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“Alessandra. She was my twin. My best friend. The only person in my life who I felt like I could really just…be myself around. We tried telling our parents that he was touching us. He was saying things that made us uncomfortable. They didn’t listen. The other girls in our youth group said we wanted attention. We were eleven years old. We didn’t want attention from a thirty-year-old. We wanted to talk about Fifth Harmony and Camilla Cabello and watch Disney princess movies.”
One tear slowly rolls down her still-colored cheeks, and she moves her head to the side, wiping it against the top of her sleeve.
“He was supposed to drive us home after youth group because my parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary at some fancy restaurant. Instead of driving us home, he drove us to his mother’s house, who was bedridden on the second floor. He threw us into the basement and held us in there, only coming down to defile my twin or knock me around. We don’t know why he picked her to rape and me to beat. We tried figuring it out. The best we could come up with was maybe I talked back more. Maybe he thought I was the one who initially told my parents, and I was.”
I pull her close to me and kiss her forehead, and she lets her head fall against my shoulder. I breathe in her warm, vanilla scent as she moves her hands to my shoulders, slowly linking them behind my neck.
“Alessi died, and I lived, and I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever actually get over, Niccolò. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t figure it out fast enough, come up with a plan to get us out of there. I fucking tried. I just…”
She sobs into my bare chest, and I pull her into me as tightly as I can, wrapping my arms around her and rocking her back and forth. I don’t try to stop her crying or tell her it’s okay.
Because it isn’t.
And I know that all too fucking well.
After a few minutes, she pulls away from me, wiping at her cheeks. Her eyes are bloodshot, and tears still well up inside of them, and my own sadness climbs up my throat.
“He made it look like an accident. There’s so much more to it. And no one believed me. Our town had 600 people in it, and they were all Bible-thumping freaks. They covered it up. The cops were part of the church. The sheriff. Everyone.
“My sister never got justice, and I was expected to act like it never happened. It was like a cult, almost. Maybe it was. I don’t know. My parents were so deep into it, they just acted like I was some lovesick teenager possessed by the devil. Alessi, too, and that this youth pastor was trying to save us from evil.”
“Is he alive?” I ask her, rage burning tiny holes in my chest.
I can’t pretend like I’m not glad she wasn’t the one who was raped, but her sister, someone close to her, an eleven-year-old child, was raped. Evelina was abused.
And that fucking monster should pay.
“I killed him,” I say, finally speaking the words out l oud that I don’t even allow myself to think about. “Months after everything when people were still shunning me and singing his praises and forgetting about Alessi and my parents were fucking in disbelief or denial or whatever the fuck…” I trail off and try to gather the thoughts I’ve shoved so far down. “It was easy. So easy.” And it was. Easier than I ever thought possible. “It wasn’t very gratifying because of how I had to do it. Made it look like an accident so no one suspect me. But he's dead and that’s all that matters now.”
My entire body heats as I look at Evelina while she rights herself. I do my best to calm down, knowing I can’t lose my cool. Not after such a big step.
“I’m so sorry, Evelina,” I tell her. My words probably mean shit, but I’m no good at this. “You are so fucking strong. Losing your sister, your twin, carrying on even when every single fucking thing was against you… You are incredible.”
I kiss her cheeks, her shoulder blade, her lips.
Cupping her jaw, I force her to look at me. “And then, after what Gabriel did…”
She shakes her head, reaching up and gripping my wrists. “That was nothing. Nothing in comparison. I was so focused on Sofia, I wasn’t even processing the fact that I was there, and believe me, the environment Gabriel had us in was much different—”
“But he still put you back into the same type of environment. Holding you against your will. I will kill him, Evelina. He will pay for what he did to you, to Sofia, to countless other people.”
She nods. “Good. Gabriel Amato deserves death. Maybe after a lot of torturing.”
When she gives a half smile, I finally feel like a fraction of the heaviness leaves my chest.
She inhales a shaky breath and shakes her head. “So can pregnancy hormones make you blurt out your life story like an idiot, or is that just some kind of weird power you have over me?”
36
EVELINA
Sex with Niccolò is unlike any high I’ve ever experienced, but somehow, showing him who I am emotionally is even more incredible than giving myself to him physically.
I’ve never felt anything like it. It all just fell into place so organically. Being here, with him, after that sexual high just turned right into this undeniable emotional chemistry.
I haven’t let myself feel vulnerable in years…
And now I’m lying with him in my bookstore surrounded by my favorite novels.
