Chapter 22
JADE
We finally arrive at the restaurant over an hour late, but the owner didn’t seem to mind, especially with the hundreds Enzo slipped into his pocket.
Being out, like a normal woman, with a man I love, is an experience I’ll never take for granted.
He sips on his whiskey while I drink the burgundy-red wine in a fancy sparkling glass, the tableware as decadent as the rest of this place. The dimmed, overhead lights above brighten the room just enough, working in sync to the sparkling large gold chandelier at the center.
I cut into my steak, tender, delicious. The first one I’ve ever tasted.
I didn’t grow up with too many luxuries, such as going out to nice restaurants.
Pizza and pasta days were as extravagant as my mother could afford.
But I don’t need any of that to be happy.
I just want my family back, my son, and Enzo.
He’s family now, a piece of me I’ll never be able to let go of.
“How’s everything?” he asks, slicing into his own steak, those captivating eyes gazing back at me, making my stomach flip from the emotions he brings out.
Being intimate with him, finally experiencing that with someone who I care so deeply for—it was more than I could imagine.
It’s as though I was caught in this bubble, where the rest of my world and everything that happened to me prior, no longer existed, even for those moments in time.
But of course, it did. I know that. I still carry those scars every single day, trying my best not to live in their shadow but in spite of them.
I have to go on. I have to move forward somehow.
For me. For my boy. For my own survival.
Because that’s what I am, a survivor, and that’s one thing those bastards will never take from me.
“Oh, it’s truly amazing,” I finally answer him, clearing my thoughts. “We could never afford this sort of place when I was younger. My mother was a single mom raising my brother and me.”
“You miss them. Why don’t you call them?” He glances to his plate, his eyes wandering up to mine in between.
“I can’t do that. They told me that if I contact my family, Robby dies. I can’t risk it.”
His jaw twitches. “Okay, baby. We’ll call them after we get Robby.”
I breathe in a sigh. “What will I tell them? How can I look them in the eyes?”
He leans into the table across from me, his hand tucking over mine. “You tell them you love them and that you’re happy to be with them again. I promise, they won’t care about the other shit. They’ll just be relieved to get you back.”
Biting into my inner cheek, I suppress the emotions riding up the back of my nose.
I pick up my wineglass and take a few sips.
He’s right. Mom would never judge me for what I’ve been through.
She’ll hate herself for allowing it to happen, but she’d never think bad of me.
And when she meets Robby, God, she’s going to love him.
As for Elliot, I don’t know. Nine years is a long time, and he’s an adult now.
My God, what does he even look like now? Will I ever see them?
Pulling in a long breath, I push those thoughts away. I can’t continue thinking about them or it’ll eat me alive.
Distracting myself, I dart my eyes around the room, Enzo’s hand still clasped to mine, my attention wandering to the soft waves of the river outside our window.
I’m instantly transfixed by its tempered beauty, waiting to crash over the world around it.
I wonder how it’d feel to be as powerful as the ocean, having the ability to drown all those who’ve made you suffer, to keep them under, unable to ravage.
Enzo squeezes my hand and I look back at him, at this man who loves me with his whole heart, so much that I feel it every single moment we’re together.
But as I lift my gaze away from him for only a moment, just a fraction in time, my inhale seizes in my chest, a tremor running up my arms, my body cold. Naked.
I continue staring. Unable to move. To breathe. I can’t rip my eyes away from them, those men tucked in the corner. Talking. Smiling. Like they didn’t ruin me. Like they’re not the monsters I know they are.
“Baby? What’s wrong?” Enzo’s voice may as well be distances away.
“Joelle?” He’s in front of me now, turning the chair, blocking my view of the two men seated there, their dates across from them.
My lungs are heavy, as though I’m the one trapped under that water now, screaming, begging them to stop.
“Tell me.” He kneels, his palm possessively cinching around my knee, his thumb under my chin, nudging my face to him and him alone. “Who are they?”
He knows.
With my lips trembling, eyes burning with the tears that don’t come, I look up at him. “I’ll—I’ll never forget their faces,” I whisper so low, I don’t quite know if he’s heard, repeating those same words I used when I recited what they did to me.
But when his face turns with something dark, something cruel, the vein at his neck practically puncturing through his skin, I know he’s heard.
