Chapter 32
My body ached in places I didn’t even know it could ache, but I would still take that kind of pain over the agony currently aflame in my chest. It’d taken everything inside of me not to crumble in Zarren’s arms as he took such care with me in the shower.
His hands had been everywhere, touching nearly every inch of my body as he ran the soft loofah sponge over my skin. I almost thought he might even try to take me again while under the scalding spray, but he didn’t, at least not in a sexual manner.
Did it really matter after he’d fucked me so ruthlessly?
Hearing him admit to loving me had been too little too late.
Normally, I’d have been overjoyed by his confession that matched mine, but it only made things worse.
We were both going to suffer, and no matter how many times he’d purposely made me endure it, I’d never wish it upon him.
We loved each other, but in the end, it meant nothing. After all, we’d both drunk the poison from the same vein. As he’d told me time and time again, my fate wasn’t my own, and in the end, his hadn’t been, either.
It should’ve made me feel better somehow, but there was no satisfaction to be found in something so fucked up. And that was the only way to describe what this all was. I’d already been forced to mourn the loss of the life I’d once lived, and now I would be forced to mourn this as well.
I’m sorry was what his reflection kept saying to me. Again, too little too late. Zarren had eventually turned off the water, dried me off, and even helped me get dressed before escaping downstairs.
Will you smell my scent in the air? Will it haunt you like yours will haunt me?
Will you hear my screams in the dead of the night? Will they echo in your soul?
Will you see my face each time you close your eyes? When they’re wide open?
Will you find pieces of my heart strewn across the floor? Will they be lying there beside yours?
Shaking my head, again, it didn’t matter.
Nothing ever would. I had no choice but to be handed off to someone who might be a complete monster.
I was having to pay for the sins of my father, and one who’d never lifted a fucking finger to do a damn thing for me.
All he’d done was try to use me, then pawn me off like something he possessed.
Mikhail might have me in body, but he’ll never possess my heart and soul.
What’s left of those will lie squarely with the man downstairs. I wanted so badly to run to him and try to plead to his confessed feelings toward me, but there was no use. He’d rather bite off his own ear than stand up to his uncles... For himself... For me...
“You need to pack whatever you want to take with you,” he’d said to me after leaving me on the bed.
And he was right. Begrudgingly, I forced my limbs to move.
I got up and retrieved my suitcases from the closet.
I had no sooner pulled everything from the hangers when the sound of a doorbell pierced the air.
As soon as it did, something struck my chest, and I staggered over to the chair in the corner.
As reality hit me that time had truly run out, I was afflicted with lightheadedness.
My vision blurred, and as I tried to collapse onto the chair beside me, my limbs wouldn’t move, and I fell to my knees in front of it instead.
My heart started to palpitate as everything got hazier, but I was paralyzed. Body, and especially mind.
Fear twisted around my arms and legs like a rope binding me to my uncertain future, while also slipping inside and wrapping around my lungs. At first, my breaths became labored, but as the incessant roar of my blood in my ears beat in my head like a snare drum, it slowed to a stop completely.
Mentally, I clutched at my chest, but in reality, I began to choke. I wanted to cry out for Zarren, but each time I tried to open my mouth, my windpipe would close more tightly. It didn’t take long to go from a kneeling position to one flat on my face.
I knew I was heavily sweating as the perspiration created a small puddle underneath me. I was also wracked with chills as goosebumps rose up on my flesh despite feeling as if I’d been thrust into an inferno.
Unable to do more than hyperventilate, I found myself praying to whatever God was out there to finally show me some mercy. I’d been the perfect daughter, friend, girlfriend, and nurse in my life, and I deserved better than this.
If so, why was this happening to me?
The longer I lay like this, the sooner I would be found.
Refusing to allow Zarren or those sadistic uncles of his to see me like this, I forced myself to calm down.
It was hard as hell considering I was a discombobulated mess on the fucking floor, but I was a Winslow.
Not a Barganella. Or a Bocharov. But, a Winslow.
