Chapter 3 #2
Did he ever marry? Have a girlfriend? Or, like so many in his line of work, was he married to the job, the teams?
"You're awake," he murmurs. "Get some rest?"
Found out, I nod and sit up. “Yes."
He eyes me sidelong. "What?" he says. "You're looking at me like you want to ask me something."
I shrug. “Not really."
"Ask. I will answer, if I can."
I'm horribly uncomfortable with personal conversations like this. It invites questions. But this is Lorenzo, and he knows everything about me.
"Your life, after me," I start.
He nods. "What about it? I went into Spec Ops and then intelligence, and now I'm freelance."
"Not your work," I say. "Your…personal life."
"I didn't have much of one," he answers. "Drinks with my teammates. The occasional football game."
"Did you ever have…relationships?" I ask, the words stumbling and tumbling out of me awkwardly.
He glances at me. "Ahhhh. Well? Yes. I was no monk. I…there was someone, when I was stationed in Goiana. Consuela. Sweet girl. Beautiful. Kind. Funny."
I feel a strange burn in the pit of my stomach at this news. "I see. What happened?"
A shrug. "I went on assignment, and when I came back, she'd moved out. Left me a letter telling me how to find her, if I ever wanted to settle down properly."
"You did not, obviously.” I can't look at him. The ache in my gut won't let me. I'm not sure what this sensation is, but I don't like it.
He shakes his head. "No. I never saw her again."
"Why not?"
He’s silent a long time. "Many reasons."
"Such as?"
He glances at me. "Do you really want to know?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."
"The more I thought about things, the more I realized that it wasn't the job or the time away from her that drove us apart. It was…well, it was you."
I feel as if I've been punched in the stomach. "Me? How?"
"I couldn't commit to her. I couldn't…connect with her past a certain point.
I was holding some part of myself back. Keeping a distance between us, emotionally.
And even physically, in a way." He takes off his hat and plucks idly at the loose threads of the brim's ragged edge, driving with his knee for a moment or two.
"And what does that have to do with me, Ren?"
He frowns at me. "You don't get it?"
"Lorenzo, how could I have come between you and this Consuela of yours when I was on a different continent entirely?"
He lets out a slow breath. "Because she wasn't you, Sophia.
She could never be you. She could never understand me—she accepted the danger of my job, she accepted the time apart.
But she couldn't understand me. It's the only way I can put it.
And beyond that, as I said, she just wasn't you.
I couldn't love her because I was still in love with you. "
My eyes burn, and it makes me angry. "That's not my fault."
He shakes his head. "No, it isn't. I suppose it doesn't make any sense to anyone but me, but even though you were the reason, I never blamed you."
"You're right—that doesn't make any sense," I snap.
He looks at me with a heavy sigh. "Sophia—"
"I am NOT Sophia!" I shout. "Sophia is dead! The woman you loved is fucking dead, Lorenzo!" I slam the heel of my palm against the steering wheel as I all but scream the word dead.
"Inez, then—"
"You know nothing about me—about Inez. I may occupy the body of the woman you once knew as Sophia, but that person is gone.
Inez is…I am…" I shake my head. "You cannot love Inez.
I'm not…capable. Whatever thing it is inside of a person that lets us love and be loved…
it died in that cell. My father's men raped it to death.
Rafael raped it to death. And I…I finished it off, when I… all those people…"
I steal a look at Lorenzo and he's staring at the window, shoulders bunched around his ears, jaw tight, fists clenched so hard they tremble, white-knuckled.
The burn behind my eyes turns into a haze I cannot see through, and I pull onto the shoulder and brake to a skidding halt in the gravel with a swirl of dust.
Lorenzo is out of the car before I've put the shifter into park, hands knotting in his hair. I'm out and after him, memories of that awful, bloody night surging through me in a crushing cascade of gore-soaked nightmares.
Heads snapping back, brains spattering walls.
Stunned eyes going vacant as crimson circles bloom on shirtfronts, again and again.
The kitchen.
Maids' quarters.
Dining room. Cellar.
Stables.
Bunkhouse.
Spent shells trailing me like hot droplets of brass blood.
Bile stains the back of my teeth, presses against my lips. I stagger away into the scrub beyond the shoulder, fall to my hands and knees, and vomit until there's nothing left but strings of spit.
I feel him. He hands me a wad of gas station paper towels and a water bottle. I wipe my lips, rinse my mouth.
