Saved: a dark romance Read online

  I didn’t know he’d put surveillance cameras in. I would’ve thought his bedroom was a place where he wouldn’t put in cameras. I should’ve known better. I fucked up again.

  He overheard me whispering in Italian to her, telling her that I’d convinced him I was on his side, that I hated him for what he’d done to her. That I was waiting to catch him alone, so I could behead him and sever his fucked-up brain from the rest of him, from us.

  I walked her back to the main house and was kissing her cheek goodnight when we were both summoned back to his office.

  He had three guards with him and he had us watch the playback video. And then he laughed like a maniac as he saw the horror wash over us.

  This was when things changed for the worse. Much worse.

  He was bent on brainwashing me, bringing me around to his warped way of thinking.

  That night, he made me watch as he raped her. Four men held me down. Afterwards, he told her to tell me in Italian to shoot them all in the heads so that no one alive would know how weak I was.

  I didn’t. And he didn’t force it. He just laughed, in hysterics.

  One of those men who’d held me down was Rocco. It was the night we met. In the coming years, he did a lot of my training. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that he was my only friend. The looks he gave me? The quiet words of reassurance? When my father disappeared with my mother years later, Rocco and I would have a heart-to-heart. It wasn’t like most heart-to-hearts. It was an exchange of looks and a few words that told me he was loyal to me, that he knew I wanted out, that he wanted out of this madness, too.

  “I’ve watched you, seen all you’ve been through since the night we met. You impress me. You’re a strong man. I’m loyal to you, whatever you need done.” He leaned forward and spoke to me in Italian. I hadn’t known he spoke it. “If some day you want me to put a bullet in his brain, you only have to give me a look. I’ll know it, recognize it immediately, and it will be done.”

  If you were one of my father’s soldiers, the only way out was death. Rocco was different. Rocco taught me a lot. He’s proven himself loyal every day since. But, I never trust 100%.

  ***

  A year, to the day, before Holly arrived, my cousin Kat hung herself. I was the one who found her. In my father’s office, her body covered in bruises. And I knew, then, he’d raped her, too.

  She’d gone skinny, stopped bathing, and a week before her death, she’d hacked all her long beautiful hair off. That girl was trying to become invisible. But she hadn’t escaped the radar of the sick and twisted fucking perverts in her family.

  I’d watched her wilt over time under the abuse she suffered. And I’d done it coldly, not able to show emotion, not able to even give her kind words or even a smile. Because I had my role to play.

  I almost killed him. He returned to the bedroom alone, the first time I’d seen him alone since I was six, but I was there, behind his door. When he shut it, and spotted her swinging from the ceiling, I grabbed his throat. I had him an inch away from taking his last sorry breath when his bodyguards came in and pulled me off him.

  He shot those bodyguards who pulled me off him. Killed them so they wouldn’t share that his son turned on him. That was the day he left with Mama, a gun to her head so I couldn’t stop him. That was when he started pulling my strings remotely.

  I helped him fake his death, but left just a smidge of doubt, so that he could come back.

  For the next few years I oversaw the selling of the women and the guns. And I did what he demanded. I regularly got outlandish orders. I was regularly put in situations where I was being tested. I never failed. Not until my birthday last year when I choked that bitch to death for nearly killing Holly. But through it all, I was quietly plotting.

  And until the fire that almost took Holly, I regularly went down to that basement to fuck the slaves, to take what I wanted. I had a hateful sexual appetite and those slaves bore the brunt of my anger. I knew it was wrong. I knew it. I did it anyway.

  And my father? He’s still pulling those strings, still using my mother as a weapon, to get me to do his bidding. His business is more profitable than it ever was. He laughs about that, proud of the monster he created in me. Prick.

  Until I find him. And end his reign in a way that will hurt him more than death. I’ll set Mama free for real this time.

  But even when that reign ends, I’m still ruined. I’m still a piece of shit product of the rape of an innocent girl by a psychotic megalomaniac.

