CHAPTER ONE #2
Maggie came on to me, she was drunk, you have to believe me.
You won’t even touch me, Guilietta. What did you expect a red-blooded man to do?
Answer me! Don’t throw eight months away over a mistake!
And then came the texts from Maggie herself—cold, dismissive, venomous in their casual cruelty.
Don’t make this into some tragic opera, Giuli. We were horny and you’re a prude. We need to figure out next month’s rent, so stop acting like a child.
Then. Seriously! You had me thrown out. Stop acting all high and mighty! This is why Josh wanted me instead of you.
Mutual friends from campus chimed in shortly after, their notifications flooding my lock screen with invasive questions, thinly veiled gossip, and faux sympathy that turned my stomach.
For seventy-two hours, I had retreated into my childhood bedroom, curling into a tight, trembling ball on the mattress, staring at the familiar pastel walls while the world I had painstakingly built shattered into jagged pieces.
My mother, Jiana, had hovered outside my doorway like an anxious ghost. She brought trays of hot chamomile tea and buttered toast that grew cold and untouched on my nightstand. Her dark eyes, ringed with dark circles, searched my pale face with frantic concern every time she stepped into the room.
"Guilietta, tesoro," she whispered on the third afternoon, sitting on the edge of my bed and gently brushing a tangled lock of chestnut hair from my forehead.
Her hands were shaking—a nervous flutter she had carried for as long as I could remember.
"Please, sweetheart. You have to eat something.
You have to talk to me. Did Joshua hurt you?
If he touched you, if he laid a hand on you, I will call the police. I will call your father right now."
"No!" The word ripped out of my throat, raw and hoarse from hours of silent weeping. I sat up, clutching the duvet to my chest, my voice trembling with fierce urgency. "Do not call Dad. Please, Mom. Promise me you won't."
My father, Vincent Placido, was a figure of quiet, looming authority in my life.
Present in his devotion and staggering financial generosity, but physically absent for the vast majority of my upbringing.
He worked in New York—something high-level in corporate finance and investments, my mother had always vaguely explained—and only flew home to our Cleveland house five or six times a month, staying for a day or two before disappearing back into the city.
Whenever he was home, an unspoken tension rippled beneath the surface, as though the walls themselves were braced for impact.
If I told my mother the degrading, humiliating truth—that I had walked into my apartment and caught my boyfriend of eight months bare-assed between the thighs of my best friend and roommate—she would look at me with overwhelming pity.
And if my father found out, I had no idea what kind of cold, terrifying storm he might unleash.
"Then tell me what happened," my mother pleaded softly, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "You came through the door three days ago looking like you were bleeding from the inside out. You haven't slept. You haven't eaten. Let me help you."
"I just... I need time, Mom," I choked out, wrapping my arms around my knees and burying my face. "Joshua and I are over. Maggie and I are over. Everything is over. Just...please give me space."
She had kissed my crown with trembling lips, lingering in the doorway before softly clicking the door shut.
That night, sleep didn't come. But something else did.
Around four-thirty in the morning, lying in the dark while the house settled into cold stillness, the weeping stopped. The burning ache of humiliation in my chest didn't disappear, but it began to harden, calcifying into something sharp, frigid, and resolute.
I sat up in bed, the fog of despair lifting to reveal absolute, piercing clarity.
I was leaving.
I couldn't go back to the college apartment.
I would rather starve on the street than breathe the same air as Maggie Floyd, looking at the sofa and the counters where she had smiled in my face while sleeping with the man I loved.
I couldn't stay in Cleveland, either. Joshua knew every square inch of this city—he knew the campus routes I took, the coffee shops where I studied, the libraries, the quiet parks.
He would hound me, corner me, and humiliate me until I suffocated under the weight of everyone's stares.
I was going to New York. To my father.
When I was eight years old, my parents had suddenly packed up our Manhattan apartment and moved us to Ohio.
My mother had insisted it was for a quieter life, better schools, and fresh air, but even as a little girl, I had sensed the underlying terror—the hurried packing, the hushed late-night phone calls, the way my father had practically shoved us onto the private jet with a look of desperate, bone-deep relief.
