Chapter 30
Madelene
It’s been hours since Elio left the room, and despite my skin itching to leave, I haven’t so much as peeked out the blinds. The fear I’ve lived with for years still hasn’t dissipated. I think the mental torture the Severinos left with me has been the worst.
The bruises have healed. I can almost forget the things they made me do. I no longer close my eyes and feel Marcello’s fingers ripping at my hair as he forced me down on his erection. The time I spent with Hollis has replaced almost all of those horrific memories.
The threats, however, are struggling to hold on.
They cling to my consciousness like smoke clings to clothing and heavy air.
The Severinos swore they’d see my father dead, and they made that happen.
I don’t think Elio was lying to me. He seemed indifferent to the news of our father’s death, not like he told me a lie to hurt me in any way.
I don’t think the man cares about anything enough to lie.
As darkness forms around the outer ring of the curtain covering the single window of the motel room, I grow even more antsy, but it isn’t exactly fear that’s making my blood hum.
I want to go to him—Hollis—not my brother.
The man that walked out of here earlier today was right. He’s no longer Elio, and I think I knew that long before we buried those ashes in the crypt.
I should be happy, grateful he didn’t die a tragic death. I worried for his soul, knowing suicide would send him to a different place from where my mother went a year later. I’m not so sure that the man will have an entirely different outcome no matter how he meets his end.
He was at that office, the same as Hollis and that man, Nash, who forced us there at gunpoint. If Hollis works for that Angel guy, that means Elio probably does, too. Hollis had no problem killing Marcello nor Julio, and I highly doubt Elio will struggle with it now either.
Nighttime grows longer, the last tendrils of sunlight drifting away, leaving the heat of the day behind, clinging to the concrete of the city.
I hate the overhead lights outside the door as I walk along the side of the motel, but no one seems to concern themselves with me.
I heard a lot of things. Many I don’t believe dripped from Alessio’s and Marcello’s poisonous mouths, but I doubt they were lying when they said all men will take what they want from a woman.
The woman could beg and plead, but the result will still be the same.
The protected life I lived with my parents extended to the Severino compound, and even though the guards would look at me in a way that would make me question my safety, the threat of betraying the family kept them away from me. The men that may lay eyes on me now aren’t bound to that same loyalty.
The front desk clerk seems annoyed when I ask her to call me a cab but she does it anyway, her eyes skating over me in a way that makes my skin crawl.
I wait quietly, keeping to the shadows of the building for the car to pull up.
“You got cash?” the cabbie grunts when I open the back door of the car. “I’m not getting into trouble if you’re using a stolen fucking credit card.”
I hold up some of the money Elio tossed at me before leaving, grateful for the plexiglass barrier between the two of us.
He continues to stare at me, and I’m thinking this is the worst idea ever when he speaks up again. “Do you have a fuckin’ address?”
I swallow, not having thought this all the way through.
“The corner of Gumwood and North Seventeenth,” I say, wondering if I’ve made another mistake when his eyes widen.
“Listen, I tip well,” I tell him, and it’s enough for him to turn back around and drive the fucking car out of the parking lot.
I never thought we were in the safest neighborhood, but I never heard gunfire or yelling outside either. This guy just confirmed my suspicions that even if I stepped outside to try and escape Hollis, I might have been in more danger than I was inside with him.
The drive takes longer than I expect it to, and the driver looks at me in the rearview mirror with every red light we catch as if he fully expects me to change my mind with each chance I’m given.
I keep my eyes locked ahead. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I see him again.
He could very easily tell me to get the fuck out of his life, but I know I have to try.
Hollis stepped in front of me, tried to protect me from all of them.
Even with his hands cuffed behind his back, he was willing to put himself in harm’s way if it meant saving me for only a single second longer.
That means something to me.
I can’t remember the last time someone was willing to endure any kind of pain or punishment in order to protect me. Elio was the last one, but he’s no longer that man. He said so himself.
The street is dark, nearly all the streetlamps either broken or barely flickering, and I have to consider the reasoning for people around here needing the darkness. What makes me want to run the other way is probably the same reason Hollis chose this place.