  I’ll set it up so Mama can finally go home to her family in Italy. I’ll close down Papa’s business and fake my death. I’ll disappear.

  Because, I’m not fit to live a normal life. I’m bent. I’m probably as cracked and twisted as he is. The man I’ve become would not make my mama proud, feel like I was worth the ordeals she’s been through, even if a lot of what I’ve done was to keep her alive. I’ve also done things I didn’t have to do. I’ve hurt people I didn’t have to hurt. I’ve taken what wasn’t mine. I’m beyond redemption, no saving my soul.

  Nineteen

  Alessandro

  December 26, Tasmania

  We know where he is and we are ready to go. I’m very fucking ready to go. It’ll take all I have in me to not end his life with my bare hands, like he had me taught to do.

  Instead, I’ll hurt him worse. I have help. I won’t fail.

  But first, I need to pay a visit to Holly.

  Today, it’s my wife’s nineteenth birthday. I haven’t seen her since the day after our wedding day when I’d bound her, taped her mouth, hooded her, and handed her to be taken to safety.

  I had no choice. He found out I got married. And that meant that he also figured out that the now-dead girl I’d kept in Holly’s room wasn’t Holly. He was so fucking smug, thinking he’d taken a toy away. He was very fucking angry when he found out he’d been duped. And I knew I had to get her to safety immediately.

  She’s on an island off the coast of Tasmania, hidden. Safe. From him and from me.

  I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t know what she thinks of me. I got a few reports at the beginning but it was making me lose focus so I instructed them to keep their reports to themselves.

  I can’t imagine she’ll still have stars in her eyes when she does see me. I can’t imagine she’ll want anything to do with me. It doesn’t matter, though. She’s fucking mine whether she wants to be or not.

  They said they had to take the mirrors out of her room. She was yelling at them. Talking to me. Pleading. She smashed the one in her bedroom, so they removed the one in her bathroom, worried she’d get hurt.

  They said that she painted me, drew me. And tore the paintings and drawing all up in a rage and shoved the torn pieces out the bars over her window.

  And then broke down in tears of remorse. Tears that wouldn’t stop.

  They held her while she cried for me.

  It was fucking doing my head in. I haven’t gotten an update other than continued thumbs ups, in seven and a half months. I knew where she was, I knew she was safe. That’s all that mattered.

  I’ll get this shit done and then when I disappear, she’s coming with me. If I have to live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere I’ll do it. I’ll give up everything else. Everything but her.

  Nothing protects her from me when this shit is done. I’ll be done keeping her safe from me. From my bullshit. Let’s see how she does at making me happy. Ha. A fucking joke. She either hates my guts now or she will when she realizes that her happily ever after isn’t gonna be that.

  Even if giving her up meant I could redeem myself, I wouldn’t. I am not a good man. A good man would save her from the evil inside of himself. I refuse.

  She’s the gift I’m giving myself. Even if I don’t deserve it. Even though she deserves better. More proof I’m not the good guy she’s convinced I am. More proof I’m just as fucked in the head as he is. Maybe I can relate to why he wouldn’t give my mother up, no matter what she wante
d. I can’t fathom my life without knowing that Holly is where I can get to her when I need her.

  When I do sleep, I often have dreams about being on the edge of a cliff, hanging on by my fingertips, then seeing her. Sometimes she’s got her little toes against my fingertips. Sometimes she tries to pull me up but then she falls over the edge. Sometimes I dream that she and Mama are both dangling and I have to pick one of them only. I don’t pick fast enough and they both fall. I wake up sweaty and angry.

  ***

  I fly to Melbourne and take a ferry to Devonport and then rent a car to drive to the port where I’ll catch a boat ride to the island where Elijah and his wife have been keeping her safe for me. Eli is Wes’s uncle. I’ve heard a hundred stories about him, he’s had an interesting life and his body is a deadly weapon. The man is a survivalist; there should be books about the things he’s seen and done, the tight spots he’s gotten out of. And I trust Wes, therefore I trust Eli.

