Chapter 33 – Desta #2
My eyes are dry and crusty. Same with my mouth.
I feel like I swallowed sand. My head hurts.
My body aches. My stomach rolls, and for a minute, I don’t move.
I’m not sure I can yet. My mouth tastes awful.
Like my tongue is coated in acid and my teeth in a layer of grime.
Vomit. My mouth tastes like actual vomit.
But why? I don’t remember throwing up. Everything is heavy and so… off. I can’t remember...
I blink, focusing on the ceiling above me. My ceiling. The bed beneath me is soft and familiar. I’m at the cottage. How did I get here?
The last thing I remember is… Ferrin. Oh my god, Ferrin is dead. He was floating in the water, and Sven was chasing me. I hiccup out a sob and twist my face to the side. Pain slices through me, sharp and unforgiving. It’s my fault. All of it is.
He’s gone and I…
I told him I hated him. That I never wanted to see him again. I didn’t mean it. Oh god, I didn’t mean it. I was mad and felt betrayed. I didn’t want last night to be it. I wanted more time with him. I wanted possibility. Potential. Now it’s too late.
After that… nothing. Why can’t I remember anything after that? It’s maddening. My arm is sore, and I glance down to find two purple bruises on my bicep. He gave me something. More than once, by the look of it. Then brought me here.
But why?
Or did he meet up with my mother as he was originally supposed to? That has to be it. She’d never let him know about this place.
Slowly, I peel myself up, my limbs shaky.
I glance around my room, but it spins, and I plant my hands into the mattress beside me.
It’s exactly as I left it, and my insides plummet.
I don’t want to be here. I want to be off somewhere with Ferrin.
I want to be back at our beach sleeping beneath the stars, wrapped up in everything that’s him.
Tears scald my eyes, and I press the heel of my palm into them, trying to stop them. I feel awful. Like I’ve been ripped apart from the inside out. He tried to save me and died for it.
My hands drop to my sides, and I let the tears go. They continue in a freefall.
I allow myself this grief. I let it consume me. I let the memories trickle through my head, one after the other. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe he was only after the money.
But I had it, and to me it was real, and that’s what matters. That’s what I’ll keep.
It’s only now that I realize I’m in different clothes than I was in at the festival.
I’m in a tank top and shorts. But my hands are filthy, as are my legs.
She changed me but didn’t clean me up. Or did Sven change me?
Did he rape me too? Isn’t that what he said he was going to do before he shot Ferrin?
The thought sickens me.
I can’t stay here.
Not with all that I know. I can’t go back to the life I had before.
She hired Lars and Sven. She had Sven kill Ferrin. I have to get out of here.
A noise from downstairs prickles my ears, and I force myself out of bed. Something tickles the recesses of my mind, but… fuck, I can’t remember. Goddammit!
Frustration slams through me. I reach the door and lean against it, and I’m hit with a wave of déjà vu with no home. No foundation. It’s only a feeling cloaked in darkness.
I test the door. Locked. She locked me in. There’s no way I’ll be able to escape with her here. It’s one entrance in and out. Except…
I shoot over to the window and open it. I’m three stories up, and if I try to jump, I’ll either die or seriously hurt myself and then be killed. I should know, I contemplated it more than once.
But maybe if I tie the blankets and sheets together, I can use them like a rope and climb down.
Honestly, I don’t have a choice.
I tear the sheets and blankets off the bed, tying one end to the other as securely as I can before I secure the sheet around one of the posts on the bed. I give it three hard tugs, and it holds. Doesn’t mean it will when I’m hanging out the window.
My heart hammers and my muscles still feel weak, but it’s now or never.
Gripping the blanket for dear life, I climb onto the windowsill and drop the bedding over the other side. It falls but stops at least three meters above the ground.
I can manage that kind of fall. It’s not too far.
Holy shit. Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m about to do this.
I climb out the window, making sure to plant my feet into the side of the cottage. I glance down, and a wave of dizziness hits me. Jesus Christ, this is insane.
I suck in a hearty breath and slowly work to scale my way down one step at a time. My arms shake and sweat pours down the back of my neck and between my breasts. This is so much harder than I thought it would be, and holding my weight like this is all but impossible.
I keep my focus on the stone wall in front of me, doing everything I can to maintain my grip, when a voice from the bedroom startles me. My sweaty hands slip, and I eke out a terrified cry as I nearly fall. I manage to regain my hold and footing, but it doesn’t matter.
Antonia found me.
“Genevieve, no!” She grips the sheet and tries to pull me up, and in doing so, it knocks my feet out from the wall and stretches my arms overhead.
Alarm skitters through me as I dangle like a worm on a hook. A shriek catapults from my lungs before I can stop it, my grip precarious as my clammy hands can’t support my weight. I try to work myself down like this, but it’s nearly impossible.
I look down, and the world tilts sideways. Fear and adrenaline spike through me. I’m still at least two stories up.
“Genevieve!”
“Stop calling me that!” I scream.
“Let me pull you up.”
I laugh caustically. “So you can kill me? Or keep me here forever? No thanks.”
“I love you! You’re my daughter.”
“That’s a lie.” I try to replant my feet only for my knees to give out on me. I swing wildly around, and my back bashes into the stone, causing me to drop a meter. I shriek and twist myself around until I’m able to regain my footing on the stone wall. Holy fuck, that was so close.
“You’re going to fall!”
“What do you care? I don’t even know who you are!”
“Listen to me. You have to listen to me. I know everything seems bad right now, but it’s not what you think. I’m your biological aunt and the woman who raised you. The woman who saved you! Please. Don’t do this. You’ll get hurt or die. If you stay here with me, no one will ever hurt you again.”
My heart lurches. She is the woman who raised me.
She’s also the woman who lied to me my entire life. Who kept me locked away in a cottage without any other human contact. Who sent a murderer to get me.
“What about the tiara? And Rhys?”
She narrows her eyes. “He’s the reason all this happened. He was after the tiara all along. He didn’t care about you. He was a liar and a thief.”