Chapter 24
Elowen
“I’m sorry it took me a little long. My dad is too worried,” I say, sitting beside Salvario on my bed.
“That’s valid.”
I called my dad and told him everything. I also told him how I believed Hunter was Salvario, and how he had led me to believe it. He promised he would make Hunter pay for it. Then his concern shifted, he was worried that Salvario might do something similar to what he had done before.
I told him Salvario’s dissociative identity, which was behind all that, is now gone. He has his doubts and asked me to let him do his investigation before deciding anything about Salvario.
Salvario told me that after his suicide attempt, he developed dissociative amnesia, because of which his dissociative identity disappeared. He’s lost a large portion of his memory, which includes many of his childhood memories and some from his adulthood.
“Who was holding you captive?” It only comes to me now because Dad asked me about it.
“Chris Flisher.”
My breath catches in my throat. The man Hunter used to work for.
Is it possible he sent Hunter to act like Salvario?
My throat goes dry; a cold prickle spreads across the back of my neck.
My skin feels suffocatingly tight, as if my body is rejecting what my mind is piecing together.
It’s very likely that he came close to me just to use me to harm my family.
“Why did he do that?” I ask Salvario, my voice barely steady.
“He found out I had breached your father’s security, so he tried to force me to do the same for him. I kept him strung along with the false promise that I’d help him until I found a way to escape.”
“Did you ever meet Hunter when you were there? He worked for Chris.” And maybe still does.
He frowns, then shakes his head. “I never saw him, but he could have seen me there.”
Yes, it’s very likely. He not only could have seen him but also observed his behavior, and that’s how he replicated him so perfectly.
He takes my hand. “You need to rest now. It’s already very late, and you look tired.”
“Aren’t you mad at me?” I venture, my voice so low I’m not sure I want him to hear.
He squeezes my hand. “I’m happy to finally be back to you, Princess.” He cups my cheek with his other hand. “And you still want me. Why would I be mad?”
I nod, looking into his eyes. They’ve changed, or have I forgotten them after watching another set of gray eyes for three months? My jaw stiffens at the thought. Why am I thinking about him?
Salvario leans closer, and before I can think, he presses his lips to mine. I freeze for a few seconds, but as soon as I come to my senses, I push against his chest and break the kiss.
What’s wrong with me?
I should feel relief. Joy. The overwhelming rightness of finally being back where I belong.
I should be breathless with happiness, clinging to him like he might disappear again.
I should feel whole. But what I feel is a suffocating anxiety.
Why? I’m not doing anything wrong, but it feels so wrong.
What was wrong was what I did before, not this.
Why won’t his face leave my head? I didn’t want to see it, but I still saw how he looked when I threw the ring at his feet. Like he’d lost everything. Utterly defeated.
I get up from the bed. “I’ll be right back after taking a shower.”
“Let me accompany you.” He gets up. I can see lust in his gaze, but it’s different from what I’ve become used to seeing.
I force a smile onto my face. “Wait for me here.” I turn and walk into the bathroom.
I lock the door behind me, remove my clothes with shaking hands, and step under the scalding hot water.
I grab the loofah and start scrubbing, tears stream down my face, swallowed by the water. I scour every inch of my body until it’s raw and burning under the heat of the water, but it does nothing to wash him off.
There isn’t a single part of me he didn’t touch, and no amount of scrubbing will take it back.
I can’t remove his hands from my body.
I can’t undo what I did.
I slide down the wall, pressing my forehead to my knees, sobbing without a sound.
I can’t get him out of my head.
I slam my head against the wall, again and again, but he’s still there. How do I gouge him out? His eyes watching me. His hands on my skin. His voice latches in my ears, clawing through my mind. The things he said, the things he made my wretched body feel. How do I tear all of it out of my skull?
I close my eyes, feeling numb and exhausted. My elbows on my knees, my hands against my head, I stay sitting under the hot spray.
Salvario said after he attempted suicide, he lost those bad memories. Will it work if I do the same?
A knock comes at the door.
