Chapter 72 Grace
The air here is the first thing that tells me I have descended into hell. It’s not the damp, cold stone I expected but a cloying, sumptuous scent that lures you in, that makes you believe this is not a prison but a place of luxury, at least for visitors.
It’s a lie. I know it is. It’s a thin, pathetic veil over the truth of rot and misery that exists here.
Antonio’s hand is a firm, possessive bracket on my lower back, guiding me forward, his touch now a brand of ownership I can no longer mistake for anything like affection.
The corridor is wide and the walls are a dull, grey stone that is easy to wash down.
At regular intervals heavy, riveted iron doors break the monotony.
From behind some, I hear nothing but a profound, aching silence.
From others a low, broken sob, a muffled plea or the faint, metallic clink of a chain shifting.
Each sound is a shard of ice driven into my soul.
We stop before a door indistinguishable from the others and a cold dread, sharper than any I have ever known, washes over me.
Antonio nods to the hulking guard who shadows us. The man steps forward, a heavy ring of keys jangling in his grasp. The scrape of the iron key in the massive lock is the most horrifying sound I have ever heard. It echoes down the corridor with a promise of finality.
The door swings inward with a groan.
The room is slightly larger than I imagined, but that only makes its contents more obscene.
The walls are the same grey stone, but they are adorned with implements I can barely comprehend; gleaming metal, polished leather.
Things with chains, straps, and sinister curves.
They hang like perverse artwork. In the centre of the room is a large bed.
It’s made up with crisp, white linens, a grotesque parody of normalcy amidst the tools of torment.
And then I see her.
She’s by the far wall with her back to us, her posture slumped as if carrying an impossible weight.
She wears a dark blue piece of lingerie.
Something expensive, something obviously meant to shame her more.
Her hair, once a vibrant golden blonde like mine is a dull, lifeless grey, lank and unwashed.
At the sound of the door, her entire body flinches. It’s a violent, involuntary spasm of pure terror. She turns slowly, reluctantly, and I see her face.
The world tilts on its axis. The air leaves my lungs in a painful rush.
It is my mother, and it is not.
The face I have clung to in my memory for years, the warm, smiling face that whispered stories to me at night, is gone.
In its place is a gaunt mask of suffering.
Her eyes have sunken into deep, bruised hollows.
They are wide with a familiar, animal fear as they land on Antonio.
Her hands, thin and trembling, come up in a feeble, instinctive gesture of defence.
Then her gaze shifts. It slides from him to me.
The fear in her eyes doesn’t vanish; it transforms. It melts into a confusion so profound it seems to physically pain her. Her brow furrows. Her lips, chapped and pale, part. She stares at me as if I am a ghost, a hallucination summoned from the deepest recesses of her tortured mind.
She stumbles back a step, her hand flying out to brace herself against the cold wall. A small, broken sound escapes her, a whimper of disbelief.
“Elaine,” Antonio’s voice cuts through the thick silence, cold and authoritative. “You have a visitor.”
My mother’s name on his lips is a desecration. She doesn’t look at him. She can only stare at me, her eyes tracing the lines of my face, the sweep of my hair, the expensive silk of the emerald-green dress Antonio had made for me as her eyes catch on the diamond collar at my throat.
I find my voice. It is raw, stripped bare. “Please can I have a moment. Alone.”
He turns his head slowly to look at me, his dark eyes unreadable. “That is not advisable, Grace.”
“Please,” I beg, forcing myself to meet his gaze, to pour every ounce of false submission I can muster into my eyes. “Please, just five minutes.”
He studies me for a long, agonizing moment, his jaw tight. He is calculating the risk, the threat, the value of this concession. Finally, he gives a curt nod. “Five minutes, and I will be right outside.”
The warning in his tone is unmistakable. He steps back, pulling the heavy door shut. The click of the lock engaging feels like a death sentence.
We are alone. Mother and daughter. Prisoner and prisoner.
For a moment, we just stare at each other. The silence is a living thing, choked with twelve years of absence and a universe of pain.
“Grace?” Her voice is a raspy whisper, eroded by disuse and tears. It is the most beautiful and the most terrible sound I have ever heard. “God, is it really you?”
I can only nod, my throat sealed shut by a sob I am desperately trying to contain. I take a tentative step forward, then another, until I am close enough to touch her. I can smell the faint scent of soap on her, and underneath it, the sour tang of despair.
Her trembling hand reaches out, her fingers brushing the silk of my sleeve. She touches it as if it is something magical, otherworldly. Her eyes drink me in, and I see the calculations happening behind the pain. The diamonds. The dress. My presence here, with him.
Understanding dawns in her sunken eyes, followed by a wave of such profound grief that she sways on her feet.