  Rocco is still proving to be trustworthy, too. If not for Rocco, my father might’ve found us before I had a chance to get her to safety. Rocco figured out we were being tailed in Vegas and eliminated that tail before he got copies of the wedding pictures to my father, which would’ve outed who Holly is because it would’ve shown Tom Ferrano’s son and his wife in those photos. He would’ve made it his mission to identify every person in those photos.

  I’ve done as much damage control as I can and hopefully he still doesn’t know who my wife is. I put another girl in that room. I switch them out every few days, different descriptions in case anyone is reporting to him.

  After Holly fell asleep in my arms on our wedding night, I got up to tell room service to send our dinner up, so we’d have something for when she woke.

  But, when I checked my messages, that was when I found out that the night before, while I was passed out drunk, he had someone take the girl sleeping in Holly’s room. They killed Maria and two guards. Punishment for what I did to his office. Word got back to him fast so I knew I needed to flush out another of his spies. I did. I flushed out all sorts of shit.

  I’ll stay here the night and then tomorrow, we leave.

  Because I’ve come here, even carefully, I’ll have to move her again. I won’t take any chances.

  I’m sending Eli and his wife on an extended holiday and I’ll be stashing her somewhere else, until I can deal with him and then … and then I don’t know yet.

  It has taken almost four years to find my father. But now that I know where he is, it’s showdown time. I’ve had a single-minded focus for the past nine months. Find him. Plan for the day when I can end his reign in a way that will hurt. Cut the fucking puppet strings he’s got attached to my shoulders. And seeing her before that will either fortify me or it’ll bring me to my knees.

  Holly

  I’m staring out the window at the water washing over the jagged rocks overlapping one another along the shoreline. Today, the water looks particularly angry. Maybe angrier than I’ve seen in the past nine months of looking out this window.

  I have a window in this prison, too. But this window has bars on it.

  At least I can see the water through the bars. My room isn’t decorated like a prison cell, but it is one all the same.

  The couple who look after me seem like good people, but that doesn’t change a thing. They’re guarding me. Feeding me. Providing for the basics. But keeping me locked up. For how long? I don’t know. Why? Because my husband sent me here.

  My new husband gave me a beautiful wedding day, a wedding night that was better than a dream, and then he had me hog tied, hooded, and transported to a prison. No contact. For months. And months. Nine of them. The duration of a gestation. In the time it takes a baby to grow, I’ve had something else grow. A living and breathing ball of anger and frustration in my gut.

  I’ve been stuck in a room for nine months. Two kind people to talk to, okay, but that’s an enigma because sure, they seem very kind, yet they are my guards.

  Elijah, Eli, is in his late 50s, he’s a tall black man with a very nice smile and green eyes. Like Wesley Traynor. Obviously related somehow to Wesley. I’ve never asked. I woke up here, not remembering my journey and not knowing where here even was.

  Eli wears a utility belt filled with things to keep me in line, should I get out of line. A stun gun, handcuffs, pepper spray. I’ve watched him exercise on the beach and he may be in his upper fifties but he’s cut, like he’s in his twenties or thirties. Natasha, also known as Tasha or Tash… she’s in her late 30s and pale and blonde. She looks like she could be related to me. She’s kind of a hippie. She’s sweet and crafty. And she’s nice to me. But, she’s still helping him keep me here.

  They spend time with me. They provide me with paint and other art supplies. Books. We don’t have cable so I watch DVDs or draw. Or knit. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what my sister has been told. I only know that I’m in a prison. And I also know that today is my birthday.

  Tash and Eli and I had a nice tofurkey Christmas dinner yesterday with some roasted fish, vegetables from the garden, and homemade rolls and pie. Tash knitted me a lovely afghan for my room as a gift. I’d seen her working on it over the past few months but had no idea it was for me.

