Ophelia
This day has officially hit rock bottom.
I collapse on the couch, the sun arching in the sky as the afternoon becomes evening. I should’ve asked Salvatore to fetch me a pregnancy test, but like a coward who hides away from the truth, I asked for fucking pain relief.
I preach about telling the truth, and yet I refuse to be honest.
Pain relief would go a long way. My body might need Tylenol more than this baby as I curl up on the couch with a stone lodged in my chest. The area cramps up as anxious thoughts roll through my mind.
Do I keep the baby? Do I abort it? Do I become a single mother?
I could tell Salvatore, but I’m too much of a coward and don’t want to see his face when he realizes we fucked up.
A baby complicates everything, and I’m not ready for our relationship to become even more complex.
We already walked into complicated when I spilled that coffee, but children are forever, and I don’t know if I’m ready to enter the next phase, committing myself to a man who might not be here tomorrow.
I sink into the couch, staring through the window. I have no idea when Salvatore is due home. My head was more focused on other things at the time when he left. I needed to shower and get out of my own head. I needed to rinse off the day, feel better about myself.
But now I feel even worse.
From this height, the vehicles look like ants. I watch them drive down the streets in neat lines, rear lights flashing red as they stop at the intersections.
I sit at the very top of Manhattan, and yet I have never felt this low in my life.
I wanted to be seen, to be appreciated. Salvatore’s attention has always validated me. If the richest man in the city wants me, I must be doing something right. To be loved is to be chosen.
But when you love, you have a long way to fall. And the more I drift off to sleep in his arms, doing relationship things, the more I lose.
Love has never been about gaining. You love for a season and spend the rest of your life in mourning.
If I’m pregnant, I have to keep the child. This seems to be the only form of love that makes it out alive.
I glance at the time on my watch, expecting Salvatore to walk through this door any minute. Meetings never last long when he’s running them, thirty minutes tops. What the fuck is he doing?
And why not host the meeting here? The Moretti building is covered in police tape, an investigation underway. He would be safer meeting his men here.
Of course, my presence seems to burden the rest of his men, and Salvatore would rather kill himself than be seen as weak.
I spend the next half hour on the couch, waiting for Salvatore to return and kiss everything better.
Golden light spills across the city as the sun sinks into the horizon, glass buildings shining in the dying light.
I find strength and drag myself off the couch, pacing around the penthouse as I make calls to Salvatore. Orange surrenders to red, darkness soon following. I watch the sky turn dark and wonder if I should search for Salvatore…
Or buy a pregnancy test so I can give my overthinking brain a rest.
I slip on a pair of flats, grab the spare keys from the bowl and head out. Before I can make it into the corridor, my foot hits something.
Looking down, I see a paper bag outside of the door.
Aritzia.
I stick my head out of the window, looking left and right. There has to be some mistake. Sapphire doesn’t know where my boss lives. The only other person who knows I was in Aritzia today was…
Nope. Not going there.
I swallow the lump in my throat, trying not to freak out. Panicking never solves anything. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this.
I stuff the spare keys in my pocket, grabbing the bag. The paper crinkles as I open it up, shivers rushing down my spine as soon as I pull out the cable knit sweater I was eying up earlier. In the same damn color.
I set the bag down, reaching for my phone to give Sapphire a call.
“Oh my god, Saph,” I gasp as soon as she picks up. “Please tell me you left an Aritzia bag outside of Salvatore’s apartment door.”
“No, why?”
Fear expands from my core, turning me cold.
I’m ready to barricade myself in the apartment when a black figure spawns in front of me, like they fell right out of the wall.
“Phee?” says Sapphire on the phone.
A face materializes, David’s eyes coming into focus as he plants a finger on my lips, shushing me.
Cold, hard realization hits me all at once as I stare into his wicked eyes, seeing the truth for what it really is.
We were too slow.
Pinning me a look, David grabs my phone, hanging up the call. He smashes the device against the wall, snapping it in half.
Tossing the phone aside, he returns his attention to me, pulling on my shoulder, dragging me out of the apartment. My back hits the corridor wall with a thump, my vision distorting from the sudden pain.
I blink, fighting to regain my vision. By this point, Salvatore’s apartment door is closing in slow motion in front of my very eyes. Despair eats me alive as it bangs shut.
