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Gabriele’s soft brown eyes bored into mine. His expression was hard, but those eyes were always soft for me. Always comforting for me.
A stupid obsession.
Yet, he looked at me like I had every right to be obsessed with him. “Eight years ago,” he said, making me go tense. “You were sad eight years ago, but now you are… Now you look like your soul is broken.”
It was broken. “Maybe it is.”
“I want to know why. You told me he was going to propose to you that night. Why didn’t you marry him? Why were you with him? You saved his life, but now you prefer death over him.”
I saved his life?
He was probably referring to my so-called betrayal again. I shook my head. “I didn’t save his life. I didn’t tell him what you told me eight years ago.” I could feel tears threatening to come. I didn’t know how I felt about crying in front of Gabriele.
“Then tell me what happened,” he said with a steel voice. “Why wasn’t he there?”
“He came after me,” I whispered.
“Is that it?” Gabriele asked.
His tone. That unbelieving mocking tone switched something inside of me. It was a horrible memory. It was the night everything went to shit. Tears filled my eyes, and I shouted, “Yes! He called me, and when I didn’t pick up, he found me. When you attacked the club, he was busyrapingme.”
Gabriele’s body turned steel at once. He looked like I slapped him or punched him in the gut. Good. He deserved it. He was the reason for all those things.
“It was all because of you. You ruined my life.”
His jaw flexed. There was no more confidence in his position. He looked defeated. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me my sins so I can know how to pay for them.”
I huffed a laugh. Only if it was that easy. “You can’t pay for them. You can’t fix.”
“Try me,” he said with a confident voice. I looked at him; he almost acted like he was the God and had the power to just took all my pain away from me. I knew he couldn’t, but I also wanted him to know. I wanted him to carry the burden for it until the end of his days because, unlike Aleksei and his friends, he seemed like it would actually hurt him despite the fact that he was just a little part of what happened to me.
He was so beautiful, so powerful. I didn’t want him to feel pain, but I wanted him to shoulder some of mine. He was the first person that seemed willing to do so.
At last, I said, “Okay.” But after a second asked, “Can we do this on the terrace if I promise not to jump? I can’t look at you while I say it.” I could only look at the moon and the stars. That’s what I did every time I felt trapped for years. Because the moon and the stars were always the same for both the free people and the captives.
“Of course,” he said with a soft voice that sounded almost impossible to be his.
He made me another cup of coffee. He didn’t have milk in the house but put some sugar in it. Brown sugar. Like a sociopath.
His rooftop terrace was magnificent. My apartment didn’t have one. I had to look up at the stars through my window every night. They did look better like this.
He also sat between me and the edge. I didn’t blame him for not trusting me with this. The idea of jumping was tempting, but even if he wasn’t sitting there, I wouldn’t jump.
I wanted to tell him. I never told anyone what happened to me. I wanted him to know. To bear my pain.
Gabriele didn’t say anything when we sat down. He simply offered me a cigarette which I took, lit it, and sat back. He waited for me to start. He seemed like he could wait forever for me to feel ready.
Choosing his eyes for comfort was not a mistake. He was the type of man I assumed he was eight years ago.
“I was going to marry him,” I said. He didn’t react. He just kept listening. “All my plans ruined that night. His father, Dimitri, was my protector. You killed my protector.” I couldn’t help my voice crack at the end.
Gabriele swallowed thickly. His body was tense. “He was your protector?” he asked.
I nodded and took a drag from my cigarette. “He was not a good man, not even for a mobster. He let Aleksei take me in the first place, but his presence was better than his absence.”
“Took you?”
I realized that he didn’t know anything about me. Probably it was better to start from the beginning for all this to make sense. “My first captivity,” I explained. “I was born in Russia. My dad was long gone. It was just my mother and me. Aleksei saw me on the street and decided that he wanted me. Dimitri bribed my mother, and they took me here, just like that.”
