Chapter 23
Gabriella
Now
By the time Nico finally let me crawl back to my room, the house had long since fallen quiet.
Not truly quiet, of course. Nothing in this place was ever truly quiet.
Somewhere downstairs, a floorboard creaked beneath heavy boots.
A door slammed in the distance. Male laughter drifted faintly through the walls, low and ugly, followed by the shrill giggle of one of the newer girls.
There was always noise here. Always some reminder that no one slept peacefully under this roof. Not really.
But it was quieter than it had been earlier, and after the kind of day I’d had, that counted as a blessing.
I pushed the bedroom door shut behind me, leaning my weight against the wood for a second as the latch clicked into place.
My whole body throbbed. My shoulder burned where I had been shoved into the wall, my scalp still stung from where Nico had yanked me across the room by my hair, and there was a deep, pulsing ache low in my ribs from a kick I had been given when one of the girls dropped a bottle of whisky in the kitchen.
It had shattered across the tiles. She’d frozen a split second too long instead of rushing to clean up her mistake. The next moment, huge hands had grabbed at her, and she’d been dragged away to the basement before I could even think to take the blame for it.
But I’d paid the price anyway.
That was the way of things here. One girl made a mistake, and I suffered for it.
If they whispered too loudly, held one of the bikers’ gazes too long, a hand shaking at the wrong moment…
everything had a cost. Every inconvenience needed blood to settle it, and because I was his old lady, because I was the one standing closest, because I was the one he most enjoyed breaking, the debt almost always landed at my feet.
Or on my skin.
Or between my legs.
Or buried somewhere deeper, where no bruises ever fully showed.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tipped my head back against the door, forcing my breathing to even out.
The pain itself wasn’t what made tonight unbearable.
Pain was familiar. Easy, almost. My body knew what to do with pain.
It could compartmentalise it, absorb it, turn it into background noise if I needed it to.
It was the humiliation that clung.
The way he’d smiled when he did it. The way the girls looked at me afterwards, wide-eyed and guilty and terrified, as though they wanted to apologise for surviving at my expense.
Sometimes, the girls even looked at me with spite and glee.
As though this was a small price I should be paying, glad it was me and not them.
As though I hadn’t saved them dozens of times before.
But I would never share that truth with them.
I’d never burden them with the knowledge that one more day of safety in this place came at the price of my own rape and humiliation.
The men in the room hadn’t even blinked tonight. It was as though a hand around my throat was no different to someone reaching for the salt.
I pushed away from the door and crossed the room slowly, each step measured, my knees threatening to buckle from the exhaustion that sat in my bones.
I didn’t bother turning on the main light.
I never did. The softer lamp near the vanity was enough, casting the room in a muted amber glow that left the corners drenched in shadow.
It was kinder that way. Shadows blurred things.
Softened them. Made it easier to pretend I was someone else.
I dropped my dressing gown onto the end of the bed and caught sight of myself in the mirror.
For a second, I just stared.
My hair was a mess, black and tangled from where it had been grabbed, one side of it knotted near the roots.
My lipstick had long since worn away, leaving only a faint stain at the edges of my mouth.
There was a bruise darkening just above my collarbone, another fingerprint-shaped mark emerging along the side of my throat, and one shoulder strap of my dress hung lower than the other, the lace twisted from where it had been tugged out of place.
My eyes looked too big. Too empty. Like they belonged to a woman far older than the one staring back at me.
For one ugly, trembling moment, all I could think was: This is what he’s made of me.
Not strong. Not cunning. Not untouchable. Not the princess I had once been, or the girl who used to smirk through every argument like she had all the time in the world.
Just this.
A body that knew how to endure, a face that knew how to lie, and a ghost wrapped up in lace.
My hand came up before I could stop it, fingers brushing the bruise at my throat. It hurt. Of course it hurt. Everything did. But I pressed harder anyway, welcoming the sting.
I should have been tired enough to cry.
I should have been tired enough to collapse onto the mattress and shut my eyes and will the night to pass.
Instead, something else stirred beneath the exhaustion. Hotter than grief. Sharper than fear. Something restless and poisonous and bitter enough to curdle in my chest.