I swallow a few times to erase the evidence of my crying, then speak. “I’m not done yet.”
“Why are you crying?”
A shiver rakes down my whole body. It’s not the question, it’s the voice. Hunter’s voice.
They have identical voices. How can I think it’s his when Salvario is the one in my room?
I need to do something. Before I tip over. I haven’t lost my mind yet—it’s still intact, still mine—but I’m standing at the edge of it, and the ground is crumbling beneath my feet.
My thoughts circle back to the plan. The only way to silence the memories. The only way to escape the curse named Hunter.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice clearer this time.
I get up from the shower floor and look out through the glass of the shower enclosure.
There must be something here that can help me.
Salvario did it by cutting his wrist. I need something sharp.
My eyes land on the glass toothbrush holder.
I step out of the shower cubicle, grab it, empty the toothbrushes and toothpaste, then hurl it at the floor. It shatters into pieces.
“Elowen.” Salvario’s voice comes from the other side of the door.
“I’m fine.”
I pick up a sharp piece.
“Open the door,” he orders, his voice again sounding like Hunter’s.
No. I won’t let him mess with my head like this. He has to go. He has to leave my mind.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice distant but sure, placing the shard against my wrist.
My whole body shakes, but there isn’t a shred of doubt in my head.
I know the consequences. I could die from this, but that doesn’t frighten me.
It stopped frightening me a long time ago.
I thought that desire for death vanished the moment I realized—no, not realized, decided—that Hunter was Salvario.
I was wrong on both counts. Once you accept that you want death, it never leaves you.
It may hide, but it comes back with the same force the next opportunity it get.
I walk back into the shower, the shard carving into my flesh.
I feel pain. A lot of it.
But along with it comes a sense of peace. It sinks its teeth into my flesh, wraps its hands around my throat, squeezing slowly as I watch my blood drip onto the floor, mingling with the shower water. Now I don’t wish for memory loss. I wish for the other consequence.
There will be no guilt.
No Hunter.
No Salvario.
No Elowen.
Only peace.
“Elowen, open the door, or I’ll break it down.” His voice comes harder now, furious.
I slide down the shower floor, back pressed to the cold tile, and watch fresh blood bloom from my wrist. Dark petals unfurl beneath the water’s stream, spreading, thinning, and vanishing.
“Elowen, open the fucking door.” He orders it the way I’ve never refused him. Until today.
In my head, all his orders replay, those he gave me in his gothic mansion in Greenland, then in my grandparents’ house, and then when he came back as Hunter. I laugh, hitting the back of my head against the wall. I’m still stuck in the cruel, false reality where Hunter is Salvario.
“If you’re close to the door, move away.” Hunter’s voice. No—not Hunter’s. Salvario’s.
Hunter isn’t here. He left after I threw the ring. He understood that he can’t deceive me now. The last shreds of my tears mix with the water streaming down my face.
He wanted my body, he got it. He never wanted my heart, that was always Salvario’s, and he knew it.
What did I do wrong to him to make him do this to me? He must have laughed at me. Called me stupid. Desperate. Which isn’t even wrong. I was so stupid and desperate that I threw myself at the first man who showed any resemblance to Salvario, declaring him Salvario.
And now that Salvario is here, I’m no longer worthy of him. I’m no longer the Elowen he left behind. I’m someone I myself loathe. While he was suffering in captivity, I was in another man’s arms.
My brain grows cloudy, random thoughts drifting in and out. My head spins. I try to keep my eyes open, but the water and the spinning won’t let me. I hear the door hit the floor, and nothing after that.
Hunter
My body freezes. My legs won’t lift to move away from the door I’ve just broken down.
Blood threads through the water running down her wrist. A woman’s lifeless body, in the same state, flickers behind my eyes, even though I’m not blinking.
It’s a feeling of déjà vu telling me that it’s not the first time I’m watching my world drown before my eyes, watching my soul die inside my still-breathing body.
My legs move on their own, carrying me forward once the horror sinks in.