“You can be anything you want to be, Rory,” I could hear in the back recesses of my mind. “You can swim the largest ocean or fly to the farthest planet from here.”
“I can’t do those things,” I could hear myself say.
“Why not? Your dreams should never feel so big that they’re unattainable.”
“What’s un-at-ain-a-bull mean, Daddy?”
“You’re a Winslow. Anything you want to do in life, you can do. Never settle for less than what you want.”
Yet, here I was settling for being tagged like a piece of livestock to be shipped to another continent, where I’d be married off to a stranger and one I’d never love.
I had thought I’d felt that for Drake, but if that had been true.
.. been real... I wouldn’t have fallen ass over face for my captor. ..
Only I couldn’t capture something that never belonged to me.
From the day my mother had fled Palermo for America, my fate had been decided.
Everything that had happened since my first breath into this world until now had been a result of my mother’s action.
When I’d first learned what it meant to be adopted, I’d been hurt but eternally grateful that I’d landed with my Mom and Dad.
Any dreams I’d dreamt had been ones imagined on borrowed time. My entire upbringing and life to this point had meant nothing. One day, I’d realize the things I had considered dreams were never real. The only thing unattainable in this world I was born into was a normal life.
I’m not Aurora Winslow. I’m Aurora Barganella.
I’m the illegitimate bitch of Cosa Nostra’s own, Leon Barganella.
And soon, I’d be the betrothed whore of Mikhail Bocharov.
But for the most fleeting of moments, I’d also been Zarren’s.
So goddamned mine!
And he’d been right. Since that long, dark road in the dead of the night when I’d put my own wants, needs, hopes, dreams, freedom, and future on the back burner for him, I’d been his.
Since the first time his lips touched mine, awakening a fire inside of me that burned bright until now, I’d been his.
The voices grew louder and I rolled over onto my back.
I needed to get up before they found me in the exact shape I least wanted them to find me in.
I forced myself to get back onto my feet.
There was one more suitcase to go, and after grabbing everything from the dresser, including two T-shirts of his, I brought them back to the bed.
I stuffed everything inside of them except for one of the shirts, which I brought to my nose. I inhaled his scent into me, hoping it would give me strength. All it managed to do was weaken me further. It fell from my hands into the suitcase, along with a few more tears.
All of my stuff from the bathroom came next, and finally, I had only my nightstand to clean out.
There wasn’t much to be found in it. My obvious travel documents and identification were there, as well as a notebook Zarren had gotten for me at my request. I hadn’t really written much in it to date, and now regret over not doing so caused the earlier rope binding me to wrap around my neck like a noose.
After grabbing my things from the drawer, I was about to close the last suitcase when something fell onto the bed beside it. A long, jagged, single shard of glass. I’d picked it up off of Zarren’s floor the other night when he’d erupted in a fit of anger.
I hadn’t really understood why I thought of doing it at the time. Had I been scared of him? Did I think he would turn that anger on me? He obviously had issues, as evidenced by the condition he came home in yesterday.
As I held the jagged glass in my hand, it shook from my trembling. I’d never get out of this place alive, but maybe... No, this is crazy. Walking to the bathroom to throw it away, I kept repeating one thing to myself.
Be strong! Be strong! Be strong! Be strong!
I’d nearly dropped it into the garbage can as intended, but the voices raised higher. Leaving it on the counter instead, I quickly slipped out of the bathroom and bedroom, making myself part of the wallpaper.
“Z, she has to go,” is all I heard, and I escaped back to the room before a sob could break free. The bedroom door did not have a lock, so I raced into the bathroom and secured its lock in place before flattening myself against the door.
Tears sprang to my eyes, then fell unchecked down my face.
Would it be two minutes, five, ten... It didn’t matter.
They would not be leaving here without me.
The earlier panic returned, but this time I clutched the counter to hold myself upright.
I’d always been the perfect law-abiding citizen, having never even done so much as lie to my parents, until I got here and was forced to.
