Page 84 of Savage Roses
That’s putting it mildly.
But it’s Lena’s reaction that’s the most extreme—she screams at Arturo one last time to pull the trigger, begging him to shoot her. When he doesn’t, too busy aiming at Lucius’s men flooding the studio, she takes matters into her own hands.
“I will not return to the Mill!” she screams in drunken hysterics. “I will not let them bring me back there!”
Before anybody can make sense of what she means, she smashes the half full bottle of vodka she’s clutching and uses one of the large glass shards to slit her throat.
Blood splatters and her body stumbles half alive, half dead to a collapse on the floor.
None of us have a chance for any kind of reaction—we’ve got a bigger matter at hand with Ray De Trolio breezing through the door. His unibrow raises and lips spread in delight.
“Look, who it is, fellas! It’s Psycho… and the dead prostitute, but who gives a fuck about her? We’ve been looking all over foryou.”
“What a coincidence,” I say coolly, me and my two guys against their dozen. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to kick your ass.”
De Trolio’s smile spreads. “We’ll see about that.”
delphine
How’s itpossible that I’ve never felt so far away from Salvatore yet so connected to him at the same time?
I toss and turn through the night, unable to sleep.
Something is wrong. Deeply, horribly, unsettlingly wrong.
I don’t know how I know this. I can’t put it into words or make sense of it. For all I know, it could be another bad case of paranoia rearing its ugly head.
Every time I tell myself this, it comes back ten times stronger than before. I wake up sweaty and breathless in the middle of the night, shaken to my core. A sickening premonition pits inside my stomach, and I feel helpless and bound by invisible restraints.
A prisoner inside a heavily guarded home.
In theory it’s for my own safety.
But what about Salvatore? What abouthissafety?
The days and nights have melded together. I haven’t bothered keeping to a routine, though it goes against my nature—I can’t bring myself to when nothing about this situation feels right. I sleep for hours on end and then lay despondent, lost in a maze of my own confusing thoughts.
Stitches and the other men never budge whenever I badger them about letting me speak to him. They insist we have no communication.
Salvatore’s orders.
It’s easier this way.
“Easier on whom?!” I snap before I storm out.
Any available pastimes fail as distractions. The villa has an entertainment room with a big screen TV and recliners, and another room that’s a study stocked with hundreds of books. Neither have appealed to me less than they do now. Even playing with Salt and Pepa feels hollow; the cats must sense this, because they give me plenty of space, slinking off and finding friends in some of the men on the crew.
The sheets are damp the next time I jolt awake in the middle of the night. The temperature outside reads as twenty-four degrees. Ice frosts the windows and the roads, yet I’m sweating bullets as my lungs convulse and I gasp for air.
It’s like my nightmares all over again.
After my rape, I’d had nightmares for months. I’d often wake shaken and terrified in the middle of a scream or thrash in bed.
The violently sick feeling is the same. The feeling that I’m not okay. I’ve been… hurt in some way.
Except this time, it’s not me I’m feeling it for.
It’s him. He’s hurt. I know he is.