“Are you sure?” His nostrils flare.
I nod, my pulse slamming, remembering how one of those men stuck that baton in me.
How he enjoyed hurting me. How the others laughed before they all took their turn.
I wasn’t a person to them. I was a carcass.
A toy. A sick game they played. But now two of them are here, enjoying their food as though nothing happened.
“I’m gonna take care of it, baby. I can’t take it back, but fuck, I’m gonna make sure they bleed for it.”
“Wha-what are you going to do?”
“You mean what are we gonna do?”
I nod, my heart pacing.
“You trust me?”
“Explicitly.”
He gives me his hand. “Let’s go.”
I fumble, grabbing my purse as we both rise.
He threads his fingers through mine, glancing at me with breathtaking fervor as we make our way to their table, every step like torture.
Like my legs are slowly turning to stone.
But I fight it, shoving down the nerves, the mind-bending fear.
Because I’m not alone, and where I may be weak, he’s strong. And his strength is contagious.
Both men turn as we approach. For a split second, they don’t recognize me, but then it comes, that panic, that sheer terror on both their faces, their eyes filled with the same horror I had on my face when they tortured me.
They both glance at one another, the two women beside them oblivious as they talk to each other.
Enzo squeezes my hand once.
“Hey, guys!” he greets them, stepping right behind them, each of his arms falling over their shoulders like they’re long-lost friends.
I stand to the side, my eyes on the man who held that baton, his face pivoted to me, his anxiety setting over my gaze.
I relish it. His fear. I smell it. Taste it.
I want to own it. The utter devastation I felt moments before is replaced by the need for vicious violence.
I’ve never felt this much rage before. It’s like someone else is trapped inside me, screaming, and ripping at the seams to get out.
Enzo spins the man’s head forward once he notices the asshole gaping at me.
“Hey, pal,” the other one says, turning around in the chair. “I think you got us confused with someone else.”
“Nah.” Enzo’s forearms clench around their necks, biceps popping as he does. “I’m pretty sure I have exactly who I was looking for, and there’s something important we really should talk about. So how about we send these ladies home so we can do just that?”
I finally peer at the two women, probably not much older than me, their faces stunned, expressions frozen.
“Yeah, we’re not gonna do that,” the one who used the baton says.
Enzo only chuckles dryly. “Yeah, you are. Because we both know if you don’t…” The rest of it he says quietly into the man’s ear, and when he does, the color completely drains from my tormentor’s face.
Enzo pats him on the head. “That’s what I thought.”
Reaching into his wallet, he throws some money on the table.
“Are you their girlfriends, wives?”
“No, um…” one answers, her long fingernail pushing her short, brown hair away from her face. “We…” She glances at the other woman.
“They pay you to be here?”
She nods.
“Well, how about I take the trash out of here, because that’s what they fucking are, isn’t that right?” He forms a fist, shoving it into one of the men’s necks. “They hurt you yet?”
Both women glimpse down onto the table.
“That’s what I thought. How about this, ladies? We never saw each other. When they go missing, and they will go missing, you never speak about me or her.” He gestures with a thumb at me.
One can trace the danger on his handsome face, like a path leading to destruction.
“Okay, yeah,” she says, swallowing hard. “Whatever you want.”
“We’re gonna go now,” he tells them, removing his cell from his pocket and typing something quickly before he places it back. “There’s more than enough money on that table for the both of you.”
He drags the chairs out, the men still on them, both slowly getting up, their bodies shifting uncomfortably on their feet.
Enzo leads them out, stepping up behind them, one hand clasped to mine and his other in his jacket pocket. “One wrong move, I’ll shoot you both dead. I don’t give a shit what happens to me because I’ll gladly kill you for what you did to her.”
Enzo smiles flirtatiously as two women at the table we pass glance suspiciously at us.
“Listen, it was all a misunderstanding,” one of them says. “We didn’t know—”
“Didn’t know you were raping me? Holding me down while he shoved that baton in me while I begged for you all to stop?” I whisper-shout as we march out the doors and back onto the street. Enzo’s car parked right across from the restaurant.
They’re both facing me, sandwiched between us and the car, their expressions void of any redeeming emotions. Not that it’d change anything. They’re monsters of the worst kind.