Truly
Holly
We are back in Portland and on our way to my sister’s house from the airport. Alessandro isn’t ready to commit to putting down roots here yet. He wants to wait and see what’s what, he says. Ang and Dare have left their condo vacant for us so we’ll stay there again, for now. We’re heading straight to their house for a meeting he has with the Ferranos and some guy that works for him.
We had an amazing two weeks in Jamaica. We danced. He can dance! I can’t, but I drank a lot of pina coladas and I tried.
We lazed. We had sex every single day. Sometimes it was sweet. More often, it was dirty and very very naughty, especially the one night I drank all those pina coladas. We had sex in the alley behind the nightclub at the resort we were staying at. It was dirty and amazing.
We ate like pigs. We laughed. We went snorkeling and climbed where that beautiful waterfall is in Ocho Rios. We tried all sorts of new foods, and our delayed honeymoon was a dream come true.
We avoided heavy topics and I think I got to know him better. I think maybe he has gotten to know himself better. He’s been sweet and demonstrative, and I’ve had the best two weeks of my life.
I’m not pushing him for answers about the future, where we’ll settle. I’ve seen him reading up on his father a couple times. I’ve read up on him, too, and the stuff he’s being tried for? Murder many times. Lots of other criminals. Sex trafficking. Moving guns, including in the Middle East and Africa to known terrorists.
Not good. No mention of Alessandro. An article I read said that Sandro the Butcher had one son, Jesse Romero, who had died in a meth cookhouse explosion in Portland about a year and a half ago. I knew that had something to do with the Ferranos but had no idea what the rest of the story was.
I read that Sandro’s uncle, a man named Juan Carlos Castillo, was killed just before Jesse in a big turf war in Morelia, Mexico. His death was grisly. He’d been found dead, decapitated and castrated, his own genitals cut off and stuffed into his mouth.
I stopped reading after that. Knowing that the Ferrano guys were involved was eye-opening, and I wished I didn’t know. I wondered how much Tia and Ang knew of their husbands’ illegal activities. And then I put it out of my mind, because I thought about what Lisa Ferrano had said to me about looking at life differently after living in captivity, about seeing the good in men who other people see as bad.
I know Alessandro has killed. I saw him kill Esmerelda. I’ve experienced his violence firsthand. I also know that sometimes violence is a part of life.
I know he’s not 100% yet, but I know he’s trying to live his life in a way that includes me. I’m getting what I wanted --- the opportunity to make him happy.
So, we’re back in Portland for now. Alessandro told me he has a meeting with Zack about some clean-up to do with his father’s business. The meeting is at Ang and Dare’s so I’m gonna spent time with Ang while he has this meeting.
When I arrive at her place, Dario answers the door and gives me a hug, “Hey. Angel’s in the kitchen. Go ahead. Lex, follow me.”
He and Alessandro go to his office and I head to the kitchen, giving Alessandro a kiss as we part ways in the hallway.
My sister is sitting at her kitchen table with a redheaded girl. They’re deep in conversation. It halts when I come in and it’s obvious that I’ve walked in on something.
Ang gives me a big smile when she sees me but it doesn’t quite touch her eyes.
“Holly, this is Julie.”
The redheaded girl gets up. She looks a few years older than Ang. She’s gorgeous.
“Julie used to be Truly Garnet when I was Felicia Sapphire.”
“Oh.” A Kruna girl. “Nice to meet you.”
“Truly was another Kruna slave,” Ang explains unnecessarily. “I told you that me and Dare got her help as part of the plan to take Kruna down?”
“Right. Good to meet you.”
“She’s um… here because Jonas has a meeting with our husbands. He and Julie are in a relationship. Jonas is the hacker Alessandro had lent to help with the Kruna takedown.”
I nod.
“Jonas helped your husband take Sandro the Butcher down, too,” Julie says softly.
“Oh wow.” I sit at the kitchen table.
Julie looks upset. No, she looks a bit haunted.
