Chapter 34 ROSE
ROSE
Iwalk through the halls of my family home, the air cool this time of night, my body tired from the last twenty-four hours. “Angelos?”
“In here,” he shouts, the sound coming from my father’s old office.
I push the heavy door open and suck in a breath as Angelos holds a gun in his hand, my brother showing him how to use it.
“Angelos, put that down.” My pulse hammers in my throat.
This is exactly why I changed my name and left this world behind.
I didn’t want him ever to know what it felt like to hold a gun in his hand.
“Relax, sorella. It’s not loaded.” He opens his palm, showing me the bullets.
I step into the room. “I don’t care. He shouldn’t be handling guns.”
Elio takes it from Angelos with a roll of his eyes and places it in a holster in the back of his trousers.
“You carry that thing around with you?”
His eyes flick to mine. “You can never be too careful. Maybe Papa would still be alive if he’d carried a gun at all times.”
I scratch at my neck, my skin prickling with uncertainty. “Come on Angelos. Come and say goodnight to Nonna.”
“Can we still go clay pigeon shooting, Uncle?” Angelos looks between me and Elio.
Elio waves a hand in my direction. “Up to your mamma, ragazzo.”
I narrow my eyes at him. I’m sick of being the bad mum all the time at having to say no. Our relationship is strained enough, with Magnus looming over us like a bad smell. “I’ll deal with you later,” I say as I close the door and follow Angelos down the hall.
He looks up at the ornate mouldings on the wall as if taking in the grandeur for the first time. The house still contains most of its original features. The last time he was here, he was too young to remember it.
We walk into Mamma’s room now she’s out of the hospital. I’ve been with her most of the evening while Angelos was with Elio. He needed the space with the tension high between us and him blaming me and Dan for uprooting him this time, and I still haven’t found the courage to tell him the truth.
“Night, Nonna.” Angelos kisses my mother on the cheek.
“Buonanotte ometto.” She lifts the oxygen mask back over nose.
I run my hand through Angelos’ thick brown hair. “I’ll come and tuck you in soon. Clean your teeth and get your pyjamas on. It’s really late.”
He runs out of the room with a spring in his step, as if he’s treating this as a holiday.
It’s been a long time since we visited here, too many memories in this house to make it feel like home.
A shiver shakes my limbs and I pull my cardigan over my chest. “I don’t know how you can live here after everything that happened. This place still gives me the creeps.”
Mamma pulls her mask down again. “This was my parents’ home before your father tainted it. I was born here and I’ll die here. No man or ghost is going to drive me out of my home.”
I give Mamma a smile. I admire her strength. If only her body matched her strong will. “Is there anything you need before I go to bed?”
“My book.” She points to the shelf behind me.
I run my fingers along the spines, a smile playing on my lips as I remember sneaking into the library as a child to read my mother’s romance collection.
“Here you go.” I guess it’s why my mother chose this room as her new bedroom when she could no longer get upstairs.
I lift out my old copy of Romeo and Juliet from the adjacent shelf.
The pages are more tattered than I remember.
Her frail fingers slip around my arm. “I’m glad you’re here, la mia bella rosa.”
“Me too, Mamma.”
“Try not to worry about the Bianchi boy.”
“You still think there’s an explanation?”
“All I know is what I saw. The man cares about you. His father was a good man. And I see so much of his father in him.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” It’s time to move on with my life.
I came here to get away from Dan, needing space to breathe and time to think clearly.
I’m not afraid of Magnus. There’s nothing he can do to me that he hasn’t done already.
Except take my son away, but I won’t let that happen.
I’ll kill him myself before that ever happens.
I close the door gently as I step into the hallway, the light to Elio’s office still on. Peeking my head around the gap, I smile at Elio. “Thank you for entertaining him tonight. But can you keep the guns locked away from now on?”
Elio quirks his lips and shakes his head as if I’m being overdramatic. He’s nothing like our father, thank goodness. But he shares the same taste for vengeance. “He should learn how to handle a gun. I was much younger when I learnt how to protect myself.”
Maybe Elio’s right if it’s for his own protection. “Maybe you should teach me how to handle one.” I huff, but I’m not exactly joking. “Right. I’m going to bed. Just came to say night.”
“Do you have everything you need?” He looks up from his laptop, a warm but concerned expression on his face. “Il ragazzo, okay?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You gonna tell me why you’re here?”
“Just wanted to spend some time with Mamma.”
He nods. “Doctor’s said she’s over the worst. You don’t need to worry anymore. The old girl might outlive us all.”
“Tough as old boots, that one.” My smile falters, knowing it’s just wishful thinking. Mamma may be over the pneumonia, but the COPD machine isn’t going away. “Night.”
“Night, sorella.” He goes back to his laptop, a frown settling on his face.
I close the door and pad up the large winding staircase, my fingers gliding along the ornate carved design of the wooden bannister that curves up the stairs.
Moonlight shines through the large arched window on the staircase, light bouncing off the crystals on the chandelier that hangs as a focal point in the centre of the marble steps curving around it.
My brother’s head of security nods as I pass him on the stairs. “Goodnight, signora.”
“Night, Bruno.” My muscles relax, knowing the house is locked down. I walk into the guest room that Angelos has claimed. “Have you cleaned your teeth?”
“Yeah.” He climbs into bed with his Nintendo switch. “I left my charger at home.”
I ruffle his hair. “I’m sure we can get one tomorrow.” I pull the duvet over his chest in the large double bed. “Want me to stay in here with you?”
“I’m not a kid anymore, Mum.”
“Just because you’re thirteen does not mean you are an adult.”
“I’m a teenager.”
I lean over and kiss his forehead. “All right. I’m just across the hall if you need me, and Uncle Elio’s bedroom is next door.”
“Mum.”
