Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
As far as the story of Sarah Moretti’s death, she died in a fire at the house of her piano tutor. A tragedy. Nothing more to it. The fact that Allegra and her mother had been kidnapped wasn’t public knowledge because it wasn’t truly a kidnapping. It was her father punishing his wife. Hurting her any way he could.
Who would know that I was coming here? Or did Malek just get lucky? But then why not take Allegra with him? Perhaps that is the more important question. Why did he leave her behind for me to find?
I dig my phone out of my pocket to find a text from Enzo.
Enzo: Cousin, I’m on my way to the house. Where do you need me?
Me: Why aren’t you at the hospital?
Enzo: I’m fine. Where do you need me?
He’s eager to prove himself. He knows I have my doubts about everyone. I’m analyzing everyone’s motivation, everyone’s actions.
Me: Devil’s Peak. Call a doctor in. Female.
Enzo: Done
I add that last part thinking Allegra will feel safer with a woman doctor. I want her examined thoroughly. I want to know where that bastard laid his hands before I cut them off. Because I will cut them off. And that will be the beginning of what I do to him.
But all that can wait. I glance down at Allegra sleeping, her head in my lap, the bruises on her face.
I have her. She’s here with me. Everything else I will fix. I have her now and she’s safe.
10
ALLEGRA
Iwake violently unable to separate the nightmare from the reality of this heavy, drug-induced sleep. It’s pitch black. I sit up, but I don’t know where I am. Sweat trickles down my back. My breaths come short and ragged, keeping time with my pounding heart.
I look around the dark space as my eyes adjust. I’m not cold. Not freezing. Not shivering in that damp, wet-earth cold. No smell of spilled wine. I look up at the prisms of light filtering in through stained glass and I know where I am. I remember.
My racing heart slows to thuds.
I remember.
As if on cue, my hand begins to throb. Because I remember that, too.
Pain.
A sob breaks the utter stillness of the place, and it takes me a moment to realize that that sound? It’s me.
I’m afraid to look down.
Afraid to see what I know I’ll find.
But I have to make myself do it. I have to make myself look. It would be weakness not to.
The thick duvet covers me, warm and soft and safe.
No. Not safe. Nothing is safe. Nothing has been safe for a very, very long time.
The space beside me is empty. His place. He didn’t sleep here last night.
But he came for me.
I recall the war of bullets and when that door opened, when I heard again the terrible sound of heavy metal creaking along that filthy floor, how I wanted to die. Oh, how I wanted to die.
My unbandaged hand throbs. I take a deep breath in and I turn my gaze down. This pain isn’t from a knife wound. It’s bruised from when Malek forced the ring.
Uncurling my fingers, I look for it now. My mother’s ring. Her blood still on it, after all those years. Cruel that. The cruelest thing he did. He who professed to have loved her had hated her more than any of the other monsters in her life.
But the ring isn’t there. It’s gone. I ripped it from my finger.
Four fingers on each hand now. Matchy-matchy.
I close my eyes. The place where my little finger was throbs. Phantom pain. Sensation when there is nothing there. Did my mother feel it every time they took another one? No. She would have only felt real pain. I shake my head to rid myself of the memories. To let them go. To make them let me go. I don’t know what’s real, what’s not. Did she know what was real? What wasn’t? I think she’d gone half-mad by the time they’d finished with her.
I don’t want to think about that now. I don’t want to remember it. Why do I remember it so clearly? Like it just happened. Like five years haven’t passed. It’s the drugs. It must be. They’re confusing past and present, memory and reality.
Time to look at my right hand. The one that won’t feel phantom pain yet. Only real pain.
I do it. Finally, I do it and I have to muffle the sound of my cry. Because this? This is real. The bloody bandage. It’s very real. And I know what’s underneath.
What’s not underneath.
I need to focus now.
The ring.
I need to get my mother’s ring.
A snore comes from the corner of the room startling me. I almost scream, but then I see the woman there. She’s sitting on a chair. Slumped on it. Asleep. It’s the nurse who assisted the doctor Cassian had brought. A female doctor. For me. So I’d feel safe. As if I could ever feel safe again. Cassian couldn’t protect me from Malek. He couldn’t keep me safe. He broke his promise.