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There was fire in Gabriele’s eyes. His jaw was so tense I thought it was going to snap. “Your mother let you go for money?”
I shrugged. I never blamed my mother. “She didn’t want to. They would have taken me anyway.”
“Did Aleksei…” Gabriele started but couldn’t keep going.
I stayed dumbfounded for a second but then understood what he was trying to ask. “Did he rape me?” It was a strong word. I tried to use it in my head as much as possible to not forget it. I didn’t want to justify what they did to me. Not again. “He didn’t force me.”
“That was a yes or no question.”
It was not. At least not for me. “He didn’t do it like he did after his father died. He brought me to a mansion. Locked me up in there. I was alone in my room, and I had no visitors other than Aleksei. I was only fourteen. I was fucking terrified.” My vision blurred from all the tears filling my eyes. “I tried to run away for a few days but, of course, couldn’t. Aleksei never got mad at me. He was always so kind and charming. I had no one, and he was good to me. So, one day he asked me if he could kiss me, and I said yes.”
“He was twenty-nine,” Gabriele said between gritted teeth. I could see that he was holding so much more inside.
I only nodded. He was fifteen years older than me. It didn’t feel like that at the time, though. “He was my only friend. I wanted to make him happy, and he used that very well.” I paused for a second, remembering those days. I didn’t even see his game. I was just a child. “He was never angry with me, never forced me. He always asked before doing something. When I said yes, he was happy. When I said no, he would say, ‘That’s okay, Birdie,’ but it was not okay.” I sniffed, trying to hold back my tears. “He would leave for days. He always had a reason, but in the end,Iwould be left alone. He would punish me silently, and when I said yes after that, he would just gift me things. I was a fool.”
“You were not a fool!” he said harshly. A tear slid to my cheek, and I saw his hand flex at his side. He didn’t brush it away, though. He didn’t touch me. I was not sure if it was good or not. He only leaned towards me and whispered with a soft voice. “You were just a child, Kira.”
I liked it when he said my name with that soft voice. It calmed me. It touched my heart.
I brushed away my own tears and took a sip from my coffee. It was awful. I took another sip.
“After that, we were kind of dating,” I said, diving back into the story. “He never forced me back then but kept that act. After a few years, I started noticing that. I noticed how he played me, how he used me. He took me from my mother to marry me. Dimitri wanted him to marry me. A Russian girl with no one but them. Loyal.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. It didn’t go away. “I knew he was going to propose on my eighteenth birthday, and I was scared. I knew there was no way for me to escape, but I didn’t want to be bound to him forever.”
“I gave you a chance to escape,” Gabriele said. He was trying to be gentle, probably because of all the things I had told him, but I could feel the tension of his thoughts. He still believed that I betrayed him.
I didn’t betray him.
“I was going to escape,” I said with a raw voice. “I had no idea who you were, but I trusted you anyway. I did what you asked of me.”
“You trusted me?” he asked. A part of me felt good that this was what he focused on instead of questioning my words.
“Yes,” I answered truthfully.
Gabriele looked at me with something weird in his eyes. “Why?”
I shook my head softly. “You looked me in a way.” It was hard to describe. “Men always looked at me in the same way, like they wanted me. I could see the same in you, but it was also different. For the first time, someone looked at me like they wanted to give me something instead of taking.”
He nodded absently, and his eyes left mine, looking towards the sky. “I did,” he whispered almost inaudibly, and it hurt my heart.
“He found me,” I said, my voice cracking. “He came out looking for me and saw me getting into a taxi. He was drunk and furious. It was the first time he forced himself on me. He raped me.”
Gabriele’s eyes filled up with hatred. He gritted his teeth and hissed, “I should have taken you myself.”
He should have. He didn’t need to, though. I was just a stranger. I was not his responsibility. Still, I didn’t want to argue about that. I wanted to keep his words in my head, in my heart.
“After that, it got worse,” I wanted to finish the story. I didn’t want to relive it all over again, but I wanted him to know. “When Dimitri died, there was no one to force him to marry me. The power also changed him. He was more demanding, and he was angry at me for what happened. He acted like it was my fault. Then he needed more power, so he married a Nikolayev. But he also didn’t want to let me go.”
“He kept you captive,” Gabriele said with a guilty voice. He thought it was the same with him. He thought he did the same thing Aleksei did. On paper, it was, but from my perspective, it was too different. Still, I was not going to thank him for kidnapping me. I was not going to put myself in that position even though I was happy to get away from Aleksei.
I nodded and took another sip from my horrible coffee. “I didn’t betray you,” I whispered down at my cup. I just wanted to voice it again, even though my story proved it. I hoped that he believed me.
Gabriele took a deep breath and put down his cigarette on the ashtray. He got up and looked up at the stars. I wondered if he did that a lot. If he looked up at the same stars, I did.
He came closer to me and looked down at me with regret in his eyes. “I am sorry,” he said, and his hand twitched at his side.
I tilted my head towards his hand and whispered. “You can touch me. I won’t break.” I wanted him to touch me. I wanted someone I chose to touch me when I wanted them to touch me. For the first time, I wanted to be the one to make choices about my own body.
Gabriele took a shaky breath and brought a finger to my cheek, tracing my cheekbone. When I didn’t flinch, he cupped my whole cheek with his big hand. I pressed my face slightly to his palm. He felt strong, but for the first time, a man’s strength didn’t scare me.