“Oh, my baby girl. I’m so sorry. So sorry.
” She takes my hands in hers. Her skin is papery thin, her bones fragile as a bird’s.
“You have to be strong, Grace. Stronger than you think you are. You have to do whatever it takes, whatever he asks. Do you understand me? Whatever it takes to survive, to stay out of this place.”
At her words, the dam inside me breaks. The composure I have fought so hard to maintain, the icy control I wrapped around myself to get through the door, shatters into a million pieces. The tears come in a hot, uncontrollable flood.
“I’m not strong,” I weep, my body shaking violently. “I can’t do it anymore, momma. I can’t. He, I thought he loved me. He made me believe it. He was kind, he was charming, and I was so alone and so scared. I let myself believe it, but he’s a monster and I can’t, I can’t live like this.”
I am collapsing inward, my knees buckling, but she is there. She catches me, her arms wrapping around me with a strength I didn’t believe her frail body still possessed. She holds me as I sob into her thin shoulder, her own tears wet against my temple.
“I know, my love. I know,” she murmurs into my hair, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that I can’t save you. I can’t do anything.”
It is this that steels me. Her apology, her helplessness. Her love, still intact after all these years in this hell. It gives me the strength to do what I came here to do.
I pull back, wiping desperately at my tears. I have to be quick. Our time is slipping away, and I’ve already wasted too much with my own self-pity. “You can’t save me,” I whisper, my voice suddenly steady, hollow. “But I can save you.”
Her tear-filled eyes search mine, confused. “What?”
My fingers, numb with fear, slip under the fabric of my dress, slip between my thighs and I pull out the tiny glass vial I hid in the only place I had available.
For a moment, there is only confusion. Then recognition dawns and her gaze flies back to mine, wide with shock and a dawning, terrible hope.
“It’s the only mercy I can give you,” I say, the words tearing from my throat. “The only freedom I can offer.”
She looks from the vial to my face, her expression shifting from shock to a heartbreaking tenderness. “Oh, my brave, brave girl,” she breathes. Then her face hardens with a mother’s final, fierce command. “You drink it.”
I stagger back a step, shaking my head violently. “No. Never.”
“Grace, listen to me…”
“No,” I hiss, the word sharp and final. “You don’t understand.
However much he has hurt me, you have had it worse.
This is your way out, this is the only way I can get you out.
Once I know you are free of this place, then I can plan my own exit.
I can ensure all of us, you, me, and papa can see each other again. ”
I see the truth of my words land. I see the memory of these years of Oblivion flash in her eyes; the horror, the terror, the degradation.
“Please.” I whisper, feeling like we’re running out of time, that any minute Antonio is going to barge back in and we’ll be found out.
A profound stillness settles over her. The fear vanishes from her face, replaced by a serene, devastating acceptance. She looks at me one last time, pouring a lifetime of love into a single glance. A mother’s blessing. A mother’s goodbye.
“I love you, Grace. I love you so much. Be strong. Be strong and survive.”
She doesn’t hesitate. She brings the vial to her lips, tips her head back, and crunches the thing between her back teeth.
For a second, nothing happens. She stands there looking at me with a faint, sad smile on her lips. Then her eyes widen. A sharp, choked gasp escapes her, and her hands fly to her throat. A white froth bubbles from her mouth, spilling over her lips and down her chin.
Her legs give way. She collapses falling against a small wooden stool by the bed, and the impact splinters it into pieces. Her body convulses once, twice, before going so fucking still.
The froth at her mouth is the only movement now as she lies on the cold stone floor, with her eyes open, staring at nothing.
“Goodbye, Momma.” I whisper. “Goodbye. Say hello to dad when you see him and tell him that I love you, that I love him. That I love you both…” My whisper turns into hysterical sobbing as the last of my composure leaves me.
I am truly alone now. There is no one in this world who cares for me. Who sees me as a person. A human being, and not a thing to use.
I collapse onto her. I lie on top of her broken, frail body and I wail, no longer caring about anything.
Antonio will punish me for this. He will hurt me, but in my pain and despair I can find solace in the fact that she escaped.
She beat them. In the end, my mother is with my father, and they are in heaven and none of this matters anymore.
The door opens silently as I brace myself for whatever comes next, for the punishment that I know I will have to endure.
Antonio stands in the doorway, his eyes taking in the scene in a single, lightning-fast assessment; the shattered stool, my mother’s lifeless body on the floor, the foam of poison on her still lips.
His face, usually a mask of controlled arrogance, twists into something purely and utterly demonic. The understanding is instant.
He knows. He knows it was me.
His eyes lock onto me and he lunges.