4. Lydia
LYDIA
As I sit there on the floor with his words still circling my skull like water around a drain, I decide that maybe Nico D’Ambrosio is God’s way of punishing me for a crime that I haven’t quite yet committed.
He takes without asking, and when he decides something, the world is expected to arrange itself around the decision.
Just my luck that he decides that what he’s going to take is me.
Little bursts of aftershocks and pleasure shiver through me every time I move. My clothes feel like rasping sandpaper against my skin, still sensitive and humming from the orgasm that he pulled from me.
So, the only thing I can do is sit there and wait for my heartbeat to return to a semblance of normal, and wait for the strength to flow back into my legs.
I hate that when he gave me the chance to tell him to stop, I refused it.
I hate how much my body enjoyed what he did.
But most importantly, I hate how badly I wanted him to do more.
A lot more.
Sighing, I press the heels of my palms into my eyes until I see stars. But all that does is send the image of Nico’s face swimming to the front of my mind.
As soon as it does, another, unexpected surge of heat rushes through me and I force my eyes open, staring at the door that he walked out of a few moments ago.
There’s no easy way out of here. Hell, I’m not even sure if there is a way out. He drove like a maniac to get me here, pushing well over a hundred for practically the entire trip. We must be out on the far end of Long Island.
I look up at the unreasonably tall ceilings of the room and sigh again.
Mom…
Did she even send me that text? For that matter, is she even still alive? I’d been so shook by the text that I had come running back to New York without thinking.
And now, in a cosmic twist of fate, I’ve ended up in the same position that she did: on the verge of marrying a man who’s given me no choice.
Mom didn’t want to marry Frank. She’d grown up with him as children. And after a date with him in high school, she quickly figured out that she didn’t want anything to do with him.
Frank, on the other hand, outright refused to accept that.
After Dad died, that was when the incidents started.
One morning, we woke up to her tires slashed. And wouldn’t you know it, Frank was there to tell us he’d give us a lift. Another day, someone threw a brick through the living room window, and Frank showed up to help put up bars on the window.
It went on like that for weeks and months.
Mom wasn’t dumb. She knew that Frank was probably the one behind all those incidents.
But what could she do when Frank was a rising star in the precinct?
And it’s not like all these little bits of vandalism were cheap.
There was only so much she could hold out on, and after three years of endless incidents, she agreed to marry Frank.
Anger burns through my veins, chasing away the last drops of pleasure from Nico’s hands. I push myself up to my feet with fresh determination.
I’m not going to stick around to marry him. I’m going to go find my Mom, and then I’m going to save her.
Throwing one last glance at the door to see that it’s still closed, I start taking in my prison to see if maybe there might be a way out.
Under normal circumstances, the room would’ve been a dream.
The lofted ceilings are easily fifteen feet tall.
In the center of the room is a four-poster bed made of dark carved wood, layered with heavy sheets.
There's a dresser against one wall, an upholstered chair by what I suspect is an actual working fireplace, and a nightstand with a large ornate lamp.
On the other wall, I see a marble-covered bathroom through a half-open door.
It’s a pretty prison, I’ll grant him that.
Walking over to the large window, I stare out into the dark and see no lights winking back at me. For all intents and purposes, I’m on an island surrounded by God knows what.
I turn from the window and yelp in surprise when I see the same old woman who had greeted Nico upon arrival standing at the doorway with towels in her arm.
“Good evening, dear. My name is Giorgia.” There’s a warmth to her voice when she speaks, and her eyes betray no malice. “I have the towels that Mr. D’Ambrosio requested for you.”
“Lydia,” I introduce myself warily.
Giorgia’s smile widens a bit and she walks in to lay the towels down on the bed. “A pleasure to meet you, dear. Would you require anything else? I know Mr. D’Ambrosio said towels only, but I can bring you tea. Or something stronger if you’d like.”
A car. A phone. A door that locks from my side instead of his.
I swallow every one of those answers. This woman saw Nico march me up the stairs with a dead man's blood on my cheek, and didn’t question a damn thing. Whatever Giorgia is in this house, she is his before she will ever be mine.