“That house,” I say, pointing at the familiar yet also strange house.
“This is North Sixteenth,” he clarifies, but I’m not going to argue with the man.
It’s not like I had a chance to memorize the address when I was backing the truck out of the damn garage.
And the first time I showed up here, I had a fucking bag over my head.
“It’s not fucking safe for you here. Doesn’t look like anyone is home. ”
The house is completely dark, but I can’t just sit in the car and wonder. “Give me two minutes.”
He starts to argue, but I climb out anyway, grateful when I don’t hear the squeal of his tires deserting me out here as I walk quickly toward the house. The closer I get, the safer I feel, but my heart is still pounding in my chest. I’m terrified, but seeing him again makes it well worth it.
The doorbell doesn’t work when I press it, and although reluctant to knock on the door for the attention it might bring from the other houses, I do it anyway.
It goes unanswered, and I don’t sense him the way I did when I was here before.
I press my face to the living room window, the one he was always so fond of looking out of, tears stinging my eyes at what I see inside.
It’s empty. The settee, the coffee table, even the small dining room table that once had two lonely chairs pulled up to it are gone from the kitchen. He’s not just out. He’s gone.
I startle when the cabbie blares the horn, but I know better than to stick around and see just how much attention the noise will draw.
My skin is crawling as I rush back to the cab, seeing a dark shadow move down the street.
“Back to the motel,” I say.
He doesn’t hesitate to pull away from the curb, just as the man in the shadows doesn’t hesitate to watch us drive by.
“I have a right mind to take you to a fucking mental hospital because you seem on the brink of a fucking breakdown.”
“I’m fine,” I assure him, wondering just how damn close to being right he is.
Gone.
I expected many things going to his house tonight, but that wasn’t a consideration.
I knew after looking around the house for the first time that it wasn’t his full-time residence.
It was too sparsely utilized. Someone doesn’t have to have any real personal effects to make a home feel lived in.
Pictures of loved ones on the wall aren’t a requirement, but there was nothing that made me believe that he could’ve slept one night there prior to bringing me to the house.
After two weeks of us being there together, we accumulated packets of ketchup. There were dishes in the drainer.
Trash in the trash can. He left as easily as he showed up.
I consider going back to that office Nash forced me to drive to, but I doubt that Angel guy would help me. I don’t even know what to ask for. The woman might be a better bet, but there’s very little chance anyone would be there this late at night.
I have no option but to head back to the motel room. Maybe when Elio gets back, he’ll be more willing to answer some questions. Despite not seeming like the brother I loved all my life, I don’t get the idea that he’d hurt me. If anything, I’m a complete waste of his time.
Hell, coming back to the motel may be too much effort for the man.
He warned me that if he wasn’t back in three days, it meant that he was dead.
I’m sure that’s what he wants me to believe.
If anything, he just left knowing he’d have a seventy-two-hour head start.
He never meant to be found in the first place after all.
I pay the cabbie once I get back to the motel, tipping well like I promised. Elio was generous with the cash he tossed my way, but it’s not like it’s enough to start a new life.
I try to crush the hope inside of me, knowing that I’ll never see my brother again, that considering him dead is my best bet, but I was proven wrong once before.
I just can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that I’m completely alone in the world.
With my father’s death, something that is affecting me less than it probably should, and Elio leaving again, I literally have no one.
I’ve felt helpless and alone many times in my life, but right now, the desolation feels all encompassing.
It has me questioning what the point of survival is.
I’m not insane enough to go back to Chicago.
I’ll run the skin off the soles of my feet in order to stay free of Alessio, but I don’t exactly have hope or plans for my future either.
I close myself in the motel room, flipping the latch for the lock and making sure to fix the curtains so no one can peek inside, before falling to the bed.
Knowing I’m not above asking for help, I formulate a plan to go back to that office and see if there’s anything those people will be willing to help me with.
Too bad it’s Friday night and they’ll most likely not return until Monday.
I can wait. It gives Elio more time to change his mind and come back to get me.