Julia
“Let go of me!”
I try to shake Andreo off as he manhandles me through the door of the apartment.
I don’t recognize this place, or maybe I’m just so shaken by everything that happened that I can barely take it in.
My eyes are burning with tears, and my body is rushing with adrenaline—but more than that, I can’t stop playing out what I saw back in the mansion, when Andreo fired upon his own father right there in front of me.
I just can’t wrap my head around it. None of it makes sense.
My chest feels like it’s going to burst, the pain of holding myself back more than I can take.
I was so shocked when it happened, my ears starting ringing, vision blurring helplessly, and I could do nothing but go along with what Andreo was demanding from me.
He bundled me into a car, put his foot down, and stuffed his gun into his pocket, hitting the early morning roads like he had a vendetta against them personally.
And all I can think about, all that’s going through my mind, is that Antonio is dead.
Dead. The thought thuds in my mind like a heavy weight, and I can’t even make sense of it. Someone so full of life, so protective, so passionate, just…gone? Like that?
It doesn’t make any sense. I feel like I’m going to throw up every time I think of it, the horror clutching at my chest, and I want nothing more than to turn back time and plead with Andreo to leave his father out of it.
I want to tell him that this has to do with me, and nobody else, and to please spare Antonio, spare the father of my child, because I can’t stand the thought of losing him before I’ve so much as had a chance to—
Andreo slams the door behind him, nearly making me jump out of my skin. My head whips around, and I wrap my arms around myself protectively as he stalks toward me, his gaze traveling up and down my body.
“I knew you were a whore, Julia,” he spits at me, venom leaking from every word he speaks. “But marrying my father? Even for you, that’s bad.”
“I—I only did it because you—”
“Oh, come on,” he laughs, holding his hand up to stop me in my tracks. “You expect me to believe your excuses? You wanted the money, was that it? Or the prestige?”
“I just wanted to be safe,” I whisper, but I doubt that he’ll believe me. He hasn’t trusted a word that has come out of my mouth, after all, and I don’t see why that would change.
I want to scream, to tear my hair out at the roots, to fight with him and tell him that he doesn’t know a damn thing and that he needs to let me out of here before the stress starts to harm the baby. But I know he would never let me go.
Even the version of him I knew before was not as cruel and wild as the one staring me down right now.
I can tell something has shifted, even if I’m not entirely sure what it is—something within him taking on a different form, like he has gone crazy with the newfound power he’s gotten his hands on.
No longer an heir, but a force in his own right.
“And you are safe,” he tells me, as he closes the distance between us. He takes my hand, and I stand there, staring down at it uselessly, wishing I could whip away from him but knowing it would only cause him to do even worse to me.
“Please, Andreo, just let me go,” I plead with him. “I won’t tell anyone—I’ll make sure nobody comes after you. I just want to go back—”
“To my father?” he crows, with obvious irritation. “You want to go back to him?”
I nod. I don’t see any point in lying to him, pretending that I don’t have some kind of connection to Antonio. I’m married to him, for God’s sake. Plausible deniability went out the window a long-ass time ago…
But he locks his eyes onto mine, flicking his tongue over his lips. “He’s dead, Julia.”
My stomach drops. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.
But then—I hardly got a look at where Andreo fired that shot off.
If he hit his father in the guts, left him to bleed out on the floor in the middle of all that chaos, who’s to say that he isn’t done for?
The thought makes my knees tremble, and I grasp for the back of a couch beside me, trying not to drop to the ground.
But Andreo takes my reaction for something else entirely, and to my horror, raises his hand to my cheek.
He caresses my skin for a moment, trying to arrange his face into the mask of something that looks like decency.
As I gaze back at him, I can’t believe that I used to think this man really cared about me.
Right now, it just seems like a game he’s playing, a role he has stepped into for as long as it takes to get me to give up on whatever I’m clinging to.
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” he tells me. “Whatever he made you do, it’s over now. And I know I hurt you, but we’re back where we belong.”
Suddenly, I snap back to my senses, and I bat his hand away from me. “Don’t touch me,” I fire back furiously.
I don’t give a damn if Antonio is alive or dead or somewhere in the middle—I’m not going to fall back to Andreo like I have no other choice. The way he treated me before, that’s not the kind of shit I’m going to return to, no matter what.
I glare him down, and something in him shifts again. Whatever front he tried to put on, it vanishes in a second, and he steps back from me, lifting his chin as though surveying me.
“You’ll see sense soon enough,” he replies, and he sounds utterly certain of it, like he has already made up his mind.
Even though the thought of him touching me makes my skin crawl.
Even though the very notion of him laying hands on me is enough to turn my stomach, especially after what I shared with Antonio.
Even if the memories of the way he treated me are flooding to the front of my mind, insistent, violent, nightmarish.
“And you’ll see that we belong together. ”
He turns his back on me, making for the next room. “Rest,” he orders me. “Your bedroom is there. Well…” He glances back over his shoulder, mouth pulled into the shape of a smile again. “Our bedroom.”
I rush through before he can say another word or drop another hint, and slam the door behind me, throwing myself down onto the bed just before the tears start coursing once more.
I can’t believe this. I know that things were messy with Antonio, but this—this is a million times worse than I could ever have imagined.
He’s gone. At least, that’s what Andreo wants me to believe.
The father of my child, snuffed out before—well, before he even had a chance to come to terms with the fact that he was going to be a father again. Every part of me feels numb, hollowed-out, like I’ve been ripped out of a life I was meant to live and dumped back into this mess with no warning.
And now, Andreo seems to think that we are going to reunite as if nothing has changed, even though the very thought of it makes me sick.
I’m never going to let that man near me.
I don’t care what he seems to think, what kind of threat he levels against me to try and twist my arm, my mind is made up, and there’s nothing more to be said.
I tuck my knees into my chest and pray that this is all a foul nightmare that I will wake from soon. But with every passing moment, I’m more and more certain that this is reality…
And there might be nobody coming to save me.