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1
Bex
* * *
“Open it!” he screams through the window. “Open it right now.”
I scramble off the bed, desperate to get away from him. The hairdryer falls from my hand, the bath towel slipping down my body.
He taps on the glass, his voice gentler, more cajoling. “Let me in, Bex. Come on, I just want to talk to you.”
I shake my head, fumbling for the hotel room door. He starts shouting again. “If I have to break this window, you’ll be in big trouble. Again.”
His fist slams into the safety glass. A spiderweb of cracks radiates out from the impact point.
He punches the window repeatedly, his eyes still fixed on me. “Open it, or I will have to hurt you again.”
I finally manage to get the door open. “Help me!” I scream, rushing out into the corridor.
The most handsome man I’ve ever seen steps out of the room opposite mine.
I crash straight into him.
Bouncing off, I land on my ass, the air forced from my lungs while I gasp like a dying fish on the thick carpet.
He looks down at me, seemingly more concerned with the wet streaks on his immaculate gray suit than my frantic fight for breath. There’s a glass of whiskey in his hand. He takes a sip while I try to speak.
“Ho sentito urlare,” he says in a rumbling voice far too calm for my liking.
“Please,” I say, staggering to my feet, grabbing hold of his hand, hoping he understands English. “You’ve got to help me. My ex-boyfriend’s trying to get me again. He’s going to kill me this time.”
He pulls his hand free from mine, glancing into my room where Oswald’s busy trying to break the safety glass with his increasingly bloody fist.
Without another word, the man walks into my room and closes the door behind him, shutting me out in the corridor.
I tug my towel tighter around me. Despite the heat, I’m shivering uncontrollably.
“Stai bene?” a young woman’s voice asks over to my left.
I turn and find a teenage maid pushing a trolley along the corridor, a two-way radio clipped to her hip.
“You okay?” she asks in English.
“My ex-partner,” I tell her, the words not coming easily through chattering teeth. “Trying to get in my bedroom window. He must have followed me here. I can’t believe he—”
A noise in the bedroom. A grunt and a rattle as the window is pulled open. Oswald’s roaring voice makes me wince. “Get your fucking hands off—”
His voice cuts out. I shriek as something slams against the other side of the door, rattling the hinges. I step back, clinging onto the maid as Oswald yells on the other side in mingled anger and pain.
“You’ve been fucking her, haven’t you?” he asks. “Answer me, you son of a bitch. Say something, damn it. Answer me!”
Another thud, then a sound like wet meat falling off a kitchen counter, and then only a deafening silence.
The maid has left the trolley behind. She’s stepping toward the locked door, clinging onto my arm as she steps back again. “Dovrei chiamare qualcuno?” she asks, glancing from me to the door and back again.
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak Italian. Non parlo Italiano.”
“Si. English? I call someone for you? Polizia?”