“Yes?”
“Can Dad come and stay here with us now he’s out of prison?”
I swallow the acid rising in my throat. “We’ll talk about your dad tomorrow.” I take the Nintendo Switch from his hand. “Get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
He yawns and rolls over on the pillow. “Night, Mum.”
I lean down and press a kiss to his temple. “I love you.”
“Love you, Mum.”
I turn off the light and pad out of his room with the tattered book still in my hand, and I rub the ache in my shoulder and neck with the other.
It really has been a long day. Entering my old bedroom, a breeze blows through the window, the thin curtain wafting on the wind like a ghost here to haunt me.
My teeth chatter with a shiver and walk over with only the moonlight to guide me and pull the window closed.
With a tight chest, I take a moment to scan the grounds below. The old trellis that clung to the wall is now rotten, the drain pipe several feet away. Bruno waves a hand as he paces the lawn, smoking a cigarette. Not even Spiderman could penetrate these walls tonight.
I place the book on my nightstand, then shrug my cardigan from my shoulders and lay it over the back of my dressing table chair.
Not much has changed in here. It’s still the same decor it was when I was eighteen.
All my happy memories tainted by the massacre from the angel of death, a nickname for the silent killer who picked off my father’s men one by one in the run-up to his murder.
I’d heard them talk about it. All the while, unbeknown to me, I was meeting him in the Villa Borghese, my father and brother too busy to even notice what I was up to. The irony isn’t missed on me.
I woke up to bloodstained sheets and went downstairs to bloodstained walls and a pool of blood in my father’s room. I shake the thoughts away. No amount of therapy can remove the image or the guilt that it was my fault.
There was no love lost with my father and I remember a sense of relief, knowing he couldn’t hurt my mother anymore, but Elio paid the price, having to step up and take on the family business.
Deep breaths. It’s a different time. I inhale for five and then exhale for five. “I have nothing to be afraid of,” I say out loud, reciting my daily affirmations that used to calm me down.
“Except me,” a familiar voice says in the shadows.
I lunge to the door, but cold hands wrap around my waist, his palm silencing my mouth as he whispers into my ear. “You left me, fiore mio.”
His body holds me hostage against the wood, his heart beating against my back at the same ferocious pace as mine. “There isn’t a place on earth you could go where I won’t find you.” With one hand over my mouth, his other hand grips my throat. “Do I need to remind you that you belong to me?”
I shake my head, my voice muffled behind his hand.
“I think I do. I think I need to show you.” He removes his hand from my mouth but holds my throat in a viselike grip.
Metal clinks as he tugs at his belt.
I claw his hand around my neck. I could shout, scream, bang against the door, but I don’t because my body wants him despite my mind screaming and my heart bleeding on the inside from where his betrayal slashed it to smithereens.
Instead of crying out, I pant heavily, waiting for him to turn me around and kiss me, but he holds me against the wood, tugging the fabric of my t-shirt.
“I want you stripped bare. No fucking dressing gown,” he growls in my ear as he tears the cotton at my back.
The sound of fabric tearing rips through me. “Please don’t.” I fight, my body thrashing against his, but I keep my voice quiet.
Don’t wake the baby.
Memories ripple and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s in the past.
More sounds of fabric shredding fill the room, along with my panting breaths as I struggle against him. “Not like this.”
“Yes. Like this, Rose. You’ll never leave me again. You want to change your identity and disappear? I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’ll forget your own damn name.”
The sound of the fabric tearing slices through the fog of desire, sharp as a whip.
And just like that, I’m not here anymore.
I’m back in London. Back in that prison, disguised as a home…
The bedroom spins, colour leeching from the walls until all I see is white. White bedding, splattered with red. My blood.
Magnus’s voice drips like acid into my ear.
“Scream for me.” His weight bears down on me as he tears the cotton nightdress from my back.
A burning sting slices through my skin. I grit my teeth and clench the duvet as more blood splatters against the white bedding.
Another bedspread ruined, but that’s the least of my worries.
“Scream like a stuffed pig,” he says, but I won’t wake the baby.
I won’t have my son grow up in a house where he sees his mother get beaten to a pulp like I did.
That is not the life I want for my son, so I stay silent.
Another laceration burns as his knife cuts deep.
A whimper leaves my lips, but I refuse to cry.
In my mind’s eye, I clutch the bedframe, feel the jagged pain of the blade slicing my skin. My breath comes shallow, ragged. My heart slamming against my ribs like a caged animal.
No. No. It’s not him. Not now. Not real.
But my body doesn’t understand. My body only knows the sharp burn at my back, the metallic sting of old fear flooding my veins.
Don’t wake the baby. Don’t wake the baby.
The mantra echoes in my mind, a helpless loop. I bite down on my lip until I taste blood, the same as I did all those years ago.
Dan’s voice filters through the fog. “Rose?” His hands are still. His body heat surrounding me, but his touch is featherlight now. “Fiore mio, it’s me. It’s just me.”
But my mind won’t release me from the past.
His hand on my waist feels like a shackle. His breath against my ear feels like chains tightening.
“Rose—talk to me. Come back to me.” His voice cracks, full of fear I know he shows no one else.
But I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. All I can do is pray that Dan stops touching me so my mind can break free of this prison.
The sensation of the blade is too real, burning fresh over old scars. I see Magnus’s sneer, the gleam of his knife, the way he carved his possession into my flesh just for fun.
Another breath. Another sharp yank of the fabric.
I flinch, trembling uncontrollably.
“Rose!” Dan’s voice sharpens, panic tightening his words.
“Don’t wake the baby.” The old plea slips free, and my heart shatters all over again.
Maybe I should have woken Angelos all those years ago. Maybe I should have screamed. There’s no point now. There is no baby anymore.
Only ghosts.