  Eli made me a chess set that he carved out of wood. It’s beautiful, each piece carved with such detail. He taught me to play chess so it’s an extra nice gesture, because it’s something for us both to do. It’s not totally altruistic because Tash won’t play chess with him. She says he’s too cutthroat and it’s unbecoming.

  I beat him a few days back, for the first time, and he joked during Christmas morning that he wanted to take it back but it was too late to make me a new gift. In truth, I think he’s happy I won. Now maybe I’ll be a challenge, occasionally.

  We ate Christmas dinner here in my room. Because it’s obvious that they’re not allowed to let me out. It has never been said. I’ve never been told this is a prison, but my room is locked, they deliver food. And when I had a flip out the first day I woke up here, they held me down and sedated me. I was sedated a lot in my first few weeks here.

  I painted them together, as my gift to them. A portrait for above their mantle. I’m happy with the job I did. They both said they love it.

  I cried for the first few days after the sedation wore off. And then I got angry and violent. They had to sedate me a second time. Tash is a nurse.

  Although I can’t imagine that so-called nice people would keep me a prisoner like this, I have never asked them if they know who Alessandro is. I have never said a word about him. Neither have they. When I had my last meltdown, and got sedated for the second time, Tash sang to me, my head on her lap as she stroked my hair. It felt like I cried for days. I don’t even know.

  I have my wedding and engagement ring on. I still wear his locket. I don’t even know how many times I was tempted to push the button inside the locket. I should have. Make him wonder who to kill. Make him wonder what’s happening to me. I’ve also been tempted to drop it out the window, hoping the sea would wash it away.

  But, I promised him that I was okay with things being good just for the wedding day. I promised I’d try to make him happy. And I’m stubborn, especially when I make a promise.

  If he ever comes for me, am I going to be able to keep that promise? Or will I want to gouge his eyes out?

  Those eyes.

  My soul aches at the thought of them. In the early days here, after the sedation stopped, I drew and painted him and surrounded the room with him. I think I might’ve finally gotten his eyes drawn just right. Not that it matters now. After I filled the walls, I tore the drawings and paintings all down.

  And then I drew new ones.

  And then I tore all of those down and painted his eyes directly on the walls. And then I painted over them.

  Tasha was worried about me and tried to get me to talk about it. I wouldn’t. I haven’t shed a tear for him since a day several weeks after they st
opped sedating me. I had one more good long cry and then decided I was done.

  Today is my birthday. I don’t know if they know it or not. Tasha delivered my breakfast. Eli delivered my lunch. They’re acting like it’s just a regular day.

  And now I’m staring out at the water angrily lapping over the rocks, the sky beginning to dim. Another year of my life gone. Three years of mostly solitude. Is my sister worrying about me today? Has Ang had the Ferrano family go to war with Alessandro over my disappearance? Has anyone lost their life because of it?

  Is my mother thinking of me today? Is my mother even alive or has she drank herself to death, drowned herself in her sorrows, popped one too many pills?

  I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the bars that separate me from an ocean that I often wish would just wash me away.

  I hear the food slot open. The food slot was what Eli and Tash used in my first months here. They haven’t used it in ages. I figure they figure if I was gonna try to run away, I’d have done it by now.

  Yep, that’s me … a stupid girl resigned to her fate. Her fate in someone else’s hands.

  I glance over my shoulder and see something sliding through.

  A saucer holding a single cupcake with pink swirly frosting. A candle sitting in the center. Lit.

  My heart skips a beat. He’s here. This one looks the same as the one from my eighteenth birthday. I thought I smelled something sweet baking not long ago.

  I hear the key go into the lock and then the doorknob turns.

  I close my eyes and let out a slow, sad breath.

  Alessandro

  I step into the small room. She’s sitting on a chair by the barred window. Her hair is longer, half way down her back. I close the door and lean against it. I fold my arms across my chest.

  The room smells like lemon cleaner, paint, and the burning birthday candle that’s beside me, sitting on a tray that protrudes from the wall where that tiny door sits, giving Eli and his wife Natasha the ability to send food in for her.