Chapter 71 Grace
I’m a fool.
A stupid, stupid fool. How have I forgotten who this man is? What he is?
He’s a liar, a manipulator, an absolute piece of shit and I fell for it, I fell for it all.
The silence in our room is thick and heavy, like a shroud smothering every sound, every breath. It tastes of ash and betrayal.
This diamond collar around my neck is choking me more with each passing second and though I tried, I tried and I tried, I cannot get it off. I cannot unclasp it.
I sit in a high-backed chair, my legs drawn up to my chest. My arms are wrapped around them, making myself small, like an island in a sea of his opulent, gilded cruelty.
I don’t look at him.
I haven’t for days.
My eyes trace the patterns in the Persian rug instead, follow the intricate swirls of burgundy and gold until they blur and become something else.
They become the leering lines of a stranger’s face.
My mind keeps flickering to what Mateus gave me; that vial that I have stashed away in the back of the drawer, but Antonio hasn’t left me alone for even a second and I don’t dare risk trying to retrieve it and him then realising what I have.
Antonio moves through the room, his presence a violation of the silence, a disruption I feel in my very bones. He is trying to fill the void his actions created with noise, with things, with the force of his sheer will.
It’s pathetic.
He stops in front of me, and I keep my eyes on the rug.
I’m not allowed to look at Master without permission, am I? Wouldn’t want to break the rules.
“Grace,” he says, and his voice is strained, a wire pulled too tight. It’s the voice he uses when he’s trying to sound reasonable, but is anything but. “Look at me.”
I don’t. My gaze remains fixed on a particular gold thread, following its path.
I feel his hand then, descending toward my shoulder.
A gesture that might have once been possessive, claiming, even tender in his twisted way.
My body reacts before my mind can. I flinch violently, jerking away from the contact as if his fingers were white-hot brands.
A full-body shudder racks me, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
It’s a bad move. A fatal error.
Behind my eyelids, the world dissolves into memory.
The feel of the other man’s hands, coarse and unfamiliar; grabbing, groping, claiming what was not his.
The smell of his cheap cologne and sweat, a foul cocktail that drowned out the scent of Antonio’s expensive cologne.
The brutal, rhythmic thrusting, a violation that tore through more than just my body.
It shattered something fundamental inside me.
And through it all, the audience. I open my eyes, desperate to escape the memory, and they land on him.
Antonio. He is watching me, his expression unreadable but his eyes are alive with a dark, voyeuristic fire.
He is not disgusted, he is not angry on my behalf.
He is interested, he is enjoying the spectacle of his own possession being defiled.
The image is seared onto the back of my eyelids, and I can’t tell if it’s even real anymore. All I can see is Antonio lounging in a chair, one leg crossed over the other, his fingers clutching that damned necklace, watching. Always fucking watching.
“Dammit, Grace.” he snarls, his patience evaporating. My recoil has angered him.
My silence is now a weapon he doesn’t know how to defend against. He strides to the sideboard and picks up a small, velvet box.
He throws it into my lap. It lands with a soft, insulting thud against my thighs.
“Open it,” he commands.
I don’t move. The box sits there, a scarlet pimple on the fabric of my dress.
“It’s a pair of earrings,” he says, his voice dripping with a frustration he can’t conceal. “Cartier. I thought…”
His words die as I slowly, deliberately lift my gaze from the rug to the box, and then to him.
I let him see the absolute, bottomless contempt in my eyes.
I let him see that his attempt to buy my affection, to paper over what he did with gemstones is the most pitiful, disgusting thing I have ever witnessed.
And he sees it.
He reads the judgment in my stare, and it infuriates him. He’s so used to buying the entire fucking world that he doesn’t know what to do now that money can’t solve this, can’t fix this.
His jaw clenches, and a muscle ticks in his cheek. He looks like a little boy who’s had his toy taken away. A furious, entitled little boy.
The door to the suite opens then with a soft, hesitant click. Mateus appears from the other side. “Antonio, sorry to disturb…”
He doesn’t get to finish. Antonio’s rage, thwarted and boiling, suddenly finds its outlet. He spins on Mateus, a whirlwind of violence.
“Who told you to interrupt me?” he roars, crossing the room in two strides.
Mateus’s eyes actually widen in shock. He tries to back away, but Antonio is on him.
He grabs him by the arm, yanking him fully into the room, and backhands him across the face.
The sound is a sickening crack that echoes in the silent room.
I don’t move, I don’t scream. I just watch, my blood running cold. This is the man I… No. I cannot even finish the thought.
He hits him again, and Mateus crumples to the floor with a whimper. He kicks him, his polished shoe connecting with Mateus’s ribs. “You worthless piece of shit. You think you can just walk into my private rooms? You think your time is as valuable as mine?”
He is losing it.
That facade of a controlled, powerful man is crumbling, revealing the rotten, furious core I know is beneath. He beats Mateus until he is curled into a ball on his precious rug, which is now stained blood.
Finally, he stops, breathing heavily. He straightens his suit jacket, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair, carefully avoiding the part where his flesh was melted. “Get out,” he spits at him. “And send someone to clean up this mess.”
Mateus scrambles to his feet, fleeing without a backward glance as Antonio turns his wild eyes back to me.
