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“That night. My seventeenth birthday. Did you hand him your knife?”
The knife that killed my mother. Did Lorenzo give it to my father, or did Dad take it from him?
Lorenzo freezes and raises his head. I can’t see his face, but I can hear the cruel smile in his voice as he says, “What do you think?”
I grab the scalpel lying in the kidney dish like a dagger, lurch to my unsteady feet and bring it down between his shoulder blades with a scream.
Lorenzo whips around and grabs my wrist. The scalpel blade is an inch from his cheek.
“Let me go!I hate you.” I grapple in his grip but he’s too strong.
“Don’t attack if you don’t know you’ll kill,” he growls, and sinks his teeth into the fleshy part of my forearm.
I scream in pain and the scalpel falls from my fingers.
Lorenzo goes on biting me, his eyes filled with rage and his jaw locked around my arm. I go on screaming, expecting it will bring the others running, but the door stays closed. He could be killing me and they don’t care.
I’m on the verge of passing out from the pain when Lorenzo releases me. I fall into a heap at his feet, my legs like rubber from the drugs.
The scalpel is lying a foot away on the concrete and Lorenzo bends down and snatches it up. Twisting the glinting object in front of my face, he seethes, “The fuck is this? Don’t stab with a scalpel. Steal it, hide it, and creep into my room at night and slash my throat.” He jabs a forefinger deep into the side of my neck. “Right here. You feel that? That’s the jugular vein, two centimeters in. Cut that with this little blade and I’ll be unconscious within a minute. Even if I get my hands around your throat, I’ll pass out before I can strangle you to death.”
Lorenzo’s hand slips around my throat. He stares at my lips, which I’ve bitten until they’re swollen this past hour. He runs the pad of his thumb over the indentations from my teeth as if he’s fascinated by them. As if each one is precious. His thumb swipes across my lips again and I pant against his touch, struggling to breathe as he grips my throat. Lorenzo’s cold, pale cheeks darken. Reddening with blood.
He stands up suddenly and throws aside the scalpel, as if disgusted I haven’t tried to kill him properly.
“Vinicius, Cassius!” he roars at the door. “Get this fucking idiot out of my sight.”
A moment later, Vinicius is bending over me and hauling me to my feet. He’ll answer this asshole’s orders and not my screams. Before I can say a word, he slaps a piece of duct tape over my mouth and covers my head with a pillowcase. He tries to walk me out of the room but thanks to Lorenzo’s drugs I can’t walk properly, so he hoists me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
I’m slung into the back of a car and we’re on the move again. I try to count the turns and the passing minutes, but my head is spinning and the back of my neck stings. The car is parked, and someone helps me walk.
The ground beneath my feet lurches, and a moment later my ears pop. We’re in an elevator and we’re going up. It takes a long time so I assume this must be a skyscraper. My heart leaps. A skyscraper is full of people and security.
I’m led out of the elevator and across carpeted floors. Someone pulls the pillowcase from my head. Vinicius. He rips the duct tape from my mouth without looking me in the eye. We’re in a bedroom. I open my mouth to ask him what’s happening, but he leaves, slamming the door behind him.
I turn around slowly. A bed. A chest of drawers. A small bathroom through a door. The windows are floor to ceiling along one wall and I hurry over, wondering if there’s any way I could signal to someone. I recognize from the buildings that we’re in downtown Coldlake, but there’s nothing close enough for me to hope to signal to someone for help. I can make out people far below on the street, and they crawl like ants, oblivious to me far above them.
Beyond the door to my room, I can’t hear anything. Either the men have left, or they’re in some distant part of the apartment. We’re so high up that I suppose this could be a penthouse. Cassius’ apartment, or maybe Vinicius’? The horrible place they took me too first was probably Lorenzo’s.
I sink down onto the bed, feeling my wedding dress crumple around me. There are twelve purple and red teeth marks on my arm, six at the top and six at the bottom, a grisly reminder that if I’m going to try and kill one of these men, I better know that I’ll succeed.
After a while, the adrenalin hyping me up ebbs away, and I realize how uncomfortable I am in my wedding dress. I go over to the drawers and start going through them. There are sweaters. Joggers. T-shirts. Denim shorts. Socks. Underwear. All in roughly my size, so I know they planned this. No shoes, I notice. There’s nothing in this room that could help me run away or be used as a weapon, unless I want to try strangling one of the men to death with my panties. I don’t think I’d get far, though.
I shed my wedding dress and bridal lingerie and pull on underwear, a T-shirt and some joggers.
Then I go to the window and stare out. I wonder what Dad and Salvatore are doing. Running around town after Jensen on his motorcycle, I suppose. The last thing I want is to be kept captive here, but I can’t bring myself to wish that I’ll be rescued by them, either.
I think of my bridesmaids, and how terrified they must be for me, and I realize that I’ve grown attached to Rosaline, Candace and Sophia. They’ve been there for me this year while I’ve struggled to make sense of this unfamiliar world. I wish they were here now, if only so I could hear them curse out Cassius, Vinicius and Lorenzo for stealing me from their beloved Salvatore.
Hours later, I get up and go to the bathroom. My stomach rumbles and my eyes burn with exhaustion. I drink from the tap to fill my belly and splash water onto my face.
It’s getting dark outside, and so I crawl into bed and pull the covers up over my head. There’s only silence around me, and it’s deafening. I don’t know how I’m going to relax when I don’t know if someone’s going to charge into my room and take me to another location or do something even worse.
But somehow, after laying still for a long time, I fall asleep.
When I wake up, the light in the room has changed. It’s morning, and sunshine is streaming through the window. I sit up and listen, but hear nothing. My stomach growls, sounding loud in the silence.
I use the bathroom and drink more water, and then my eyes land on the door handle. Is that door actually locked, or did I just assume it was?
