Chapter 2 – Genevieve
GENEVIEVE
“So, Mother, as you know, in five days it’s my birthday,” I say aloud as I wash the conditioner from my hair. “I was thinking, now that I’m turning twenty-three, I could, um…”
Fuck. I’m already nervous, and she’s not even here yet. There’s no way she’s going to say yes. She didn’t when I turned eighteen or any year after. Ugh.
“I’m keeping you safe, Genevieve. You’re only alive because of me. What if I hadn’t found you that night?” I mock.
Ugh! Yes, she’s keeping me alive, but this isn’t exactly living. She doesn’t understand that I’m not some meek, helpless little girl. If she can make it out there with all the violence and evil everywhere you look, so can I.
Besides, why would someone want to kidnap me again?
I’m an adult. Kidnapping implies a child. Can the world really be that bad?
I finish with my hair, wash my body, shave my legs, and get out of the shower.
Gerald slinks into the bathroom as I’m wrapping a towel around myself, managing to scare the crap out of me.
I jump and skitter back a step, my hand going to my chest over my racing heart.
He gives me a curious look as if to question, who else would it be, and yeah, I guess he has a point.
Gerald isn’t actually my cat because my mother is allergic, or so she claims. He’s feral and lives in the forest, coming and going as he pleases, but he visits a few times a week and eases some of my loneliness.
Six days a week, it’s just me. And occasionally Gerald.
I count seconds. I count minutes. I dream about a world I’m not sure I’ll ever touch.
It’s the dreams keeping me going. It’s the dreams that don’t have me diving out my tower window. But after nearly twenty-three years, seventeen of them in this tower, I’m not sure what else to do. I can’t live like this anymore. The solitude eats at my soul. It cuts away pieces of it.
The hopelessness is… absorbing. I didn’t use to think this way. Not all the time at least. Now, I can’t escape it. It wakes me up from sleep. It holds my focus when I’m doing other things. Things I used to enjoy.
I have knives downstairs. Scissors. That window.
I collapse to the floor, letting the shower water run over me. My head falls to my forearms, and my eyes close. My limbs hurt, and I’ve barely done much today. A persistent ache that matches the heaviness in my head and heart.
She has to say yes. This time… she has to say yes.
A scream lurches from the back of my throat that I quickly rein in. My mood swings have been more pronounced lately, and I don’t like how I feel when they take over. I control this. It’s my life. My destiny. My fate.
I need to fight for it. Fight this feeling. I can’t let it take over. It scares me. My thoughts scare me. How close to the edge I’m teetering. They scare me more than what could be waiting beyond the tower.
“I’m going to tell her,” I promise Gerald. He’s heard me say this at least a million times in the three years he’s been hanging out with me. “I’m going to tell her it’s time I go. The festival is on my birthday. The woman told me it was for me. So if it’s for me, then why shouldn’t I go?”
I can practically feel him rolling his eyes at me as he walks toward my bedroom, essentially dismissing me. Fine. But I mean it this time.
I follow after him and get dressed before I brush out my waist-length blonde hair.
Mother is expected home this afternoon. The house is clean, the bread and dessert are made, but I can’t shake my nerves. Maybe I’ll paint. Or bake—
The perimeter alarm goes off on the keypad on the wall, and I start so badly that I smash my knee into my dressing table. Ow. Shit, that hurt.
I sigh. In all the years I’ve been here, it’s gone off three times, and all of those were animals that triggered it.
I rub my knee, which I’m positive will bruise, and go over to the tablet affixed to the wall.
I tap the touch screen, and the image from the camera flickers to life.
I can see the bushes shaking, and I hope nothing is caught in the vines.
The first time it was a deer, and I was able to cut her out of it, but another time it was a freaking Italian wolf.
I already know it’s not a human. There’s only one passage in, and you have to know exactly where it is, which isn’t so easy to find, not to mention the code to get past the door.
Plus, I’m straddling the border of a protected forest and a marsh.
No one can find me. Unfortunately. Though I won’t lie and say that I haven’t dreamed of someone breaching it.
A hero from one of my stories. He’d swoop in and take me…
anywhere. The ocean, for sure. I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.