“How was your trip?” Ang asks getting up. Her belly has gotten even bigger in just two weeks. She grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and passes it to me.
I open it and take a sip. “It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Look at your belly!”
“Got pictures on your cell?” Ang asks.
“Like two hundred,” I say.
“Show me one?” Ang jerks her chin up.
“One?”
“One of your husband? We’ll look at the rest later.”
I’m getting a weird vibe.
I get my phone out of my purse and on the lock screen is me and him, cuddled up at a restaurant. A waiter took that picture the night we arrived in Jamaica.
Ang looks at my phone takes it from me before I even unlock the home screen. She passes it to Julie. She looks down at it and swallows hard and then passes it back to Ang with a nod. She starts scratching at her chest. She’s wearing a low-cut tank top and her whole chest looks like it’s suddenly out in hives.
“Excuse me,” she says and she rushes out of the room, putting my phone on the table.
I look at my sister and my sister is as white as a ghost.
“What on Earth?” I ask.
Ang takes a deep breath. “She’s…” Ang takes another deep breath.
“Just tell me.”
“She came to Kruna from Sandro the Butcher. She knows your husband.”
It takes a second for it to register and when it does, it’s with horror.
“Knows him?”
Ang nods. “He… he was the first one to…”
Oh God. Did my Alessandro rape her in that basement?
I feel like I’m gonna be sick.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to railroad you like this. But she came with Jonas for the meeting and we got to talking and I filled her in about you and we filled in the blanks. She didn’t know what Jonas had been working on and I told her and she told me that she’d been reading the news about Lex’s father and that she’d been sold to Kruna from there ten years ago. Jonas didn’t talk about his work, he has an NDA with Lex; she spent three months there in slave training and one of Sandro the Butcher’s sons used to come down and use the slaves. Both did but one of them had used her brutally when she was still in training. I hoped it was Jesse, not Lex. I really hoped. The picture on your phone was hopefully gonna eliminate him…” Ang shakes her head.
“Excuse me, I need... I’m gonna go to the bathroom upstairs.”
Julie’d be in the powder room closest to the kitchen so I dash out of the room and up the stairs to the bathroom at the top of the stairs and lock the door.
My chest hurts. My stomach is in knots. I start to bawl, my hand over my mouth.
Alessandro
I’m stepping out of Dario’s office to use the john. He’s said it’s down the hall by the front entrance and as I get there, the door opens and a redheaded woman steps into the hall.
She spots me. She freezes, horrified.
I stop. “Oh. Sorry to startle you.”
She shakes her head vigorously and backs away, hand clutching at her throat. She trips and falls on the edge of the oriental rug that runs down the hallway.
I lean over and hold my hand out to help her up and she starts crying, cowering.
The commotion leads to the door opening from Dario’s office. Dario and Jonas pop their heads out and then Jonas rushes to her. “Jules, babe. What’s the matter?”
She shakes her head and just keeps crying.
He’d said his girlfriend was here with him. I don’t know what the fuck her problem is. Angel steps into the hall and gets a horrified look on her face. Jonas lifts the girl up and Angel points to the stairs. “You can take her to the room at the top of the stairs, it’s a guest room. Go ahead.”
“What the fuck, baby?” Dario asks.
I’m standing there, not sure what the fuck this is all about.
“Come,” Angel approaches and leads him into the office. “You, too,” she says to me.
“Where’s Holly?” I ask.
“She’s upstairs in the other bathroom. Come. Quick.”
I follow Dario who follows his wife.
Zack is on the phone.
“Give us the room a minute, bud?” Dario asks.
Zack nods and leaves the room, still talking on the phone.
“What?” Dario asks her.
“Julie was a Kruna slave.” Angel is speaking to me, not her husband.
A sick feeling is spreading through my gut.
“She was acquired from your father eleven years ago.”
For fuck sakes.
“She knows who you are.”
I shake my head.
“She … she says you and her have…” she stops and doesn’t finish that sentence. She doesn’t fucking need to.
“Fuck! Where the fuck is Holly?” I demand.
