Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ugh, I can’t sleep.
I can tell by the way Enzo sits in that chair, too still to be resting, his breathing too controlled to be anything close to unconscious. I lie in the bed with my eyes closed for a while but finally I give up and open them and look at him in the dim amber light of the lamp we left on low.
He's watching the door with that focus he has, the kind that he has on anytime he looks at me. It doesn’t waver, doesn't drift, just stays locked on the thing he's decided matters most.
"You're not sleeping," I say into the quiet.
He doesn't startle, doesn't turn immediately, just shifts his very focused eyes from the door to me with the unhurried patience of someone who knew I was awake the whole time.
"Neither are you."
"I tried."
"So did I."
We look at each other across the small motel room and something about the honesty of it, the simple acknowledgment that neither of us can turn our brains off tonight, makes the space feel smaller and more intimate.
"You could sit on the bed," I say. "The chair can't be comfortable."
"The chair's fine."
"Enzo."
He looks at me for a long moment, then stands and crosses to the bed, sitting on the edge of it leaving enough space between us but close enough that I can feel the shift in the mattress when he settles.
We sit quietly for a moment.
"Tell me something," he says.
"Like what?"
"Anything. Something I don't know. That might make you sleepy."
I consider that, running through the catalogue of things he doesn't know about me, things I've kept close and quiet for years because saying them out loud makes them real in a way I'm not always prepared to handle.
"The basement," I say, and the words feel like stones in my mouth—heavy, jagged, and impossible to swallow.
What… What am I doing?
I feel him go still beside me.
The shift is subtle, but I’m tuned in to him now, vibrating at a frequency I didn't know I possessed. "You asked," I continue, my voice sounding thin, like a thread about to snap. "You wanted to know what happened."
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to."
I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, trying to make myself small enough to disappear into the fibers of the duvet. If I’m small enough, maybe the memory won’t be able to find me.
But it’s already there.
Suddenly, the air in the room feels too thick to breathe.
My heart begins a frantic, stuttering rhythm against my ribs, a trapped bird desperate to escape.
Don’t say it. If you say it, it exists in this room. If you say it, he’ll see you differently.
My fingers dig into the skin of my shins, my knuckles turning white.
The silence of the room, that was peaceful, now feels like it’s pressing in on me, mocking the scream stuck in my throat. I can feel the cold of that floor, the smell of damp concrete and old fear, rising up to meet me. My breath hitches, coming in shallow, jagged gasps that I can’t seem to stop.
Then, I feel him move.
Enzo doesn’t reach out to me. He doesn't force a touch I'm not ready for. He simply shifts, his weight settling more firmly on the mattress, and leans just slightly closer. He becomes an anchor in the storm of my rising panic. I can feel the heat radiating from him—solid, unwavering, and impossibly patient. It’s a quiet, gravitational pull that demands nothing but offers everything.
I close my eyes, and for a second, I don’t smell the basement. I smell him—sandalwood, rain, and something inherently safe.
He has always been my safe. Always.
The thudding in my chest begins to slow. The walls of the room stop closing in. His presence is a shield, a promise that whatever ghosts I let out of the bag tonight, he isn’t going to run. He’s going to sit right here and help me watch them burn.
I take one long, shuddering breath, tasting the safety he’s giving me like it’s oxygen.
"But I think maybe I want to," I whisper, and this time, the words don't feel like stones. They feel like a release.
He doesn't say anything, doesn't push, just sits beside me and waits with that particular patience he has, the kind that feels like he'd sit here all night if that's what I needed.
I take a breath.
"They kept me hungry," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected, which is good because I need it steady for this.
"Not starving. Just hungry enough that I couldn't think straight.
Couldn't plan. Couldn't do anything except focus on the fact that my stomach hurt and I was cold and the room smelled like mold and rust."
His hand curls into a fist on his knee but he doesn't speak.
"They hit me." The words come faster now, like I've opened something and can't close it again until it's empty. "Not every day. Just enough to remind me that they could. Just enough to keep me compliant." I press my forehead to my knees. "And they almost—"
I stop.
The word sits in my throat like something with edges, something that will cut on the way out.
"They almost raped me," I say finally, flat and clean, because if I put any emotion in it, I won't be able to finish.
"The second week. Declan wasn't there and two of his men decided they wanted to have some fun and I fought and I screamed and they held me down and—" My breath catches.
"They didn't. Someone came in and stopped them. But they almost did and I can still—"
I can still feel it. The hands. The weight. The cold floor under my back and the certainty that this was happening and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
"I've never had sex," I say into my knees, quieter now. "I'm twenty-two and I've never—because every time I even think about it, I'm back there on that floor and I can't breathe and I—"
His hand finds my shoulder, warm and solid, and I feel myself come back into the room, into this moment, into the presence of him beside me.
"You're the only man whose touch I can stand," I say, and I turn my head to look at him, still pressed against my knees but my eyes finding his. "You're the only one who's ever touched me and not made me want to run. I don't know what that means but I thought you should know."
He looks at me with something raw moving through his expression, something I've never seen there before, and then he slides off the bed and onto his knees on the floor in front of me.
His hands come up and cup my face, gentle and deliberate, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones.
"Look at me," he says quietly.
I look at him.
"You went through hell," he says, and his voice is rough at the edges, barely controlled.
"You were thirteen years old and you went through something that would break most grown men and you came out the other side of it.
You're still here. You're still standing.
You're still fighting." His thumbs move against my skin, slow and careful.
"I am so goddamn proud of you I don't have words for it. "
Something breaks loose in my chest, something I've been holding closed for nine years.
The tears come fast and quiet, running down my face and over his hands, and I don't try to stop them because what would be the point, he's already seen everything else.
I smile through them, watery and genuine. "I told you I'm not a fragile doll. I don't break easily." I hold his gaze. "If the kidnapping didn't do it, wanting you won't either."
The air between us shifts.
His eyes drop to my mouth and come back to my eyes and the room gets smaller and hotter and I watch him process what I just said, watch it land, watch him decide what to do with it.
"Isabella," he groans, and my name in his mouth sounds like a warning and a question at the same time.
"I want you," I say plainly, because I'm done not saying things to him. "I've wanted you for years. And I'm tired of pretending I don't."
His jaw tightens and his hands are still on my face and I can see him fighting something, , weighing things I can't see.
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"Yes I do and I’m also pretty tired of you saying that as well."
"You just told me—"
"I know what I told you." I lean forward slightly, just enough that there's barely any air between us. "And I'm telling you now that I trust you. That I want this. That if I'm going to do this with anyone it's going to be you."
His breathing changes, gets heavier, and I watch his control start to slip at the edges, watch the careful restraint he always carries begin to fray.
"We should stop talking," he says, rough and low.
"Then stop talking."
He looks at me for one more long moment, searching my face for something, finding whatever it is he was looking for, and his hands tighten just slightly on my jaw.
"I'm going to kiss you now, Princess."