few more days pass, and I slowly fall back into my routine. Maxim still hasn’t returned from his trip, and after dropping Aurora off at the hotel, I decide to take a walk through the park near the café.
Even though winter’s almost here and the air has turned chilly, the city is still buzzing with tourists. As I walk among the crowd, I find myself studying their faces, each one carrying a different fate, a story of its own.
That’s when I sense someone approaching. I turn and recognize him immediately. It’s Gerardo, April’s husband. The Family I used to work for.
As always, he greets me politely, a gentle smile on his face as he extends his hand. “Ava. What a coincidence.”
Before I can respond, Alex steps in, towering and tense, his protective edge sharp as ever. “Is there a problem? Do you know this man?”
“Yes, Alex. I know him. It’s fine.”
He gives Gerardo a hard, suspicious look before stepping back a few feet, though his eyes never leave us.
Gerardo gestures toward a bench a little farther away, motioning for me to sit.
It’s strange, he’s never spoken more than a few words to me before.
What could he possibly want now? We sit side by side.
“I thought you were still in the States,” I say. “April told me you had to stay there for at least five years.”
His eyes dart nervously, like he’s hiding something. “Yes, that was the plan. But things changed with my work. You should come visit sometime. April and the kids would love to see you.”
“Of course. Are you still living in the same place?”
“No, we moved. I’ll tell April to email you our new address tonight.”
There’s a pause. Then he asks quietly, “How’s Aurora doing?”
“She’s good. She’s grown a lot since the last time you saw her.”
A faint, wistful smile tugs at his lips as he nods.
Silence stretches between us, heavy and awkward.
After a moment, he stands. He slips a hand into his coat pocket, looks at me for a long second, then pulls it back out and reaches to shake my hand again.
Without another word, no goodbye, no explanation, he disappears into the crowd, leaving me stunned.
If I didn’t know him, I could’ve sworn he was on something.
When I get home, the smell of his cigarette reaches me before he does. He’s sitting at the kitchen table exactly as he always is, bare chest, just a pair of lounge pants hanging low on his hips, a cup of coffee in front of him.
I march in, ready to start a fight, but the moment I see the stubble shading his jaw and the red veins spidering through his tired eyes, the fire in me fizzles out.
His cold gaze locks on mine as he exhales a cloud of smoke. “Aurora’s at the hotel?”
I nod, pouring myself a cup of coffee before taking the seat across from him. “You caught Leonardo?”
He crushes the cigarette in the ashtray like he’s grinding Leonardo’s skull beneath his fingers. “No. That motherfucker’s vanished.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
He leans back in his chair, eyes locked on mine. “I’ll find his allies. No one disappears from my radar like that without help.” A deep breath fills his lungs before his voice drops lower, sharper, dangerous. “But I’ll find them, and I’ll end this for good.”
“And if you don’t?”
His jaw tightens, teeth dragging against the corner of his lip. For the first time since I’ve known him, there’s a flicker of something unfamiliar in his eyes. Fear.
He rises, circles the table, and stops besides me. His hand slides from the crown of my head down through my hair, slow and careful. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Or to Aurora”
The words slip from my lips before I can stop them. “What about you? You did terrible things to him. What if he comes for you?”
His eyes turn deadly again, a cruel smile curving his mouth. “Let him come. Half the shit I planned for him hasn’t even started yet. Let him fucking come.”
***