He pulls me to my feet, guides me away, and we perch side by side on the rear bumper. Bugs skirl and flutter in the beams of the headlights. "Tell me."
"I've never spoken of it. Not even to Jay—“ I cut myself off before a dead man's name leaves my lips. "My employer."
"Of course not. But you have to get it out of you, meu amor."
I look at him. "How can you still call me that?"
A semi groans past in a skirl of noise and wind. Silence returns. A gigantic moth flutters in front of me for a few moments, investigating me briefly before vanishing into the night.
"Sophia is gone. I accept that. But Inez…if that is the name you choose, I will honor that, because no matter the name, you are still you, and you are not dead. You went through a hell few could ever fathom, and you survived. I still see the woman I love whenever I look at you. I see your soul."
I shake my head. "I was never a very religious or spiritual person, you know that.
But lately, thinking about…" I choke on the words.
"When I face the fact that the blood of thirty-two innocent people is on these hands?
" I examine my palms, turn them over to examine the backs, as if they are literally bloodstained.
"I am beginning to believe in eternal damnation, Lorenzo. Because I deserve it."
"They weren't—"
"Oh, spare me the justifications, Ren!" I snap, pacing away and whirling to face him.
"They were all complicit in some way, I know.
They knew the things that went on at that estate.
Father's barbarity was no secret to anyone, nor was Rafael’s.
But does that make it okay? No one I murdered that day was directly involved with what happened. I just…snapped. I couldn't—"
Words fail me. I choke on them, like hot, bitter stones lodged in my throat.
"Tell me," he whispers. "Tell me everything."
"It's bad enough I have to live with what I did," I breathe, my voice bile-hoarse. "You shouldn't have to carry those memories, either."
"Tell me, goddammit," he growls. "You think you're the only one with innocent blood on your hands?"
I sit back down on the bumper beside him. "What is there to tell, Lorenzo? You know what happened."
"Yes, I do. But I don't know your perspective."
"My perspective?" I repeat, brow furrowing.
"Yes, Inez. Your perspective. Your feelings. Your memories. They're festering inside you like cancer. Get them out."
I shake my head. "I…Ren, I can't."
He takes my hand in his, threads our fingers together. "Try."
I shut my eyes. "Seventy-two hours after the wedding, I emerged from the shower to find Rafael with four of his men and a doctor waiting in my bedroom—I had one separate from Rafael.
I was…well, you can probably imagine the state I was in.
I'd been beaten and raped dozens of times, as you are aware.
I was in so much pain I could barely walk.
Emotionally, I was…well, at that point, I was too…
I was in too much shock to know what I was feeling, and the physical pain overrode the emotional trauma, or I probably would have killed myself.
Later, rage kept me alive, as it has done ever since.
" I swallow hard. "I froze, seeing Rafael and the men.
They…they held me down on the bed and the doctor ripped the I-U-D out of me. "
"Jesus," Lorenzo breathes, muttering something in Portuguese that I don’t fully catch, something about a vile monster.
"He did give me another week to recover before he began…trying to impregnate me."
Lorenzo's head hangs. "Inez…"
"I won't speak of the things Rafael enjoys. I cannot. Not even to you—especially not to you. Suffice it to say, there were times I wished I was back in that cell instead of enduring the sick shit that twisted fucking demon did to me." I look at him. "Still want to know the rest?”
Head hanging, he nods. "I will bear witness to your pain, meu amor."
A warm rush of…I don't know what…rushes through me.
Gratitude? Something akin to gratitude, I suppose.
"It took…god, I don't really know how long.
My life then was a blur of agony and rage and disgust and horror and terror.
Emotions too dark and awful to have names in any language.
The kind of thing there just aren't words for.
So it was all a bit of a blur. It was weeks of…
him. Not every day, he was too busy for that, which was the one small mercy.
Eventually, after a few months, I would guess, I began throwing up in the mornings.
I never had a normal period after…after those days in the cell, but the morning sickness was a pretty obvious sign.
He sequestered me in my rooms, locked from the outside with armed guards to prevent me from leaving.
I spent the next nine months locked in those rooms. He didn't try anything with me once I was pregnant, which was another small mercy. "
Lorenzo rubs his face with a hand. "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus." He paces away, muttering under his breath in Portuguese, and then comes back to me, listening.