I walk to her and crouch down. My body works on its own; my mind is blank, eerily empty.
I lift my hand, place it under her nose.
Calmly. There are only two outcomes from here: either she’s breathing, and we both live, or she isn’t, and we both don’t.
She’s breathing.
She’s breathing.
The realisation hits me like a physical blow. I fall back onto the wet floor, inches from her. My lungs seize. My skull threatens to split, darkness pulsing at the edges of my vision. I’m still not blinking.
Now that I haven’t lost her, the possibility of it happening—any moment—takes over every synapse, every dark corner of my mind.
I force myself to blink, but even in that split second of darkness, I see her still body.
Her blood. I go from breathless to heaving in seconds.
My body trembles violently. I force myself up.
I need to get control. She’s losing too much blood.
I pick her up in my arms, and stride out of the bathroom.
I lay her down on the bed, gripping her bleeding wrist tightly in my fist, then wrap it with my handkerchief and run out to the study, where the first aid kit is kept. I pull it from the drawer and rush back.
I drop to my knees, scrambling to open the kit. My hands shake as I pull out antiseptic wipes. I force them steady.
I’m not losing her.
I’m not fucking losing her.
I clean the wound, wiping away the blood and water, trying to gauge how deep it is. It’s not as deep as I feared, but it’s still too much.
I press a gauze pad against the cut, holding it in place with firm, steady pressure, counting the seconds in my head.
I peel it back to check, the bleeding has slowed.
I reach for the suture kit, threading the needle with hands that aren’t as steady as they need to be.
I draw the wound closed with small sutures.
When it’s done, I grab the roll of bandage and wrap it around her wrist.
When I’m done, I’m drained to my bones. Numb from the fear.
I sit back on the floor, staring at her pale face, head tilted.
My hands, which I forced to stay steady while stitching her wound, begin to shake now that there’s nothing left to do.
I clench them tight, but it doesn’t help.
The drained color of her face makes her look like someone already gone.
But her chest is moving—up and down. I keep my eyes fixed on it, to make myself understand I didn’t lose her. But I almost did.
The door to her room opens behind me, I don’t turn to see who it is.
“What the fuck?” Logan’s panicked voice reaches me before he rushes to the bed, checking for a pulse. “What have you done to her?”
“She did it herself.” My voice barely exists beyond a breath.
“What? But why?”
How would I know?
Since evening, Logan and I have been busy making a plan to kidnap her. I was watching the feed from the camera in her room, waiting for the perfect opportunity to enter her house. I lost it when I saw her kissing him, almost fucked the silent plan we’d made.
Logan stopped me when I reached for the guns to attack her house and kill the bastard.
Because her father’s security isn’t just limited to her; it covers all of Naples.
And once he finds out his daughter’s house has been attacked, his men will come after us, and I won’t be able to leave the city with her.
I entered the house through the back door after jumping over the wall from the garden. I know every inch of this house’s security, so I disabled the alarms before coming in. Logan’s job was to neutralize the guards at the main gate and make sure they were unconscious.
When I entered the room, that motherfucker was sitting on our fucking bed. I was tempted to kill him right there. But I kept the urge down, only knocked him out and threw him outside the room. She was in the shower at that time.
I sensed something was wrong and pressed her to open the door.
The sound of the door breaking would have alerted her security, and since Logan hadn’t executed his plan, it was risky.
But when she didn’t open it, after too long, I decided to damn the plan and break the door down.
I regret not doing it sooner, and I’m afraid to my core of what would have happened if I’d waited even a little longer.
“We don’t have much time to think about it now. Get up and leave,” Logan says anxiously, rushing into the bathroom and coming out with her bathrobe.
He hands it to me. I get up, wrap her in the bathrobe, and lift her from the bed, pressing her tightly against my chest.
“Bring him back to consciousness, take a picture of him with both wrists cut using the piece of glass from the shower, then knock him out again.”
Logan raises a brow.
“She needs to know the consequences of hurting herself.” I mutter, looking down at her pale face.