I have not moved a muscle. My expression hasn’t changed. The contempt is still there, now mixed with a fresh layer of horror and that seems to unsettle him more than my silence.
He needs a reaction. When the whole world revolves around you, silence is the one thing you cannot handle.
He crosses the room and grabs my arm, his fingers digging in brutally. “Get up,” he orders, and yanks me to my feet. I don’t resist. There is no point. He drags me out of the French doors and onto the wide, sun-drenched balcony. The beauty of the day is a cruel joke.
He releases me and I stumble back a step, righting myself against the cold stone balustrade.
“What do you want from me?” he demands, his voice a raw shout that seems to startle the birds in the cypress trees below. “What? What will it take? What do you expect of me, Grace?”
My voice is a hoarse whisper after being unused for days. “I expect nothing from a monster.”
He flinches as if I’ve struck him. “I am your Master.” he roars, advancing on me.
“I bought you. You are my possession, to use as I see fit. For business, for pleasure, to share with whoever I want if it goddamn pleases me. You have no right to judge me. No right to act like some heartbroken lover. I never made you any promises.”
And that is what breaks the dam inside me. Not the violence, not the cruelty but this, this lie. This revision of our history to suit his narrative, his ego.
I lift my head, and for the first time since that night, I look him directly in the eyes. “You did promise.”
He scoffs, trying to wave it away. “I never said the words.”
“You promised with your heart,” I say, my voice gaining a sliver of strength, sharp as a shard of glass.
“Every time you looked at me as if I were the only person in your world. Every time you touched me like you were claiming a part of your own soul. You promised when you kept me in your bed all night, not for sex, but just to hold me. You promised with your actions, Antonio, and you broke that promise in the most vile way imaginable. I will never forgive you for that. Never.”
His face contorts in rage. My words, my truth have found their mark. He closes the distance between us in a heartbeat, his hand snapping out to encircle my throat.
He doesn’t squeeze enough to cut off my air, but enough to show me he could.
Enough to make me feel his power, his ownership.
“I can do what I like,” he hisses, his face inches from mine. His eyes are so fucking black, so murderous. “You are nothing to me. A beautiful thing I acquired. A toy, and nothing more.”
I don’t struggle, I don’t try to pull his hand away. I just hold his gaze and with the little air I have, I gasp, “Then why are you so upset?”
The fire in his eyes gutters. The certainty falters. He searches my face, looking for an answer to a question he never thought to ask himself. Why is he so upset? If I am nothing, my silence should be nothing. My contempt should be an annoyance, not a torment.
He releases my throat abruptly, turning away to grip the balustrade, his knuckles white. He lets out a long, ragged sigh, the sound of a man defeated by a war he doesn’t understand.
“Just tell me,” he says, his voice quiet now, drained. “Tell me what you want. There must be something. Something I can give you, something I can do. Name it.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can even think them. They are the truth, the deepest, most ancient wound. “No amount of money can ever rectify the wrongs you have done to me and my family.”
He goes very still. I see the shift in his posture, the subtle straightening of his spine. He is a businessman, a strategist, and suddenly it’s like he thinks he found a lever. He turns back to me, and his eyes are different now. Calculated. Sharp.
He narrows his eyes. “I can take you to see her.”
The world tilts on its axis. The birds stop singing, the wind ceases to blow. Everything focuses down to his face, to those seven words.
I go perfectly still. A rabbit sensing a trap. This is a trick. It must be. To see her, to know she is alive and real… it is the one desire I have never even thought of, never dared to.
“Her?” I whisper, afraid to even say the word.
“Your mother,” he says, the words deliberate, weighted. “I can take you to her. I can let you see her. Talk to her. If that is what it takes. If that is what will…” He can’t bring himself to say ‘make you love me again.’ “…make you forgive me.”
My heart betrays me. This is not a gift; it is a transaction. My forgiveness, my compliance, in exchange for a glimpse of the woman whose life he destroyed alongside mine. The math of it is obscene.
I look at him, at the desperate hope in his eyes now. He truly believes this will work. He believes he can buy my soul back with this one act.
“I will never forgive you,” I whisper, the words absolute. “But it would be a start.”
It is all he needs to hear. A start is enough, a crack in the door is all a man like him needs to believe he can kick it down completely.
A wild, frantic energy seizes him. He grabs my hand, but this time it’s not a caress or a punishment. It’s a claiming. A seal on a deal. “Then we go. Now.”
He pulls me back inside, already barking orders on his phone. “Get the jet ready. Now. No, I don’t care about the schedule. Clear the airspace. We’re leaving for England within the hour.”
He’s a whirlwind of purpose, the torment of the last few days sloughing off him as he moves into action. He has a problem, and he is solving it. He thinks he is fixing me.
As he shouts into his phone, his back to me, my mind begins to whirr.
He is taking me to my mother. To Oblivion. This is happening.
He turns back to me, his eyes alight with triumphant purpose. “Get ready. We leave in thirty minutes.”
I nod, a slow, careful movement. I school my features into something he can interpret as grateful anticipation as I let him see what he wants to see.
Inside, my mind is a vortex of fear and a terrifying, fragile hope. He is taking me to my mother.
And for the first time, I am not thinking about how to survive being with him.
I am thinking about how to get her out.