“She ran to the bathroom upstairs. She…”
“She knows,” I say.
Dario blows out a breath and gives me a sympathetic look. Angel winces.
I leave the room and holler, “Holly!”
I take the stairs, two at a time until I get up there. “Holly!”
There are all kinds of fucking doors up here. Two of them are closed. I try the first one and see Jonas and that girl on the bed. He’s holding her.
He looks over his shoulder at me and the way he looks at me? The guy’s a computer geek. He’s a good guy. He’s not a badass. He’s worked for me for years. He looks at me like he’d fuck me up if he could. I raise my hands.
“Sorry, Jonas. I’m lookin’ for my wife. Listen. I am sorry. I can’t take back what I did. All I can say…” she’s burrowing into him, not looking up at me. “All I can say is that I am very fucking sorry. That’s nothing. It’s nothing at all, but I was in a very fucked up place.”
She looks up at me. She’s one of my demons looking me right in the eyes. Her face is filled with hate. But then the hate clears.
“Thank you,” she says, “Thank you for saying that. And thank you for doing the right thing. Helping with Kruna. Stopping the… butcher,” She buries her face back into his shoulder and I back out of the room. I turn and I’m face-to-face with Holly. She’s holding herself, her arms wrapped tight. Her eyes are filled with tears and they’re on me. She heard all that. And I don’t know what to fucking do.
So, I go down the stairs and I walk out.
Holly
He left.
He just looked at me with the most pain I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face ever and he shook his head and he just left.
I stand there a minute. Two minutes.
I make eye contact with Julie and her boyfriend. They’re cuddled up on the bed in the guest bedroom that used to be mine.
“I’m sorry,” Julie says, “I didn’t mean to blindside you.”
Ang is coming up the stairs, “I’m sorry, too. We should’ve found a better way to…”
I raise my hand to stop her from talking. She bites her lip. Dare is behind her on the stairs.
“Can you take me to him? To the condo?”
“Let’s go.”
“Call me,” Ang says. “Love you. I’m so sorry it went down like that.” She gives me a big hug.
He drives me back there. He says nothing on the way but he looks angry. He looks so angry that it’s kind of scary.
He takes me upstairs to the condo and lets me in.
No one’s here. Our luggage has been dropped off here but Alessandro isn’t here.
Dare dials on his phone and then says, “No answer” after a moment.
I sit down on the sofa and put my arms around myself.
“He’s not the same person who did that to her,” I say. “He carries so many demons for the things he had to do. I know he’s not that person anymore.”
Dare nods at me. “I know. We all have to do things sometimes.” But his words don’t match his face.
“Did you kill Alessandro’s brother?” I ask.
He nods. “He was after us for revenge because of his uncle. I led him to my safe house and set a booby trap.”
“And Alessandro forgave you.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he and his brother were close. His brother tried to take a hit out on Tommy. Tia and Tommy were nearly shot up while they were in bed. Both Jesse Romero and Juan Carlos Castillo pulled a lotta shit on Tommy. We had no choice but to fight back.”
Yikes.
“Tommy’s killed people?”
“Yeah. You talk to Tia and she’ll tell you stories, too. Well, she won’t tell you. But she could. Far’s I know their early sexual relationship was entirely without her consent.”
I wince.
“We all do things we aren’t proud of. Some of us, much worse than your average regret.”
I nod. “You want a drink or something, Dare?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“I’m okay. You can… um… go.”
“No, Holly. I’m waiting until he gets back. Not leavin’ you here like this.”
“Then would it be okay if I just go lie down for a bit?” I ask, lip quivering.
He opens his arms, “Give your brother-in-law a hug first.”
I faceplant into his arms and start to bawl.” He gives good hugs.
“Listen, you two will work this out, okay?” He strokes my back.
I wipe my eyes.
“You want it to work out?”
I nod.
“Okay. That’s all I need to know. Call if you need anything. I’ll be right here until he gets back.”
“Okay,” I move away. I go to the bedroom but I don’t shut the door. I hear him on the phone with my sister.