Anger.
Not the wild kind. Not the kind that made people scream or throw things or fight back until they were beaten into the ground.
Mine was quieter than that. Mine sat low and slow, fed by humiliation after humiliation until all that remained was a simmering fury.
I was so fucking tired of swallowing it.
Tired of being punished for other people’s mistakes.
Tired of being looked at like furniture until someone wanted to use me.
Tired of carrying this house and its filth and its secrets in silence.
Tired of surviving instead of living.
My eyes flicked to the window on instinct, to that familiar stretch of glass and darkness beyond it.
The light signal.
The ritual.
The one thing in my life that still belonged to another time.
I should have crossed to the window, flicked the light twice, and let that be the end of it. That was what we did. What we had always done. A silent acknowledgement. A breath across a canyon. Proof of life and nothing more.
It should have been enough.
Tonight, it wasn’t.
I didn’t know if it was the anger or the pain or the humiliation still crawling beneath my skin, but when I saw the faint outline beyond the glass—broad shoulders, stillness, the suggestion of a beard and a body I knew almost as well as my own—something in me did not recoil.
Vienna.
Waiting, like always.
Watching, like always.
Only tonight, as I looked at him, I didn’t feel the usual rush of panic and dread and aching tenderness that came with seeing him there. I felt something darker. Something uglier.
A reckless, vicious sort of curiosity.
You want to watch? Fine. Watch.
He must have sensed the shift in me immediately, because even from across the room I saw the slight change in his posture.
The way he straightened just a little, as though every part of him had gone on alert.
Usually, when I saw him at the window, I turned away first. I kept my distance. I flicked the light. I drew the line.
I tried to shield him from the reality of my world. My hair was always brushed, my clothes strategically hiding bruises, my makeup hiding a number of different sins. But tonight, I didn’t bother.
Tonight, I didn’t move to protect either of us.
I held his gaze.
Slowly, deliberately, I lifted my hand and reached for the lamp beside the bed, switching it off, then back on again.
Once.
Twice.
The signal. Our signal.
His shoulders loosened the tiniest fraction, only to tense immediately afterwards.
The signal meant I was safe. But I wasn’t, and I hadn’t been for a long time.
He knew it now. I knew he knew. Something had shifted between us the last time he had stood outside my balcony.
He had seen too much. I had let him see too much.
As selfish as it was, I wanted him to see.
I wanted him to rescue me. I was just so fucking tired.
I should have stepped away after that.
Instead, I gave him a smile.
It wasn’t a nice smile. It wasn’t soft, or loving, or anything that belonged to the girl I had once been. It was small and crooked and mean around the edges, born of bitterness.
Even though I was acting recklessly, for the first time all day, I felt something dangerously close to control.
I turned away from the window and crossed to the vanity, feeling his gaze follow me the whole way like a physical touch.
I lowered myself onto the stool in front of the mirror and met his eyes in the reflection.
And then, I began putting the mask in place. Began letting him see the process I went through to be the Gabriella he was used to seeing.
Without ever once breaking eye contact, I brushed out my hair, letting him see how knotted and matted it was.
I allowed him to see the amount that came from my scalp, pulled from the roots by cruel hands.
Then I let him see me apply my makeup, covering up the bruises on my shoulders, the fingerprints on my neck. With a cotton pad dipped in water, I let him watch as I removed the blood from my fingers, erasing all evidence of tonight.
I could see through the mirror that he was angry. His breath was hitting the window in sharp puffs, but I had to let him see. He needed to see. It was time.
I reached up and unclipped one earring, then the other, setting them down on the vanity with deliberate care. Then I peeled the first strap of my dress down one shoulder, and smoothed over the bruise with my makeup sponge.
His jaw tightened.
Even through the glass, even through the distance, I could see it.
I should have stopped there.
Instead, I laughed.
It was soundless, just a breath of amusement against my own lips, but he saw it.
I knew he did. His palm came up and pressed flat against the window, and there was something in the gesture that went straight through me—something frustrated and needy and far too intimate for two people separated by glass and years of damage.