22. Contessa
22
Contessa
My father has gotten thin. His suit doesn’t fit quite right, and his hairline has retreated toward his ears. Maybe he pulled it all out, trying to figure out what to do to get me back. His hug still feels the same. We stand in the threshold of his penthouse, wrapped up in each other’s arms. He does not let me go for several long minutes.
Caught in his literal and figurative clutches, I don’t know what I am supposed to feel.
Relief? Anger? Despair?
It doesn’t matter, really. I wrap my arms around him, clinging to him as tightly as he clings to me.
“My girl,” he says, over and over, pressing kisses to my temple. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you, even when you had given up. Not me. Not for anything.”
For anything.
Dario’s bloody face flickers behind my eyelids. Remy’s slumped, motionless body. The taste of Vinny’s blood fills my mouth again. I swallow all my bitter objections and force myself to smile, no matter how tight and brittle it feels. “I knew you wouldn’t,” I tell him, cupping his weathered face.
He takes my hands in his, kisses the back of them, then pulls me into his arms again.
I could almost believe he really does love me, in his own ugly way. It makes it all worse.
Our reunion eases its way into the living room. Uncle Emil wraps a heavy blanket around my shoulders as if I am a trauma victim, but I’m grateful to cover myself up. My father barks orders at his assistant, telling her to get me a cup of hot tea. The glitzy penthouse is unusually active for this time of night, the minimal and exhausted staff scrambling to wait on me hand and foot.
I feel so incredibly out of place. The sudden change of scenery doesn’t feel real, but this is no dream.
“She seemed a little confused at first,” Emil tells my father, as if I am not sitting here able to tell the story for myself. “I think she’s a little shell-shocked by it all.”
“Of course she would be,” my father says. “I suspected as much during those few times we got to speak to each other. I knew you couldn’t really want to stay with him,” he says to me.
“That’s no life. Not for you. Not for my daughter. He made you say those things.”
I direct my glower to the floor and swallow my objections.
I make myself nod.
Did Kay not tell him everything that I said and did at the engagement party? If she did, I can’t tell. Maybe my father’s hatred for Salvatore is so vast, it eclipses reality itself. I stoke the lie gently, keeping it burning.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I didn’t have another choice.”
My father likes this answer.
If he wants to believe that I was a miserable, unhappy prisoner, then I’ll let him believe it.
“What happens now that I’m home, papa…?” I ask.
“You rest up and recover,” he says immediately. I don’t know what I’m supposed to ‘rest or recover’ from—it sounds like more time spent alone in a room. The thought makes me nauseous. “That’s all you need to worry about. The family will handle the rest from here.”
The rest of what?
Salvatore’s calm, certain words ring back through my thoughts: It doesn’t matter how far you go, I’ll still come after you.
I dread the thought of what Sal might do to get me back—almost as much as I dread the thought of never seeing him again. That can’t happen. They can’t keep me away from him forever—not unless one of us dies first.
My father scoots forward on his seat, clutching my hand in his. “We’re here for you now, Tessa. You’ll be back to your old self soon. Every bit of what was done to you in that place will be undone. I’ll see to that.”
I just nod and keep my eyes down, where he can’t see the truth in them.
“I’m so tired, papa,” I say instead. “I just want to finally get a good night’s sleep—”
“Of course,” my father agrees. “You must be exhausted. We have a room all ready for you, with some of your things from your apartment.”
He guides me to a spare bedroom. I stand, stunned, in the doorway of my bedroom.
These are not some things from my apartment. It is my apartment, or at least, my bedroom. My same bed, my desk and chair, all spattered with paint splotches and covered in haphazard books and sketch paper, still in the same arrangement that I left them in. Half-filled paint bottles line the windowsill.
My white-board calendar is filled with dates that have long since passed. Even my clothes are in the closet. It is as perfect as they could have gotten it, given the different shape of the room, picking up my old life and planting it here in front of me.
“I wanted to make you comfortable,” my father explains. “Get you back to normal.”
There is nothing normal about this, something cautions me.
My apartment was my escape from my father. Now, it’s here, inside his penthouse.
Like all of my father’s kind acts, I see the purpose beneath this one—I have nowhere to go. Home is here.
I swallow my ungrateful attitude and ask him for a phone before I go to sleep, a way to text everyone that I’m now safe. My request is pushed off until the morning, and my suspicion quietly doubles. We hug again, both my father and my uncle, as we say our goodnights. I thank them both for my rescue. The words taste like vinegar.
The moment his footsteps fade, I check the door and breathe relief. I have one cold comfort in all this—my door isn’t locked.
My old bed creaks just the way it used to, and I wrap myself in my favorite blanket. Even in its soft grip, the comfort of this room feels scratchy and artificial.
When I was a child, and too indulged by my closest relatives, I was given a pet chinchilla for one of my birthdays. When I cleaned his cage, I had to keep a little of his old bedding, so that some of his scent would remain, marking it as safe and home. It’s a little insulting, being treated like you have the same emotional intelligence as a rodent—even a cute one.
Maybe it’s a little deserved.
I lie back and hate myself for following Noctus out of that house. For believing him so easily, my heart in a vice. Salvatore would have never brought me to his side for something like last words. My safety would have been paramount to him. Obviously, obviously, my brain says, over and over. Hindsight tears me in two.
Like the unfamiliar shadows in this room, Noctus’s words creep around my skull. Is Salvatore missing me at all? Does he have other women to get him through nights like this?
When I am not looking, does he become someone else entirely, until he finally can’t keep up the mask?
What if he’s just fine without me?
What if my absence bruises his pride and nothing else, while I feel like someone has stolen a rib from me, his absence felt in every painful breath?