I swallow the fear, fumbling around in my jean pockets, finding my keys.
“I’ll be looking after these,” says David, keys jingling as he snatches them from my grasp, transferring them over into his pocket.
The fight leaves my body as I stare at the door, desperate for a miracle to happen.
David’s been playing Salvatore like a fucking fool.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play bluff,” I snap, adrenaline starting to kick in. “You know who.”
“Salvatore is with your aunt,” says David, flashing me a wicked smile.
“Why would he be with my aunt?”
I narrow my eyes, my brain trying to comprehend the man in front of me. His features are familiar, but they move in foreign ways as he flashes me a cruel smile.
He’s a monster in a human body, and as I stare deep into his soulless eyes, I realize my father was never the problem.
“Where’s Ben?”
David laughs. “You want your daddy?”
“I want the truth.”
“Your Aunt Viv has been keeping that one close to her chest for a while.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I knew Salvatore would squeeze the truth out of her. Violence turns questions into answers.”
Anxiety claws at my chest. “What have you done?”
“Nothing major. Salvatore is easily distracted, especially when it comes to saving you from your own family.”
“My aunt isn’t a murderer.”
“No, she’s a liar. Which is worse.”
My heart beats erratically in my chest as I stare deep into David’s demon eyes, trying to read between the lines of his riddles. Aunt Viv is the only family I have left. She’s the only connection I have to my mother, to the simple life I have spent the past two years missing.
“Family will always find a way to let you down,” says David, his voice booming through the corridor.
“They hide the truth and take it all the way to the grave with them, meanwhile you’re dabbing away tears, lowering their coffin into the ground.
” He shakes his head, laughing in disbelief.
“Oh, the things we do for power. Salvatore and I have committed some unspeakable acts, but your aunt is rotten.”
“She was in the Crows?”
“Oh,” chuckles David, “I’m sure she would have fit right in, breaking up families, leaking information in exchange for money. You really think she scaled her business because of luck?”
I hold my breath, tempted to run down the corridor and chance an escape while I still can. But I have to know the truth for my mother. I’m standing here for us both.
“Vivian is the reason your father abandoned you.”
Tears prick my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Not until I hear Aunt Viv admit the truth herself. David is a full-time scammer. He earns millions because he knows how to lie, how to draw a reaction out of people.
But the smile on his face tells me he means every word.
I wipe my eyes before tears fall. Aunt Viv doesn’t deserve my tears, nor does David.
David definitely found the right moment to weaken me. While I stand questioning everything about my life, he takes advantage of my helplessness and drags me away.
Strength left my body a very long time ago. I walk down the corridor with him willingly, my head even more fucked than my body as I shuffle into the elevator, on the verge of shutting down.
My reflection appears in the mirror. I stare at the ghastly woman in front of me, barely recognizing myself. My cheeks are drained of color, my eyes wide and hollow as I look back on my entire life, reevaluating everything.
The moon chanting, the obsession with crystals and bright colors; those were never vices she used to cope with the grief.
Her flamboyant personality is rooted in guilt.
She’s been begging the universe for forgiveness, wearing my mother’s perfume as a way to honor her in an attempt to atone her sins.
My heart picks up in my chest as I unpack more thoughts, letting emotions flood through the gates. I showed her the Crow drawing and her eyes turned wide, not because she feared the men, but because she didn’t want me finding out the truth.
And she proceeds to lie when I confront her about my father being the new leader. Not once did she correct me.
She can wear as many colors as she wants, hoard crystals until every surface in her house is covered, but it will never be enough. She sent my father away and left my mother shattered. How the fuck am I supposed to forgive that?
“This way,” says David.
I follow him robotically, lowering straight into the backseats of his car when he opens the door for me. Too many questions are spinning through my mind. I don’t care where David is taking me.
My head is scrambled, and I’m tired of defending myself, of differentiating the real from the fake. The world as I know it has been flipped upside down, and David is the only one with answers.
I’m not done asking questions, so I chase after him like a chicken walking straight into the slaughterhouse, all to hear what else he knows.
“What happens to Viv?”
“Salvatore will be able to answer that question better than me,” he says from the front, guiding the car down the road.