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Her skin is fair, her hair is dark, her eyebrows are thick, and her eyes are big and round. Long, wavy hair frames a face with full lips and an upturned nose covered in small freckles. Cesare said she's beautiful, and I have to agree. Even with half her face red and swollen, her clothes torn and her spirit exhausted, the girl is still beautiful.
Gabriella presses the arms of the seat until her knuckles turn white and closes her eyes as the plane takes off, holding her breath. As soon as we stabilize ourselves in the air, her eyelids lift.
I press the flight attendant's call button and within seconds a tall brunette appears, willing and smiling.
“Bring an ice pack and towels.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the woman returns, I tell her to hand over the items to the Brazilian, and the flight attendant obediently and silently does so. Apparently familiar with the process, Gabriella wraps the compress in one of the towels and brings it to the irritated side of her face. She moans softly as the cold compress touches her skin, and I turn her face toward the plane window.
“Aren't you going to ask me what happened?” she asks in Italian, surprising me doubly, due to her obvious fear and the language. The pronunciation is very out of place, but the speech is understandable.
Apparently, Gabriella really learns quickly. My mother has conveniently left her out of the matters she brings to me. Anna probably believes that if I talk about the girl, I risk falling madly in love with her. But the truth is, until tonight, I still had no reason to remember her existence.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“That depends. Do you already know?” She questions, and I nod my head, confirming. She mirrors the gesture more to herself than to me. “I should never have left,” she murmurs, now in Portuguese, making it clear that this was not a thought she intended to share with me. “I should have known something like this would happen.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask in her mother tongue, and Gabriella blinks, as if by an oversight she had completely forgotten that I could understand her.
“I'm not like the other women on the property, I'm no one's daughter, no one's sister, I'm nothing to anyone those men know.”
“You are mine, Gabriella. Everything inside those walls belongs to me. They should never have touched you, no matter if you were in the main house, in the vineyards or in the stables. You belong to me!” Not a spark of fear crosses her eyes when she hears my words, quite the opposite. Just like when I addressed them to Gabriella before, it's almost as if she's embracing them.
“What will happen to those men?” She asks another question that surprises me, the concern in her tone is more than unexpected, because it seems to be towards her attackers, and that doesn't make any sense.
I consider not responding, but if I care about her condition, it seemed fair to me to assure her that the appropriate sentence will be applied does not sound like anything less than an obligation.
“They're dead, Gabriella. Even if they are still breathing, it is only a matter of time before they no longer are.” The words are raw, but they don't cause the shock they would in most women I know.
A reel of emotions unfolds on the girl's face, fear or horror are not among them. Gabriella lowers her head briefly, keeping the cold compress pressed against her cheek as she reflects on what she heard. She accepts the facts with a peacefulness that doesn't suit someone with a face like hers.
I've met innocent women before, Sagrada is full of them. Just as I've met women who pretended to be, the girl in front of me, however, doesn't seem to fit into either group, and that intriguesme. Too broken to be considered pure and too inexperienced to be considered malicious.
“Why?” She asks after enough time in silence that I thought she wouldn't speak anymore.
“Because no one can hurt you but me.” Her eyes scream a question that her lips never ask: ‘And are you going to?’
I don't answer, the girl has already had her limits pushed too far for a single night, and the undeniable truth is that yes, I will.
CHAPTER 24
________
Gabriella Matos
“Buongiorno[71]” I greet when I leave the room and find Vittorio sitting in front of a coffee table.
Before I even left Brazil, if someone had shown me a photo of him right now and told me that he was an Italian mobster, I would’ve believed them.
Steam spirals from the cup of coffee in front of him as he sits in a carved wooden chair, legs crossed and a newspaper open, hiding more than half of his figure from anyone sitting on the other side of the table.
From the side of the room, however, I can see the suit pants he's wearing, the impeccably white shirt, the vest over it, and the lead-colored tie perfectly placed around his neck. All that was missing was the cigar.
“Buongiorno,” he replies, and I startle, completely lost in my thoughts.
After looking at the exquisitely dressed Vittorio, I feel a little ridiculous in the fluffy robe with the initials VC that I found in the suite's bathroom. Or should I say, in the master bedroom bathroom? After all, theoretically, everything around me is the hotel room. It doesn't matter that it's literally a two-bedroom apartment, right?
