Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
Georgia/ Seven Years Ago
I realized my life was going to change the moment I’d allowed somebody to tear past the walls I had all but promised to protect until marriage. Until that moment, I never truly understood the weight of the promise I made to my stepmother about the future or why it was so important to obey.
“There are traditions,” Leani tells me, overseeing the way Mrs. Ricci does my hair for a charity event the family is hosting. The curls seem extreme, but Leani tells me it’s what Daddy wants, so I suffer through it. “You’re old enough to hear the important role you’ll play within those traditions. You are to behave like a lady. No misbehaving, no talking out of line, and most vital of all, for when you are older, no handing out your virtue. It is not a gift to be given, but a prize to protect. Do you understand?”
I nod to appease her, even though I don’t understand at all.
“One day,” Leani says quietly, caressing my cheek, “that virtue will be the key to your future. Our future, Georgia. Us women have the power to dictate just how strong our alliances are by giving it to the right person. Always remember that.”
Back then, Leani seemed almost…motherly to me. Like she had a plan for us that I played a key role in. And I always had a gut feeling that the role she referred to was very different than the one she spoke to me about that day.
The memory comes crashing down when my father’s booming voice demands, “Where have you been? Your room was empty when we got home from dinner, and nobody knew where you were because your phone was off.”
I’d turned it off at the bar because I knew they’d put a tracking app on it. It was when Lincoln made me his offer for an escape that I’d made up my mind, and there was no going back from it. Not now.
Mrs. Ricci shakes her head from where she stands off to the side in the kitchen, silently urging me to keep quiet. She’d tried giving me momentary happiness, and I ruined it with my selfishness. Would she be reprimanded for my actions? I hoped not.
I’m startled when a large hand grips my face, jerking my head up at an angle that hurts my neck. “ What did you do? ” he growls.
I hadn’t had time to look at myself in the mirror when I’d snuck out of Lincoln’s bed this morning. All I wanted was to leave, knowing I couldn’t erase the soreness settled between my legs, or the memories my brain kept replaying of everything Lincoln had done to me. Everything his mouth and fingers and… other parts had done to me. I wasn’t completely naive. I’d read enough romance books to know exactly what I was getting myself into when I agreed to go home with him, and I knew there would be consequences.
But I never expected my father to shake with rage so violently when I got here.
Guilt bottoms out in the pit of my stomach as Leani walks over and gasps, a hand dramatically flying to her mouth. “Is that a hickey ?”
Mrs. Ricci makes a choked noise behind my stepmother as she watches my father examine my neck before dropping his hand.
“Georgia,” he says slowly, his voice so low that I feel my soul quaking. “What did you do?”
I try to speak, lips parting, but nothing able to come out. When my silence feeds the growing tension in the room, I swear the man in charge can smell it.
“Was it rape?” he asks plainly, those brown eyes nearly black as they find my face. “Tell me it was rape.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up when he says the r word. After what feels like an eternity, I finally find my voice. “N-no, Daddy. It wasn’t.”
Leani closes her eyes, and so does Mrs. Ricci.
Quietly, I add, “It was my choice.”
If it’s possible, my father stands taller than he was before. His anger, the pure rage, radiates off of him and into me. “You let somebody defile you the night you learned you were to be engaged.”
It’s not a question and not one I plan to confirm. He must sense it. See the way I shift on my feet in feigned confidence. My hair could be out of place despite the way I finger-combed it in the Uber home. Lincoln had a firm grip on the strands many times last night, so God only knows how disheveled it still looks. Maybe everyone can smell the men’s cologne lingering on my clothes that had been discarded so recklessly around a foreign apartment not even twelve hours ago. Last night feels like a fever dream, but I know it isn’t when I see the judgmental expression on my father’s tight face.
“You little sl—” When he steps closer, I inch back, flinching when I see his hand rise until I hear, “Sir, don’t.”
Suddenly, Mrs. Ricci is there, stepping between me and the man who swings his hand in our direction.
He uses the back of his hand to slap the housekeeper across the face. The cracking sound is sickening, making me suck in a breath as the beloved employee holds her face from the harsh strike.
“I will deal with you later,” he informs her before turning back to me. “After all we’ve done for you, you whored yourself out to God only knows who. Antonio and Luca Carbone won’t want you now that you’ve tainted yourself. You have no idea what you’ve just done.”
Whored myself? I’ve seen my father angry, but never like this. And I’ve never, never heard him call me such ugly words.
“You ruined everything,” he growls, eyes darker than I’ve seen them before. There’s no color that humanizes him as his fists clench at his sides. “You have no idea what you just threw away, Georgia. I have done nothing but protect you, and you ruined it. Just like your mother.”
“Daddy, I couldn’t go through with—”
“With what?” he booms. “The Carbones are a well-known and well-off family. They have connections, Georgia. Connections you do not want to be on the bad side of. I would know.”
Dread cools my skin. “I don’t understand.”
“And you never will,” he says in a low voice that I’ve heard him use on people he works with when he’s about to fire them. It’s cool and indifferent, like he’s stopped caring about them and their actions. “If you want to see what life is like without me and everything I have done for you, then so be it.”
