35. Fury is a cold mistress
There is no clock on the wall when I wake up, but it’s still dark outside. The headache throbbing behind my eyelids indicates that I haven’t slept long. I’m dehydrated and the effect of the drug Louis gave me has worn off completely.
I almost cry out when I sit up in the bed that smells all wrong, my shoulder lancing in agony. Just like I noticed last night, there’s nothing in this room. Not even a chair. No curtains frame the window, no nightstand on either side of the bed. Even if I wanted to hang myself, I wouldn’t be able to, and I know that’s on purpose. If I die, it will be when Louis has decided and not a second before.
Thinking of the man sends a thrill of dread down my spine. At least, he didn’t come in while I slept. I think.
I check my body. The clothes I’ve been wearing since yesterday are still where they’re supposed to. With a deep inhale, I let my hand drift under my panties and down to my core for signs of… I don’t want to think the word out into existence. If he used a condom and I was passed out, I’d never know for sure. I touch tentatively around my lips. No swollen tissue, irritated skin or unknown substance. Relief washes over me at finding myself seemingly untouched.
Louis locked the door before leaving the room, so there’s nothing for me to do but wait until he comes to check on me. The nightmare will start then. I’m not sure how long I’ll survive with nothing to do but follow my spiralling thoughts and the catastrophic scenarios my brain conjures.
The clicking sound of the latch is loud in the space and resonates across the empty room before Louis opens the door. I move my leg on each side of the bed, instinctively knowing I need to prepare to flee if shit hits the fan.
His massive frame occupies the entire threshold, giving his silhouette a heinous outline, but I play coy. I need to survive him. Now is not the time to be myself.
“Hi.” I keep my voice calm, in between too cheerful and too meek.
“My Giulia,” Louis breathes like me acknowledging him is the beginning of our love story, hearts in his eyes.
He comes to kneel in front of me, placing his torso between my thighs. His hand caresses my cheek, and a soft smile graces his features. The dark eyes and neatly cropped hair that accentuate a strong brow and thin lips do nothing for me anymore. I can’t remember a time they did.
“How did you sleep, baby?”
I’ve always hated the nickname. I meet his gaze head on and all I see in there is hunger. A crazed look of someone who’s been starved and is desperate to eat and holding onto sanity by a thread. My body shivers without my permission and Louis takes it as his sign to continue our conversation. He doesn’t want to know how I slept. He doesn’t care about how I feel.
“You’re shivering.” His hands rub my arms to create heat, but it’s useless. I won’t feel warm or whole until I’m back with Andrea. “Let’s get you warmed up. There’s nothing a warm bath can’t fix.”
He takes me to the bathroom on the other side of the corridor. This whole place is all wrong. The walls are painted the same colour as the thatched roof of my home. It smells exactly like the candles I like to leave burning when I’m inside. When I enter the bathroom, I see the candles, the same brand I use, lit up around the place.
Nausea crawls up my throat. I’d bet all I have that even the towels are the same brand. It makes me sick. Andrea has top notch security around the house. I know for certain Louis has never been inside nor too close, but I’m the one who buys that shit for the house, I’m the one who changed the decor to my liking. And it seems Louis has been observing my shopping habits very closely.
The clawfoot bath is full of warm water. The steam rises and fogs the mirror, so I don’t see what I look like when I step inside and undress. A small mercy.
I stop before my clothes can hit the floor around me.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching you, my Giulia. It’s been a long time. Getting reacquainted with your body brings me so much joy,” he says wistfully. Like this is his dream. And I’m sure it is. “I’ve been looking for you for so long. You coming back to me is a miracle.” I swallow over the vomit in my mouth and continue to move slowly. “Let me,” he demands when I struggle with removing my blood-crusted pink sweater.
I moan in pain when he moves me around and he clicks his tongue with impatience. When his steps retreat behind me, I let out a sigh of relief, but it’s short-lived. Louis is back with scissors in his hands.
“No, no, please, don’t.” I shake my head erratically.
“We have to remove it, and clean the wound a bit more. What the doctor did was enough to stave off the pain and close the wound, but we need to wash it. Let me take care of you, baby.” His lips find my brows and this time, I lock my muscles and repel the full body shudder that wants to take hold of me.
I need to remember the mission, the end goal.
But this pink sweater is one of the first items I bought with Andrea’s money that first day I was his wife. A memory that should be bitter but tastes so sweet.
It’s just a thing. It’s just a piece of clothing. I can do this.
I repeat the words in my head like a mantra.
The awareness of how much my training is lacking in situations of life and death hits me like a freight train. I might have been raised in the mafia, but I realise I’m barely above mafia princess status. I can box and steal and lie, but it was all for nothing when the boogeyman came to claim me.
My thoughts are dark as Louis cuts into the cloth and removes my bra. His fingers trail the sensitive sides of my breasts and my belly until he helps me out of my jeans and panties.
I want to crumble under the weight of his stare, but lying is all I have left to survive.
He notices the tears in my eyes and frowns. “Are you in pain?”