I’ve reread those words in my books hundreds of times, envisioning the feel of the sand and the water and the sound of the waves crashing and birds squawking. Fantasy or not, I believe the depiction of the ocean is real.
But I would happily settle for the festival on Friday. That’s my main love. My main dream. I have to get there. This is my year. Something inside me is making it so, and the voice won’t be quieted any longer.
I head down from my tower into the kitchen to grab the large shrub shears. It’s a hot day, and if an animal is caught in the thicket, it won’t last long without dehydrating. And if it’s a wolf or another I-eat-cute-blondes animal, the shears make a great weapon.
I step outside, squinting against the sun as I peer around, searching for the right spot, but the shrubs are still, and the air is quiet. Hmm. Maybe it got free on its own. Or it’s hurt.
I meander my way along the cottage only to stop dead in my tracks. My heart pounds and blood rushes through my ears, making my skin hot, and sweat instantly breaks out on my forehead. There’s a man slinking along the grass headed directly for the cottage.
Holy shit. Holy motherfucking shit.
There’s a man here.
An actual human man.
He’s tall and sort of broad with short, sandy-brown hair and tattoos on his arms.
Oh my god, I can’t believe this.
I can’t fucking believe this!
How did he find me? Is he going to kill me? Rob me? Rape me? Traffic me?
Isn’t that what men do? What they want with women? That’s what Mother always told me.
He reaches the window and peers in, and I take his distraction as my moment. I creep over to him, making sure my steps are light and the grass doesn’t crunch beneath my feet.
“What in the bloody fuck is all this?” he murmurs in English, and I swing, nailing him in the back of the head with the butt of the shears. He goes down like a sack of bricks, his body slack with his eyes closed and his mouth open.
A small giddy laugh escapes, and I glance around, making sure he’s alone and no one else is here to sneak up on me. Once I’m positive it was just him, I sink into a crouch and examine him. Then another laugh slips, but this one comes with an odd flutter in the pit of my stomach.
Wow. I realize I’ve never seen a man in the flesh before, but I have on TV when Mother forces me to watch all the horrors and misery of the world on it, and the men I see don’t look anything like this guy.
He’s… well, he’s beautiful. Can men be beautiful?
In my books, they often call them sexy or gorgeous, and he’s that too, but he’s most definitely beautiful.
I pat him down, checking him for weapons as they do in my crime novels.
He’s in a dirty, slightly damp white T-shirt and khaki shorts, but he also has a knapsack with him, wedged under his body.
His pockets are empty, and I dip lower so I can tug the strap of the knapsack, but I can’t manage to pull it out from beneath him.
I grab his shoulder and roll him to his side.
He’s heavy as hell, all dead weight. I grunt, pressing my knees into the ground for leverage, and finally manage to yank it free.
The momentum knocks me back, and I fall onto my ass, and the knapsack smacks me in the face.
He moves a little, his body stirring. Shit.
What do I do with him? At least he doesn’t have anything on him he could use to hurt me.
Other than his muscles. I snort a small laugh and slap a hand over my mouth.
I need to get him inside. I put his knapsack on my back, grab both of his hands, and use all my might to drag him inside.
The top of his head bumps on the step, making him groan.
Oops.
I pull harder and get him inside the kitchen.
“Damn, you’re heavy,” I whine, sliding him along the terracotta tile floor until I reach the table. It’s heavy, constructed of solid wood, and it’ll have to do. I bring his arms behind his back and loop them around one of the legs before I tie him up with rope.
Still unconscious, his head lolls over his chest, and his legs splay in front of him. Once I’m positive he’s secure, I move to the other side of the kitchen and sit on a stool so I can drop the backpack on my lap.
It’s got a decent weight to it for something not that big. I unzip the smaller front pocket first and find a gun and a switchblade. My jaw unhinges, and I quickly zip the pocket back up, too afraid to even touch them. I eye the man, a scowl twisting my lips.
“So you did come to hurt me? And here I was holding out hope that my mother was wrong about everything.” I have the urge to kick him but suppress it for the moment as I continue my search.
The large pocket has a gray jumpsuit of sorts with an ID badge that says “Marco Torino” and claims he works as a janitor for La Via Bella Studios and Gallery.
I dig beyond that and find another set of clothes, a wallet, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and— “Ow.”