I push the thought away.
I refuse to let the man who sold me off to my father pollute my memory of Salvatore.
If I want to have any chance of trying to contact him, I have to follow the plan. I have to convince my father that I want nothing to do with Salvatore Mori. I resolve myself, over and over. I can tell my father what he wants to hear, just like Sal would, to get what I actually want. I can learn to lie for him.
No matter how miserable I am, several nights without sleep finally catch up to me, and I drift into an exhausted, empty sleep.
The next day, I am told I have a surprise visitor. I’ve still not been given a phone, and no matter how I ask, my father gives my request the runaround. My surprise guest is not Kay, as I had secretly hoped. I recognize the shuffling sound of those footsteps before I realize it.
Dr. Armata enters the dining room. The ancient man has been the ‘family doctor’ since I was young. I know what the old fossil is really here to check; the same thing he checked when I was a teenager, every few months, keeping me on my father’s leash. A humiliating ritual. My thighs instinctively clench.
“When you’re finished, Tessa, Dr. Armata will do a routine checkup. Make sure you’re alright after everything you’ve been through.”
“I’m fine,” I insist, voice pitching up without my intention. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“It’s just a precaution,” my father tries to assure me.
“Well, I don’t want it.”
My father laughs, trying to downplay my reaction. “Oh, come now, Tessa. Give your old man some peace of mind. Let me hear it from a professional that you’re really alright. We can never be too safe.”
“No. This is ridiculous, you can hear it from me,” I say, watching Armata as though he is a snake that might strike. The man hasn’t touched me since the day I turned 18, and I won’t let him start now. The men in the room exchange glances at my stubborn attitude. They step away to speak to each other in low voices, but I catch the word trauma response .
My disgust doubles as I realize what they think—that I am being difficult because of some trauma Salvatore inflicted on me. Not the trauma they gave me themselves.
I go back to my room and find a pair of my old shoes in my closet. I hear someone following me.
“Tessa?” My father asks, as he watches me tie my laces. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to get my life back on track,” I smile at him sunnily. “I need to go see my friends.
Handle what’s to be done about my apartment and the art studio, see what’s happened to my installation at the gallery—I’ve been locked away for months, papa, I just need to get out and do something—”
“Let’s not be hasty—”
I try to move past him, but he blocks the way. Our eyes meet as I force him to show his hand.
“It’s not a good idea for you to be out yet.”
I knew it.
“And it won’t be until Salvatore Mori is six feet under. That won’t take long, darling, but until then, I need you to stay safe. Here.”
The words send a dagger to my heart, but my blasé smile never wavers.
“Papa, come on—” I say, breezing past him. “Just for a little while.”
“Tessa. Don’t make the security wrangle you back here. It would break my heart to have to do that.”
“I’ve been locked away this whole time! You can’t keep me trapped like he did. Tell me you won’t. Papa, please —you’re not like him—”
My hysteria barely requires any acting, but I’m still glad when he pulls me into his arms where I no longer have to worry about my expression.
“I’m not. No, darling, I’m not. How about this—you let Dr. Armata check you over, and then we can see about letting you go out for a while.”
God, the offer sickens me, but it’s worth a try. I drag my feet into the sitting room again.
Dr. Armata waits there, being served a coffee.
When I am a more cooperative patient, he makes me lay down on the couch. My skin crawls with reluctance. I’m relieved when he only does a few cursory checks and preps a syringe to take a blood sample. I suppose it’s not unthinkable that Salvatore could have been drugging me this whole time. I feel an ironic sense of relief at the sight of a needle and relax.
“Tell us what happened, Tessa,” my father prompts, trying to sound gentle about it.
I start to relay a brief, shorthand version of the truth. I was cornered by Salvatore in a club, forcibly taken to his house, locked away—these are not the details my father is looking for.
“What happened with Mori, and all those monsters that are loyal to him? What did they do to you?” he interrupts. My father would never suspect that Salvatore was deeply protective of me and would have never let anything happen to me—so long as I was under his watch.
“Nothing.”
It’s almost the truth. He and Armata exchange glances. The doctor finally intercedes, suggesting that physical examination will give us all a ‘clearer picture.’ My legs tighten together.
I don’t need any pictures down there, clear or otherwise, thank you very much.
“I don’t want that,” I insist, too frantically.
“Then I suppose you don’t want to go out, either—”
My fingers curl into themselves as I am treated like a child that doesn’t want to eat her vegetables.
But if he lets me go—if he lets me get back to him .
“Jesus Christ, at least leave the room!” I snap at him, flustered and humiliated.
Dr. Armata and I are left alone. Our face-off is a silent battle of wills until I finally pull down my jeans. I stare up at the ceiling, emotionally retreating someplace inside myself. Hatred sharpens itself inside me as I open my legs. I think only of getting back to Salvatore, fantasizing about what he would do to this man if he were here now.
The inspection is brief and telling. I do not look at his face when he pulls back and tells me to put my clothes back on.
I’m surprised to find tears on my face when Armata leaves to talk with my father. I scrub them away angrily, pulling up my jeans. My father steps into the room again, his expression dark and worn.
I glance at him out of the corner of my gaze.
“What?” I spit the word at him. His eyes are full of pity, his face grim and resolved.
“You still have so much promise, Tessa. I want you to know that. I will fix this. All of it.
It will be like it never happened.”
I ignore the reassurances.
“I’m going out,” I tell him again. My father moves toward his office, not acknowledging me.
“Did you hear me? Papa—”
He closes the office door between us.
Dr. Armata has gone.
Alone for the first time, I all but run to the front door.
A 6-foot-tall security guard towers between me and the rest of the world.