“Daddy—”
“Get out.”
The words leave me gaping. “W-what?”
He waves his hand in the air as he storms toward his study. “This is what you wanted, is it not? You wanted to choose, and you did. You did not choose wisely, my dear. You did not choose your family. Your mother. Your future. You serve me no purpose now that the Carbones and their affiliates will back out of the deals I struck for the sake of our future. So I’d suggest you get out of my house before I disown you completely.”
Mrs. Ricci pales, our eyes finding each other as the study door slams closed behind my father, who is no doubt doing whatever damage control he can to salvage his relationship with the Carbones.
Swallowing, I say, “Mrs. Ricci…”
Her face is still red from the impact of my father’s hit, her head shaking to quiet me. “I can’t help you right now, Georgia. You made your decision. I told you there would be consequences based on what you chose.”
Leani’s eyes roam over my face, but she can barely look at me. “I thought you would change things,” she says quietly. “But not like this.”
She walks upstairs, no doubt locking herself in her room like she always does when my father is upset. Soon, she’ll drown her sorrows in a bottle of wine until Mrs. Ricci has to help her.
All I can say to the only person who has ever truly been on my side is, “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Ricci closes her eyes, wincing when she touches her face. “You wanted out, and you got it. But I have a feeling you have no idea what you just started. I don’t think any of us truly do.”
What does she mean? “I didn’t know he would do this…” She has to believe me. “I couldn’t marry him. Not Luca. Not anyone unless it’s my choice.”
The only thing she does is nod with a pinched smile on her face. She reaches out and touches my cheek. “I know, dear. I know.”
Dipping my gaze to the floor, I take a deep breath. “I’ll get some of my things.”
She murmurs, “Be quick,” before disappearing into the kitchen, leaving me in the silent foyer all alone.
*
The smell of fresh hair dye burns my nostrils, making me shift on the bed, where I watch Millie apply the new pink color to her strands over the bathroom sink. “You should do something fun with your hair now that you don’t have people breathing down your neck,” she calls out, rubbing in the color with the gloves that came with the box. “We can bleach it. I’m sure it’ll be fine since you have virgin hair.” She giggles. “It’s about time that’s the only virgin thing about you.”
Lips twitching, I touch the ends of my hair and toy with the strands. “God’s favorite,” I murmur more to myself than the girl who befriended me on my first day of private school. She told me she hated wearing skirts and wanted to start a petition to get the girls to wear pants like the boys. She never did, and eventually, she loved the skirts as she got older. She’d even got written up a couple of times when she made them shorter and violated the school’s strict dress code.
My best friend puts her hair up and covers it with a clear cap to contain the mess while the color sits for thirty minutes. “Okay, maybe not his favorite-favorite considering everything that’s happened, but the Del Rossis are stuck up anyway. You’re better off without them.”
She’s clearly forgetting that I am one, not that my father seems to acknowledge that. It’s been five days since he told me to get out, and I haven’t heard a word from him, Leani, or Mrs. Ricci. I even checked my phone to see if it was still working. It was.
He’s proving a point.
That I need him. That the mistake I made was going to cost me. I can feel it already working, no matter the number of distractions Millie tries offering me since I showed up on her parents’ doorstep with a suitcase full of clothes.
I hug my knees to my chest. “Are you sure your parents don’t mind me being here?”
Her mother owns a clothing boutique in New York City that the New York Times has written about, and her father is a divorce lawyer in Tribeca. They used to wine and dine with my father and stepmother at the country club where they met, so when I showed up holding nothing but a Gucci bag with only enough clothes for a week or two at their doorstep, they didn’t look as happy as I’d hoped they’d be to see me.
In the short time I’ve been here, there has been whispered talk and forced smiles whenever I pass by the couple who told Millie I could stay for a few days.
The girl in question waves it off, wiping off the access dye from her forehead with a wet washcloth. “It isn’t like they’re ever around. I’m pretty sure my dad is sleeping with his secretary, and my mother found out about it. If they’re not busy fighting about him always being at work, they’re out pretending to be the perfect couple around their friends.” She makes a gagging noise, doing a full-body shiver. “It’s honestly disgusting.”
I’m quiet, not wanting to point out how uncomfortable her mother looked when she left for work this morning. Mrs. DeMatteo frowned at the borrowed clothes I took from her daughter’s closet before closing the door behind her, which Millie didn’t seem to think twice about before telling me she was going to drive us into town to go shopping since I refused to leave the house the first two days after I showed up.
“Anyway,” Millie goes on, not realizing that I’m barely tuning into her rants. “You’re sort of lucky. My parents are always on my case about something. Yours let you go do whatever you want. That’s most twenty-one-year-old’s dream.”
Being iced out by their family? I highly doubt that. “It doesn’t feel very freeing,” I mumble, walking over to the window when Millie picks up her cell and starts texting someone. I stare out onto the street, my brows pinching, when I see a black car parked on the far side of the road with something sticking out of the rolled-down passenger window.
“Millie?” I ask, a heavy feeling settling into my stomach.
