Chapter 87 - Grace
The water is a tepid ghost against my skin. I feel it, but distantly, as if a layer of thick, cloudy glass separates me from the world.
It’s the drugs, I know it is. Antonio calls it pain medication. I know it’s a lie, so smooth and practiced it almost sounds like concern. The pain is a dull, manageable throb; the drugs are a silencer for my will.
He moves the sponge over my shoulder, down my arm. His touch is meticulous, reverent even. Each slow, sweeping motion is a claim staked.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
The sponge is warm, heavy with water and when he wrings it out above me, the cascade hits my chest like a sigh. I don’t flinch. I am a doll on a porcelain altar, my head lolling against the back of the tub, my good eye fixed on the vaulted ceiling of the space far above me.
Another castle. The thought is a dry, brittle leaf skittering across the barren landscape of my mind.
Grey stone walls, taller and thicker than the ones in Portugal.
Leaded glass windows that distort the relentless Scottish drizzle into weeping streaks of grey and green. A different cage, a stronger lock.
He told me the highland air would be good for the baby. He always has a reason that sounds like a gift.
He murmurs something. My name, maybe. An endearment, probably. The words dissolve into a low hum before they reach the core of me. I’ve built a wall inside my head, brick by brick, and the drugs are the mortar that keeps it standing.
I try not to speak. Each word given to him is a surrender I don’t want to make. So I save them all, hoarding my silence like a weapon I cannot yet wield.
His fingers, slick and warm, trace the line of my collarbone.
I focus on the ceiling again, on the intricate plasterwork of thistles and vines.
I count them. I have counted them every day since I was carried into this room, a week ago?
Two? Time is as blurred as the world outside the windows, but one countdown is crystalline in my mind, ticking away with the grim certainty of a death knell.
Twenty-eight days.
That’s what the stern-faced doctor, a man who never quite meets my eyes, told Antonio. Six weeks of healing before, before marital relations can resume. Antonio had nodded, his face a mask of solemn understanding, but his hand on my shoulder had tightened possessively.
He can’t fuck me.
He can’t touch me like that.
The physical violation is on hold, a temporary reprieve granted by stitches and the virtue that I gave him an heir.
But he sleeps beside me. Every night, in the vast, canopied bed that smells of him.
He pulls my drugged, pliant body against his, wrapping himself around me, his arm a lead weight across my waist, his breath hot on my neck.
He is forcing his will upon me in the most intimate of battlegrounds, colonizing my sleep, reminding me that even in unconsciousness, I am not my own.
The baby is in the next room. Caspian. He chose the name.
His room was constructed before we even arrived; a state-of-the-art nursery seamlessly integrated into a clinical space that mimics a NICU.
There is an army of nurses, women with quiet voices and efficient hands.
They tend to his every need, their presence a constant reminder that I am not needed.
My body was the vessel, but its purpose has been served.
Now, I am just the occupant of the main cell.
Antonio’s sponge moves lower, over the swell of my stomach, now soft and empty. He avoids the scar, dancing around it as if it were sacred, but it is not. It is a battlefield wound. A reminder of the night I failed so utterly. The night this new, more profound captivity began.
“You are healing so well, Grace,” he says, his voice cutting through my fugue state. The sound is like a stone dropped into still water; the ripples reach me whether I want them to or not.
I don’t answer. I stare at a particular thistle on the ceiling, imagining it cracking.
Why the fuck does he say my actual name now?
Why does he try to pretend that he cares?
I was his dog, his pet, his whore to fuck and share.
All of this, all this farce is just that and I know what he plans, what his intentions are.
He wants to lure me back, wants to turn me back into that na?ve, stupid little girl that believed he was different, that believed I could change him. Well, that’s not going to happen.
He doesn’t seem to mind my silence anymore. He has grown accustomed to it, perhaps he even prefers this quiet, broken version of me. I’m easier to manage. Easier to wash, dress, and display.
He lifts me from the water as if I weigh nothing.
My limbs are boneless, my strength siphoned away by the needles and the hopelessness.
He wraps me in the towel like it’s a shroud, his hands rubbing warmth into my arms, my back.
Each stroke is a violation. This false care, this performance of devotion is more degrading than any act of hatred.
It rewrites my reality, painting me as a cherished wife instead of the condemned prisoner I really am.
He carries me to the bed and dresses me in a silk nightgown, another expensive shackle.
As he buttons the front, his knuckles brush against my skin.
A tremor, tiny and involuntary, runs through me.
He feels it. A slow smile touches his lips.
He mistakes it for a response, for the flicker of something he can nurture into submission.
He either doesn’t know or refuses to believe it is actually pure, undiluted revulsion.
He tucks me under the duvet just as a nurse appears at the connecting door to the nursery. She nods once. “He’s taken his bottle and is sleeping soundly, Mr Macrae.”
“Thank you, Agnes,” Antonio says, his voice warm with paternal pride. The performance is for everyone.
He climbs into bed beside me, shifting close, his body heat an oppressive force. His arm snakes around me, pulling my back against his chest. I am a spoon in his drawer. I lie there, trapped in his embrace and stare at the canopy above.
All the while, beneath the chemical calm a single thought beats, steady and sharp.
When?
It’s not a question of if. The ‘if’ was decided the first time he locked a door behind me. The ‘if’ was cemented when I saw the look in his eyes as he held our son for the first time, not as a child but as a new, unbreakable chain to bind me.
When am I going to get the chance?
The nurses are always there. Antonio is almost always here. The windows don’t open, the doors are locked. My body is still weak, but the countdown in my head has two timelines.
The first is his: twenty-eight days until he can resume ownership of my body.
The second, mine: an unknown number of days, hours, minutes until I find a moment of true solitude. A moment where the watchful eyes are averted, where the drugs have worn off just enough for my hands to be steady.
I need something sharp.
A shard of glass from a broken picture frame. A knife from the kitchen, if I could ever get down there alone. Or maybe just a handful of the pills he forces down my throat. A whole handful, swallowed dry would do it. A final act of defiance. You cannot wash a corpse. You cannot hold a rotting body.
He nuzzles my hair, his breathing evening out into sleep. His hold on me tightens, a final, unconscious clutch of possession.
I keep my eye open, staring into the darkness.
I am counting. I am waiting.
The sponge has been put away, but the stone inside me is gathering its weight, and it is only a matter of time before it falls.