“Hey, my baby… yeah I’m at the condo… No, he’s not… she’s lyin’ down. Gonna hang until he gets here… well, if so then I’ll bring her back with me… Okay… J and J still there? You call Leese? Yeah. Yep…you want anything on my way home?” I hear him laugh a little bit, “If you say so… okay, Angel. Love you, too. Bye.”
I hear the television go on. I close my eyes and hug the pillow close. I don’t smell him on the bedding because we haven’t been here in two weeks.
Where is he?
Alessandro
I come into the apartment. It’s dark out, somewhere after midnight, I guess, and I see Dario sitting there in the dark, the light from the TV glowing and his eyes move to me.
I don’t know what to expect from him. I stop and put the keys down. Put my phone down. I’d ignored a call from him but he’d only called the once. I’d also gotten a call from Zack and a text from Jonas.
I didn’t check Zack’s voicemail but I read the text from Jonas.
“I resign. Respectfully. I’m hoping you can understand. She’s been through a lot and she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met. But her nightmares come sometimes and they’re about you. I hold fondness for our friendship and I will even recommend someone to help you should you need my type of services again, but I have to say goodbye. No ill will for you, mate. From neither of us. She knows you’ve tried to make amends. Hope you understand my position here.”
Yeah, I do understand. I haven’t answered him. I’ll answer him tomorrow. And I’ll send him a fat severance package. Never met a hacker as talented as him. He’s someone I could’ve called a friend, but now, I’ll just wish him well.
Dario gets up and walks to the bar area and takes out two glasses and a bottle of booze.
He heads for the balcony, tipping his head for me to follow.
I step outside.
He puts the glasses on the little table out there between the two iron lounge chairs and pours a healthy dose of tequila into both.
“Thanks, man, but I don’t want a drink.”
“Yeah, well I do.” He drinks back his and then drinks mine.
I sit down and thrust my hair away from my forehead with my hand.
“I’m not here to give you a hard time. I’m probably not even the right person to be here right now. My brother’d likely have the words of wisdom you need right now. Facing your sins can‘t be easy, man. I can’t pretend to understand how that would’ve felt today, but you left your wife a wreck.”
“I bet.”
“And she doesn’t fuckin’ deserve that.”
I scoff. “Don’t piss me off, Ferrano.”
“You hang the fuckin’ moon for that girl,” he says.
I take a breath.
“Anyway,” he gets up. “I didn’t want her alone. I told her if she needs me, to call. I don’t know where your head’s at but take good care of her. You’re a lucky guy that you have what you have in her. That girl is strong. It’s like she was built for you and your bullshit. Angel was built for me. Tia, for Tommy. Men like us, lucky enough to find that? Don’t fuck it up.”
I sigh.
“My brother told me to tell you to call him, day or night. Same for Zack. We all get thinkin’ your girl’s too good for the likes of you. We all get it. Luckily, they can overlook a fuckuva lot.”
“Thanks,” I mutter.
He slaps me on the back and goes. And I lift the bottle and drink straight from it.
A minute later, I hear the door and I look over my shoulder. And there she is, wearing a little white nightie, the very fuckin’ nightie she wore back in Mexico the night she jumped from that burning building into the arms of the monster.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I return.
She sits beside me and folds her hands between her knees.
I drink straight from the bottle again.
She holds her hand out. I glance at her, confused. She takes the bottle from me and takes a swig.
She makes a sound, the sound you make when your throat is on fire.
I close my eyes.
“I didn’t recognize that girl,” I say.
She doesn’t say anything.
“Don’t know what the fuck I did to her. But I’m sure it was bad. Think about the shit I did with you and multiply it. Because I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you. I’ve never loved another girl. I used to go down to that basement and hate fuck those slaves. There are a lot more like her out there. Girls I fucked. Girls I hurt. Girls I wouldn’t recognize but who’d recognize me because even though they were faceless and nameless, I now know my face is embedded in their nightmares. Those girls out there are probably still having nightmares about me. They’d quake and cry and cower if they saw me … just like Jonas’s girlfriend.”