“No. I’m just confused.” I sigh, a little extra dramatically to lull Louis into a false sense of security. “Can you help me get into the bath?” A small quirk of my lip, a dip of my gaze before coming back up. It’s a well-rehearsed choreography.
I’m Giulia Myers again, the alter ego I created when Lana and I studied in London. The social butterfly with nothing in the head. The sultry party girl Louis fell for.
“Of course, baby.”
The warm water feels like a balm on my tired body, but my muscles tense up when shuffling sounds come from behind me. I don’t dare turn around and wait for Louis to climb inside the tub with me.
He makes me lay on his chest, his hard cock pressing into my back, his large hands resting on my stomach and breast. The touch is searing, my stomach reeling with nausea. It’s a mark that will never leave. He takes a washcloth and gently cleans the wound on my shoulder before going for the rest of my limbs.
The more he washes me, the dirtier I feel.
The more his hands roam, the more I retreat into my head. Steel wraps around my heart and my mind goes empty. I watch myself in the bath with him from above.
His hands go down my stomach, caress my thighs, and find the valley in between.
I don’t fight him.
I feel nothing. I am nothing.
My eyes close and I let my body take over. The touch is too rough for it to be comparable to Andrea, but it’s him I see behind my eyelids. It’s the only way my brain can allow what’s happening.
“God, I’ve missed you,” the disembodied voice comes from my left and I don’t recognise it, but I don’t try. It’s like the person associated with it is in a fishbowl. The voice is distorted, I can’t make out what else it says.
It takes too long for me to come, but I do, painfully, barely there. I’ve done it before too, when another man who wanted something from me held his own life above my head like a threat. Knowing my life now hangs in the balance barely makes a difference to the knowledge of losing my autonomy.
When I come back to my senses, it’s like I never left, a part of the past hour missing but deep down, I know what happened. And fury is a cold mistress waiting for me to exact the vengeance she deserves.
* * *
After Louis dries me and helps me into new clothing, a black cardigan over a simple skin tight white-T and another pair of jeans, the replica of the ones I wear, he makes breakfast. The scene is so domestic, but the idea of eating anything he prepares makes me want to throw up already. My stomach is tied in knots so tight it’s a miracle if I can keep anything down. The burn radiates up my oesophagus to invade the back of my throat, my tongue almost swelling like if I’d stuff my mouth with cotton.
“We will have to send the divorce papers soon so we can get married. Give me the ring, baby, seeing it on your fingers makes me really angry and we don’t want that, now don’t we?”
“Of course not.”
These rings are my salvation, my only reminder that something better might be looking for me out there. That I will have something to come back to when I get out of here.
But Louis holds out his hand open, waiting for me to give him my tether to my husband, willingly. I swallow and remove the rings slowly before dropping them in his open palm.
He signals for me to join him on the couch, and I take a breath before settling on his lap. His lips quirk up in a satisfied smile. I pleased him. Good. It’s one more step towards my freedom.
Louis twirls my mother’s ring in between his fingers. “You know it’s a piece of junk right?” he laughs at the heirloom. If I wasn’t so intent on getting out of here, I’d be furious right now. Andrea would never dare insult something that means so much to me. “And this cheap gold band, that’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Nothing fitting for a queen like you.”
He moves me to sit next to him and gets down on one knee. Finding the will to smile is an herculean effort when he pulls a red velvet box out of his pocket and opens it with a bright smile. “Wear this one.”
He isn’t looking at me at all; I don’t even have to fake it. I should have known Louis didn’t care about my opinion. He glides the gaudy ring with diamonds and rubies where Andrea’s was and I do my best to beam at him, smacking my lips on his and repressing another gag.
I dream of wiping the smug smile on his face, but he doesn’t notice. My apathy from earlier morphs into an ugly monster made of blood-red rage. I hold onto the beast by the horns and don’t let go, letting it grow inside my chest, ready to tear the flesh of the other monster in the room.
“I’m glad you found me,” I lie. “It must have been hard.”
I need to know, for my sanity, how he did it. How despite my security measures and Andrea’s, he found a way to get to me.
“Oh no, baby, it wasn’t hard at all. I’ve kept good contacts with a few of Pierce’s hackers. We placed an alert on your face, so when you landed in the U.K., it wasn’t hard to find you. I was so overjoyed. It was a sign, you know. A sign that you were ready for me.”
“Why kill Xan and Mia? You could have just talked to me.”
I caress his cheek, pleading for a guardian angel to protect me so he doesn’t see the revulsion in my green eyes.
Louis just shrugs and kisses me quickly. My shoulders lock up on instinct and I force them to relax.
“What’s the beauty in that? I needed to act quickly. Make you realise no one can love you like I do. Not your exes and not your fake husband. I know you didn’t marry him for love. You could never marry a man like him.”
I don’t know what he means by that, but I don’t ask. If Louis thinks killing people I briefly dated was a beautiful gesture of love, he could kill me for displeasing him at any moment.
The rest of the day is spent between preparing divorce papers and a new marriage licence. When he’s distracted, I study my surroundings, noting weapons, knives, and everything I will need to kill him.
Tonight, Louis Marshall will take his last breath. And I will be the one to drag his soul to Hell.