ANTONIO
I stare at the screen in front of me, trying to keep my focus on what I know needs to be done. My gaze flicks back and forth between the various CCTV feeds, keeping track of every movement, every detail that unfolds while I’m watching.
But all I can think about, despite myself, is the conversation I had with Julia the other day. When I caught her trying to sweet-talk Paulo into letting her out, before I intervened and kept her from sneaking into the garden.
She might have claimed that it was nothing more than a bit of fresh air she was looking for, but I can tell when there’s something more going on, and I’m not about to let her wander the grounds without eyes on her at all times.
The way she reacted, though—it has been bothering me.
She told me about Andreo, the way he would control her, comparing the two of us to one another.
Nagging at the back of my mind is the question of just what her relationship with my son actually looked like—and whether or not I’m ready to hear the answer one way or another.
Because Andreo, at least until now, has surely not been the kind of man to hurt the women he’s with.
Of course, I know nothing of his relationships, beyond what he tells me.
But the hurt in her voice was real, and I know she could never have faked something like that.
And if my own son has been causing trouble for the girls he’s with, I need to know about it.
I’m not even sure why I feel that way as strongly as I do.
I mean, Julia’s not with him now, and that’s what matters.
But I feel a sense of responsibility, for keeping track of everything Andreo does and making sure he doesn’t cause any hurt or pain to the people close to him.
Everything he has learned about how to move through the world, he has learned from me, and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I knew that it had left her scarred in some way.
I rise to my feet, giving up on trying to stay focused. I need to speak to her.
She’s in her quarters right now, finishing up the lunch that Irina, the cook, brought down for her a half hour ago.
I have the panel open at the side of my computer at all times, making certain to keep watch on her after what she tried to pull.
I could tell myself that it’s just a matter of her safety, but I know there’s more to it than that.
A craving to see her, know she’s there, know that it would take nothing more than a few minutes to get to her if I wanted to.
I had hoped that my session in the shower the other night would be enough to clear her from my mind, but it looks like I’m not going to get away with it that easily.
Paulo is on the door when I reach the corridor’s entrance, and he straightens up at once, no doubt still worried about how I see him after what I saw the other day. I haven’t fired him, because I know he will redouble his efforts to prove himself to me, but I have kept close watch on him.
“Is she in there?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
He nods.
I brush past him, and make my way toward her room, pausing for a moment outside the door before I knock.
I have no idea if she’s going to be open to having this conversation with me, especially after what happened the last time we were alone together.
She’s clearly starting to struggle with the feeling of being trapped here, and every time she looks at me, it seems, she’s reminded of everything I have done to keep her in this place.
But at the same time—fuck it, I need to know what Andreo did to her. Need to know what I might be responsible for. So I lift my knuckles to the door, and rap against it a couple of times.
It takes a moment for her to respond, and I can hear her moving around inside, letting out a long sigh as if she’s irritated at being disturbed.
“Irina, I told you, I would—” When she opens the door, she falls silent, staring at me in abject shock.
“Uh, Antonio,” she blurts out, wrapping her arms around herself.
She’s wearing a cami and a pair of jeans, and even though she’s far from naked, there’s something about the way the soft baby-blue fabric clings to her body that makes it hard for me to remember what I came here for. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. “Look,” she says, flicking her gaze up to meet mine once more. “I know I shouldn’t have tried to sneak out the other day, alright? I’m sorry. But you don’t need to—”
“It’s not about that.”
“So what is it about?”
I cock an eyebrow, keen to see her reaction to just the sound of his name. “Andreo.”
Her face pales slightly, and I notice the flex of her throat as she takes in what I’m saying to her.
“What about him?” she asks. Even though she’s doing her best to sound dismissive, I can hear an edge to her voice—almost a fear, like he might appear out of nowhere all of a sudden and insist on picking up where they left off.
“You said that he…controlled you,” I reply, following her into the room as she turns her back on me and plants herself down on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah, and?” Her tone is defensive, like she thinks I’m going to come in here and argue with her.
I need to phrase this right. I don’t want her to feel like she can’t tell me the truth about him, not if what she said before is true.
“And I want to know what you mean by that.”
She narrows her eyes at me, staring at me hard, as if trying to see inside my head and to my intentions. “Why?”
“Because he’s my son,” I reply, voice dropping to a gravelly tone. “And if he’s hurt you…I want to know how.”
She chews her lip for a moment, and I’m struck, all of a sudden, by just how vulnerable she looks. As though reaching back into her memory like this is drawing things to the surface that she would rather have left behind.
“He…he didn’t hurt me, exactly,” she replies, turning her head, eyes slightly glossy. “He never laid hands on me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
That’s somewhat of a relief, but it’s not enough. Not enough to convince me that he didn’t do something else. I stay silent, not interrupting her, just letting her continue.
“But he…he had certain rules,” she explains. “About what I could do. I moved in to the apartment really quickly. I was living in this crappy place that was basically falling apart beforehand, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to just go and live with him…”
“Were you staying with your parents?”
She lets out a slight laugh, then shakes her head. “No. God, no,” she replies. “I had moved out of that place about a year before I met him. And trust me, whatever Andreo did, it’s nothing compared to how my parents treated me.”
I grit my teeth. I can’t stand hearing stories like this, stories where parents turn their anger on their kids.
Having children is a choice, and it’s one that shouldn’t be made unless the people in question are willing to do whatever it takes to look after them.
When I found out about Andreo, I knew that my life was going to shift from underneath me, and that everything was going to change, but I was prepared for it, prepared for the weight of it, willing to do anything to make sure he had everything he needed.
“They…?”
“Were shitty,” she fills in for me, finally meeting my gaze again.
“They both drank a lot. And they beat the crap out of each other, and me, when they got the chance. I wouldn’t have stayed there another second, I was glad to get out, but it turned out life wasn’t exactly easy when you were seventeen and trying to make it on your own, you know? ”
My heart aches hearing her talk about herself like that. Just seventeen, out in the world, trying to navigate everything that her parents should have prepared her for.
“And that’s when you met Andreo?”
She nods. “He seemed like such a good guy at first,” she admits.
“And when he asked me to move in, I said yes, of course I did. It was better than worrying about rent every month when I hardly made any money to begin with, living in that shitty place with no water pressure to speak of…” She manages a slight laugh again, but it sounds more nervous than anything else.
Andreo, he’s not stupid, and no doubt he knew all of this when he moved her in.
Was that the reason he chose her? Because he knew that she had so little to fall back on?
I would never have thought my son was capable of that kind of calculated cruelty, but then, it turns out, there’s so much I don’t know about him and what he’s willing to do.
“And then he started bringing in all these rules,” Julia goes on. “Like I told you—about what I could do, when I could go out, who I could see. And if I ever decided I didn’t like the sound of one, or tried to go out anyway, he would flip his shit.”
“How so?”
She takes a deep breath, as though delving into memories that she would rather have left locked away.
“Like…like he would smash things up around the apartment,” she explains.
“He would scream at me. And he would threaten to kick me out unless I did what he told me. I was so scared of being on the streets, since I didn’t have any savings of my own, I figured it made more sense to just go along with it. ”
“You didn’t have a job?”
She shakes her head. “He didn’t want me working,” she explains.
“I was when I met him. But he said that he would take care of everything for me, that I didn’t need to worry about bringing money in.
And I hated the job, so I left it, but I guess I thought—I don’t know, I guess I thought that he would change his mind eventually. When I found something I wanted to do…”