Now, I was at the mercy of a criminal organization, and not even the one I was born into.
Soon, I would be fully entrenched within another crime family as well.
I’d never skipped school, broken curfew, cheated on a test, or even gotten a speeding ticket, but now I was being shipped from one prison to another with no chance of appeal.
I scrubbed my shaky hands down my face. My fingers and toes were as cold as ice, and I tried desperately to force movement into them. It was to no avail, as with everything else in what had become my life.
I can’t live like this... I won’t live like this...
I’d taunted Zarren by telling him I would lie under this Mikhail and scream his name, but the very thought of being in the same room with him and sharing the same air caused the panic to form a knot inside my throat. As it slowly rose up, it became suffocating.
My life had no longer been my own since Zarren had entered it and taken it over. The life I'd once known was gone. I was in a brand-new and terrifying world, and I honestly didn't know how to exist in it without him. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see another way out.
My limbs threatened to give out on me, and spying the piece of glass, I quickly grabbed it while still able. I turned it so that the sharpest side was now visible. A knock on my bedroom door sent terror racing through me.
I brought the jagged edge to one of my wrists, then at the sound of my name, I made a quick vertical slice across my wrist. Blood immediately bloomed at the surface, and the room began to spin once more. Taking the glass, I changed hands, then slit my other wrist.
As the blood began seeping from the cuts, I squeezed my eyelids closed for a few seconds before reopening them.
The tears continued to pour from my eyes as the blood did from my veins.
“Zarren,” I whispered as I staggered toward the shower.
I didn’t make it even halfway there before my legs gave out on me, and I fell hard onto the tile beneath my knees.
I nearly groaned, but I needed to get up. I tried, but there was too much blood on the floor, and my hands kept slipping. At the thunderous sound of my name, I smiled as a sudden sense of peace fell over me.
Another few minutes of pain and it would be all over.
Another few minutes and I would finally be free.
As I rolled over onto my back, I was struck by the blinding light seconds before it exploded into hundreds of starbursts above me. A soft smile tipped my lips as my eyelids grew heavier. Finally, they closed and that hard-sought peace claimed me.
“Grazia,” I heard, and my body relaxed more.
“Who’s there?” I asked as I found myself back on my feet. Only, I still lay on the floor convulsing as blood continued to seep out onto the floor.
“Mia figlia Grazia,” I heard once more.
Looking around for the sound of the soft voice, I finally turned behind me at the door and at the light streaming from all sides of it. “Who is it?” I asked once more.
“It’s your mother, Grazia. Come to Mamma,” she said as the light grew even brighter.
I looked back down at my body in the exact moment that the door was flung open.
It was nearly ripped from its hinges as Zarren rushed to my body, or what would now be my corpse.
Turning to the front of me, I saw a woman in a white nightgown waving to me as she smiled.
Her aura was so warm. Her smile was so welcoming.
“Bellezza,” Zarren cried out in anguish just as my mother spoke again.
“It’s time, Grazia.”
I wanted to tell her that my name was Aurora... Aurora Grace... Grace... Grazia... My entire life, I’d carried a piece of the real me and had never even known it. As if my mother knew what I was thinking, she let out a soft laugh.
“Yes, my darling girl. You’ve always been my Grazia. Come, we don’t have time to wait.”
I turned away from her and back at the man currently cradling me against his chest. “Don’t leave me, Bellezza,” Zarren crooned to me as he seemed almost paralyzed as to what to do with me.
“Grazia,” I heard once more. “Come with Mamma.”
A mother I’d never known but had secretly yearned for, or a man I’d loved so much... The decision should’ve been easy, but it wasn’t until I remembered what landed me in this spot.
“I won’t live without you, Bellezza,” he swore vehemently as he pulled me more tightly into his arms. I remembered other words he’d said, especially when it came to saving him.
He’d wished I would’ve let him die before.
As his life, at least according to his words, hung in the balance, I made the only decision I could.