Over the years, whenever I asked about visiting him in the city, his answer was always instantaneous, severe, and absolute: Never come to New York, Guilietta.
Never come to my workplace. The corporate world I operate in is ruthless and dangerous.
If you show up unannounced, I could lose my position. Stay in Ohio where you are safe.
For eleven years, I had obeyed without question.
But I was nineteen now. My heart had been ripped from my ribs, stomped into the dirt, and laughed at. I had nowhere else to turn, and the only person in the world who had ever made me feel completely untouchable was Vincent Placido.
I had his office address. Months ago, during one of his brief weekend visits, he had left a piece of embossed corporate stationery on the kitchen counter by mistake.
I had stared at the elegant logo and the Midtown address—a towering sixty-story skyscraper on Park Avenue—and committed every letter and number to memory.
Moving with deliberate, silent precision, I slipped out of bed. I had about three hours before mom got up.
I showered quickly, dressed and then I pulled my heavy black canvas duffle bag from the back of the closet.
I packed methodically: sturdy dark jeans, warm wool sweaters, my favorite tailored winter coat, comfortable walking boots, basic toiletries, and a small pouch containing my passport, birth certificate, and social security card.
I walked over to my jewelry box and retrieved the cash envelope I kept hidden beneath the velvet lining—about fourteen hundred dollars in birthday money and emergency savings.
I slid it into my leather wallet alongside my debit card, ID, student ID and my rent money.
Together I had two thousand seven hundred and sixty nine dollars.
Dressed in dark jeans, a thick charcoal sweater, and my warm coat, I slung the heavy duffle over my shoulder and crept down the carpeted staircase in thick wool socks.
The main floor was dark and silent, smelling faintly of lavender floor polish and the espresso beans my mother favored.
Guilt struck me like a physical blow as I looked toward the ceiling, picturing my mother sleeping peacefully in her bedroom upstairs.
She was fragile, nervous, and spent every waking moment trying to shield me from the world.
Leaving like a thief in the night would terrify her.
I'm sorry, Mom, I thought, my throat tightening. If I tell you, you'll try to stop me. You'll try to protect me. And right now, I have to save myself.
I pulled a notepad and pen from the console table by the front door and scrawled a quick, steady note:
Mom—I need to get away for a few days to clear my head and breathe. I am completely safe. I will text you as soon as I get settled. Please don't worry, and please don't let Joshua into the house. I love you so much. —Giuli
I propped the note against the vase of fresh lilies on the hall table, pulled on my boots, and slipped out the heavy back door into the crisp, biting chill of the predawn darkness.
The morning air was freezing, biting at my cheeks and lungs, but it felt intoxicatingly clean. It was the first breath I had taken in three days that didn't feel poisoned by betrayal.
I walked briskly down the sidewalk for three blocks, well away from our house so no headlights would wake my mother, before pulling out my phone and calling a rideshare.
Ten minutes later, I was in the back of a warm sedan, watching the darkened suburban streets of Cleveland slip away in the rearview mirror.
"Can you stop at a check cashing place before the airport?" I asked the driver, my voice steadier than I felt.
"Sure thing," he said, changing lanes smoothly. "There's one about five minutes from here."
He pulled into a twenty-four-hour convenience store parking lot equipped with a check cashing place, and I climbed out into the freezing pre-dawn air.
My hands trembled as I walked inside, and cashed a personal check.
I withdrew five thousand dollars—that was the limit they allowed.
The bills emerged in thick stacks, and I counted them twice before sliding them into the inner pocket of my jacket, zipping it closed.
The weight of the cash against my ribs felt like armor. Like proof that I could survive on my own. Like control. That brought my total to seven thousand seven hundred and sixty nine dollars
I climbed back into the warm sedan, and the driver pulled smoothly back onto the road toward Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
The car dropped me off at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport just as the first grey streaks of dawn began to bleed across the overcast sky.
The terminal was cavernous, bright, and humming with the early-morning rush of travelers. I pulled my duffle from the trunk, took a steadying breath, and walked through the automatic glass doors into the controlled chaos of departures.
I found the ticket counter for a major airline, my fingers digging into the strap of my bag to keep from trembling.