She doesn’t reply. When I look over, I see her smiling over whatever is on her screen. I bet she’s talking to the boy she met in one of her college classes. She’s told me his name, but I can’t remember it. It’ll be somebody different in a month if it’s anything like the boys she had flings with in high school.
Sighing, I turn back to the window and watch the vehicle sit there for ten more minutes before eventually pulling away. The feeling nipping at my stomach never goes away as I turn away from the window and watch my friend’s fingers fly across her keyboard with a big grin on her face.
“You would love college,” she says absentmindedly, her eyes never lifting from her phone. “You always liked the academic stuff, and the girls I’ve met there are actually pretty cool.”
I can’t help but feel like I’m being replaced now that she’s making other friends. She’s mentioned some of the girls who’ve talked her into pledging at one of the sororities at NYU, but I didn’t think she’d gotten close to any of them.
“Sam is telling me about a party happening tonight,” she says. “Maybe I can take you now that you’re off your dad’s leash.”
Millie has never filtered her words before, so I’m not surprised she’s being so blunt now. But a leash? “I’m not a dog.”
All she says is, “Duh.”
It’s sometime later when she tosses her phone onto the bed, done talking to her new best friends about college stuff that I’ll never understand. “Come on, you can help me wash this stuff out. My scalp is starting to itch.”
I follow her into the bathroom and wait until she adjusts the water to the temperature she wants before she dunks her head under the faucet.
As I wash out the neon pink, she says, “Seriously, though. You should do something rebellious now that you’re free. Blue would be a wild color on you.”
I blanch. “I think I’m good on rebellion for a while,” I say over the water, nose wrinkling from the ammonia radiating from her head.
“Bitch, please,” she says over the running water. “Sleeping with someone is hardly the end of the world. Which I’m totally proud of you for doing, by the way. You pulled a WWMD—what would Millie do. I’m honored. But they’ll get over it eventually. It’s not like you have to walk around with a scarlet A on your chest.”
Millie never understood how the Del Rossi family worked. Half of the time, I didn’t either. While she was sneaking out to parties and making out with boys, I was stuck at charity events, forced to mingle with high society. I wasn’t allowed to have regular birthday parties with friends but dinner parties with guests who loosely knew Nikolas and Leani, celebrating with people I barely even knew. Some had kids, but most were younger than me or as uninterested in being there as I was. And I never got to have cake or choose which dessert I wanted because Leani always catered from the nicest restaurants she could find, choosing options that no teenager wanted to eat.
I never told Millie about my arranged engagement to Luca Carbone because I didn’t want to talk about it. And, frankly, I don’t think she would have cared. As far as she knew, I snuck out and slept with a random cop at a bar just because that’s what she would do.
If she only knew how much deeper it was.
“I don’t want to dye my hair blue,” I finally tell her, passing her a towel once we’re finished and not going into details.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I frown and wonder what will happen to my hair now that I’m no longer there. Should I cut it? Let it grow? My father loved my long hair because my mother always put it into pretty braids or curls. He never let me get it trimmed past my shoulders.
Millie is right.
I can do what I want now.
Change things.
Cut my hair. Dye it. Experiment with clothes and new makeup. Who’s going to stop me?
My friend bumps me out of the way of the mirror to style her hair. “Give me twenty minutes to get ready, and we can go out to lunch. There’s no food here right now.”
I walk back into the bedroom, glancing out the window to see the same black vehicle has returned. An eerie feeling makes the hair on my arms stand on end.
When Millie walks out of the bathroom thirty minutes later, there’s a frown on her face as she lowers her phone.
“What?” I ask, sitting on the edge of her bed.
“Er…” She looks away, scratching the side of her neck. “My mother said I need to help you pack your things.”
I gape at her, hugging my arms around myself as I draw my feet up to the edge of her mattress.
She sits beside me. “You can’t stay here anymore,” she murmurs, fidgeting with the cell in her hand.
Staring into my lap, I nod silently. What is there to say? I’ve overstayed my welcome. It was only a matter of time before I had to figure something else out. “I’ll get my things.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just…” An apologetic look weighs on her face. She actually looks sorry, which isn’t typical for her. “She said they’d take my tuition money away if I let you stay here any longer. Harsh, I know, but I need that money. I like college and…” Her shoulders lift weakly, as if to say I’m not worth the trouble.
But I get it.
I might have ruined my life, but I don’t want to ruin hers.
She catches my wrist. “Hey. It’ll be okay. Like I said, your dad will forgive you. We live in the twenty-first century. I’ve done way worse.”
Trying to be optimistic, I force a smile that takes every ounce of energy in me. “Maybe you’re right.”
But she’s not.
She’s not a Del Rossi, so it’ll never be the same for her.
She smiles back, but it doesn’t meet her eyes when she glances back down at her phone and reads something on the screen. Clearing her throat, she pushes up from the bed. “I’ll give you some more stuff to wear to get you by.”
She doesn’t ask where I’ll go or if I’ll be okay. I guess Millie has always been that way.
So, I simply let my smile grow in appreciation, look out the window one more time, and see what looks like a flash from the car window still parked on the curb.
Closing the curtain, I begin silently planning where to go, knowing I can’t go back home.