Chapter 36 #2
“I don’t blame you,” I mumble, dropping back down into my seat. I want to go inside, but I think I need to breathe in the fresh air and calm down some more before I do.
Aunt Irina sits next to me and sighs sadly. “Your uncle is very hard on Matteo, and he has his own reasons for that, but he shouldn’t have hit him.”
“What reasons?” I ask stiffly. “Matteo hasn’t done anything wrong. Uncle Lev has hated him since the wedding and Matteo was nothing but respectful that night and every day since. He just told me he loved me, in Russian. He learned how to speak Russian for me, tetya.”
“That’s lovely, solnyshka.” She forces a smile, looking almost guilty that her husband just ruined such a moment. “I know you may not understand his aversion to Matteo, but it’s complicated.”
“I don’t see how it could be.” I huff, shaking my head. “He shouldn’t have hit him. Matteo didn’t deserve that.”
“He shouldn’t have,” my aunt reiterates sadly. “I wish I could tell you that he’ll regret it, but I doubt he will. Your uncle can be a difficult man to understand, and sometimes he uses force when it’s not necessary.”
“I wish Matteo hit him back,” I mutter bitterly.
Aunt Irina laughs under her breath. “I’m sure he didn’t want to upset you by getting into a full-on brawl with your uncle. I doubt he wanted to make matters worse, and I could tell that Lev just needed to go away to cool off. He would have stormed away eventually whether you ordered him to or not.”
“I still don’t understand why he got so angry, anyway,” I tell her sadly. “We were only kissing, and it wasn’t even a long one. If he gets punched for giving me a peck on the lips, I can’t imagine he’ll want to risk doing more.”
“Oh, Anya.” She exhales, taking my hand to hold in hers. “Matteo would take endless punches if it meant being with you, I’m certain of that. I didn’t know that you were considering doing more, though. Is that something you’ve been thinking about? Something that you think you’re ready for?”
“Maybe.” I don’t bother to expand on that, knowing that the only person I want to share my thoughts with on the matter is in the kitchen icing his jaw.
“I don’t want it to seem like I’m defending your uncle—”
“So don’t,” I cut in sharply.
She smiles regretfully. “But if you want some insight into his issue with Matteo, I…I might be able to explain some of it.”
My eyes search hers, confused by her change in tone. “You said it’s complicated.”
“It is.” She breathes out, long and slowly. “But I will still tell you, if you want to know.”
I take a minute to digest her offer and eventually nod. If it will help me understand my uncle’s extreme feelings toward Matteo, I want to hear what she has to say. “Okay, I want to know.”
“I didn’t expect that I’d ever be telling you this,” Aunt Irina begins, suddenly looking more nervous than I’ve ever seen her in the past. “It’s not something that very many people know.
But what happened to you, something very similar happened to me when I was nineteen.
It’s how I met your uncle, actually. He found me, and he’s taken care of me since then. ”
My heart sinks, and I hope I’ve misheard her. “W-what?”
“Three men broke into my hotel room—this place I was living in for a week while working a runway show. It was the middle of the night, and I was asleep when they started. It…I don’t want to downplay what happened by saying it wasn’t as brutal as what happened to you, but it was different.
They didn’t cut me with knives, or burn me with lighters, but they hit me hard enough to break a few bones and litter me with bruises. ”
My stomach drops, my arms curling around my middle on instinct. It’s like I can feel my scars flare, being reminded of them. Cuts, burns, bruises, it’s all too familiar, but I can’t ask her to stop. I have to hear what she has to say.
“The sexual assault was the most torturous part for me. It lasted hours and I felt like a wooden statue by the time they finished. I stopped begging for them to stop halfway through, knowing it was useless. They didn’t care how much I was crying, they wanted my tears.
They weren’t hurting me because someone paid them to punish me, or to film me and send the footage as a punishment for someone else with my pain.
They were doing it because they wanted to, because I was beautiful and they wanted to make me feel ugly. ”
My chest feels uncomfortably warm as I digest her words, and my fingers start to feel tingly, like they would if I were going to have a panic attack. But I don’t feel a rush of anxiety, all I feel is sick.
“I…I wanted to talk to you about this when you were first recovering. I debated with myself constantly on whether it would be helping or hurting to confide in you. I wanted to let you know you weren’t alone, that I understood some of your pain, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
We were both victims of something terrible, but terribly unique all the same.
I’ll never truly understand your pain, and you’ll never understand mine. ”
Aunt Irina clears her throat, trying to unclog the emotion rising up.
“I was older than you when it happened to me. I wasn’t almost killed, even though it may have felt like it.
And I didn’t need nearly as much time to recover.
I didn’t want you to hear that I fell in love with your uncle only four months after he found me and got me the help I needed.
I didn’t want you to think that because I was able to heal quickly, that your timeline was wrong or bad in some way.
You were so young, and in so much pain…but I had your Uncle Lev with me, and he made me feel like I was never going to be hurt again. ”
You were young too, I want to point out, but I don’t.
“Did you ever want to die?” I ask, voice barely above a whisper. “After it happened? Did you wish that they would have just killed you to make it stop?”
“Oh, solnyshka.” My aunt lifts our connected hands and kisses the top of mine.
“Not as badly as you did. I never tried to make it happen, but I wished for death that night, so that the pain would end. I know four years may not seem like much of a difference in age, but at almost twenty, my brain was operating differently than yours. I was angry, more than I was sad. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of bringing me to end my life.
I wanted to watch your uncle end theirs instead, and I did. ”
“Thank you for telling me,” I rasp, still processing the story. “I think you were right in waiting to. I don’t know how I would have handled this information three years ago.”
“Well, now that you do know, I hope you can better understand your uncle. He’s so protective of you, and he’s worried about anything ever hurting you again.
I know that deep down he knows Matteo isn’t a bad man, but he loves you so much that he’s not being rational.
It’s not an excuse for his actions today, but it’s a reason that may make you eventually forgive him. ”
I nod almost numbly, thinking hard.
I might hate what my uncle just did, but I don’t hate him.
And after how I reacted today, I don’t think he’ll be touching Matteo ever again.