"No," I say instead. "Thank you."
I walk over to the towels that Giorgia laid down on the bed, and that’s when I see a small silver picture frame on the nightstand, half-hidden behind the lamp. The edges are tarnished, which makes it look even more out of place.
The picture inside the frame is a woman sitting in a garden chair in a pale summer dress. A boy stands beside her. Neither of them is smiling.
Upon closer inspection, I notice a scar running from his right ear down to his chin.
It’s Nico.
My breath halts in my throat.
"Who is she?" I ask Giorgia. "The woman in the photo."
The smile drops from Giorgia’s face, and I know immediately that I’ve just asked something that I shouldn’t have.
Well if Nico didn’t want me asking uncomfortable questions, then maybe he shouldn’t have put me in this room.
"Giorgia." I pick up the frame and hold it out towards her. "Who is she?"
"It's late, Lydia. You should rest."
"Rest? You expect me to rest after everything that happened tonight?" The words come out before I can soften them. "Do you know what Nico just told me?"
Her eyes flick away at the wall, and then back to me. But she doesn’t answer.
"He said he's going to marry me." Venom drips off every syllable. "And didn’t even bother to hear what my answer is."
Giorgia’s eyes soften a fraction, and for a moment, she looks at me like I’m a mad woman standing on the tracks while the train is barreling towards me.
"So if he’s going to force me to become the lady of this lovely house,” I continue. “Then you can do the bare fucking minimum and tell me who this woman is."
"That’s Martina," she finally answers. "Nico's mother."
“Thank you, Giorgia,” I tell her. “You can go now.”
She nods, gives me one last look, and then walks out, closing the door behind her.
Alone now, I look at the photo again. Martina D'Ambrosio is beautiful, there’s no doubting that. But Mom was beautiful as well until a marriage she never wanted broke her, and she wasn’t married to Don Leo.
I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of suffering Martina endured at his hands. I still remember the final confession from that monster right before Nico put a bullet in his head–about how he raped and strangled Nico’s sister Gia for family honor.
My eyes drift towards Nico in the photo, and they stay for a moment on the scar before turning to his face. He holds himself with the solemnity of a child who knows that he’s supposed to stand that way without understanding why.
One hand hangs by his side, balled into a fist. The other grips the lapel of his little suit jacket. But it’s the way that he stands that makes me pause.
He’s standing like he’s trying to guard this stone-faced woman from the photographer. His lips are pursed in a line without any hint of the grin that I’ve come to recognize.
I’ve seen the same expression on him tonight. He had it on his face after he shot that cop in front of me.
No, I tell myself. I’m just imagining things.
I look again. The expression is unmistakable, and for a moment, I want to know why he wore this face as a child in this photo.
But just as my heart starts softening, I remember his words from moments ago.
I'm going to marry you.
Yeah, fuck that.
I am not going to end up in a frame–gold or silver–on a nightstand.
I cross over to the window and look out into the darkness again.
My fingers start working at the latch, and to my surprise, I find that they give.
When the window swings open, the warm humid air caresses my face like an old friend.
I can detect hints of the sea in the breeze as I poke my head out and look down.
It’s a long drop down, probably fifteen feet. I look back and stare at the four-poster bed with its layered sheets. I run my hand over them and feel the strong linen underneath. A reckless idea takes shape in my head.
The bed is certainly heavy enough to anchor myself.
I yank the sheet off the bed and heft it in my hand to feel the weight, feeling my heart pound in my throat at what I’m about to do. This might be my only chance. Then, I start to move, stripping the bed in under a minute.
The sheet refuses to yield at first, and I add my teeth to the mix. Then the fabric gives way in long screaming strips. I twist them, knot them, and test every knot with my full weight braced against the bedpost.
One foot after another, the rope takes shape, and I throw it out the window into the dark.
My palms burn, and my muscles are screaming as I descend. But the rope holds and I release with about a foot left to the ground and land as silently as I can. For a second, I crouch and listen for any possible sign that someone noticed my escape.
When I hear nothing, I turn towards the darkness, and I run.