She takes another swig from the bottle and then puts it down.
“You should quake and cry and cower when you see me. I’m a fuckin’ animal.”
She says nothing so I look at her face. She’s sitting there looking pissy.
“Are you gonna fucking say anything?” I demand.
She shrugs, “Her name is fucking Julie. She’s not nameless. She’s Julie and she spent ten years at Kruna after whatever you and your father did to her. Say her name!”
“Julie,” I spit. Fuck. For fuck sakes.
“And me. I’m not nameless or faceless. But why? Why wasn’t I ever nameless or faceless, Alessandro? How come I got so fucking lucky?” she starts bawling.
I reach for her.
“No!” she hisses and scrapes her chair away on the concrete, getting another foot away from me. “What’s there to say? You told me you were a monster. You told me you used the women in the basement. You told me… What can I say? Should I be mad? That’s stupid if I am. You told me. Should I feel bad for you because you had to face someone you did bad things to and see the fallout ten years later?” She shrugs again. “I feel bad for you. And I feel bad for her. She’s trying to move on. I think about Angie and all the pain she went through and how hard it must’ve been for her husband to go to that place and face her tormenters. He went back after and killed them. With your help. Should Jonas be vengeful and blow you up since you hurt the woman he loves?” She shrugs again and reaches for the bottle and takes another swig.
“I did tell you I’m a monster. And I told you that I’d never be happy. I’ve been tryin’ for nearly three weeks and I almost had myself fooled. You almost made me believe I was worthy. The way you look at me. But I’m not. Now you finally know.”
“Congratulations. You were right,” she snaps, snidely.
She takes another swig.
“Slow down, you’re not used to that shit, Holly.”
She ignores that and takes another. “You’ve done bad shit, Alessandro. Really bad shit. I’m sure you’re suffering for it, though. I told you I was not giving up on you.”
“And have you?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t … I can’t process this in five minutes or five hours or however long it’s been. I’m just… I don’t know why I escaped all that pain and they didn’t. I don’t know why you kept me safe and they were all nameless and faceless. I just … I don’t know. My heart hurts, that’s all.” She lifts the bottle.
I take the bottle away from her. “Yeah. My heart feels like it’s shrouded in ice. My soul under a blanket of black. It’s been like that for more than ten years. Twelve years. My whole life, really, because of the fucked up place I come from. Except when I’m with you. It’s still ice but there are cracks. It’s still black, but there’s this tiny little pinprick of light,” I say. “Because of you.”
“Your stupid foolish little flower, right?” she asks snidely. She’s feeling the booze, I can see that.
“Yeah. My foolish girl.” I lean over and touch her face. She doesn’t pull away. She leans into my hand.
“I come from rape. My mother pulled off a miracle and got us away. I fucked up and that meant he dragged us back and hurt her. I’ve seen him hurt her. I’ve seen him rape her, held down by four guards while he made me watch. He goaded me into raping the slaves. He raped my cousin and I had to cut her down when she hung herself in his office. She was beautiful. She had long hair like you. You came a year to the day after I had to cut her down.”
She looks at me, mouth wide open.
“I can’t justify what I did in that basement, Holly. I went down there without being goaded, too. I went down there and took from those girls something I can’t ever make up for. I can’t fix what I did to you. How much I’ve hurt you. All I’ve done to hurt you. There’s no way I can make up for that to them or to you, mi pequeña flor. Never.”
“Let’s go to bed,” she says.
I shake my head, “You go.”
She gets up and crawls onto my lap. I sit stiff. She puts her hands on my face.
“I want to get fucked by my monster beneath your mask. Why don’t you come. Let’s hate fuck.”
I stare at her.
“Too soon?” she asks, bitterly. She’s drunk and she’s angry. I deserve this. I deserve so much more than this.
“I don’t hate you,” I say.
“You didn’t hate them either. They were faceless nameless slaves. Well, I’m your slave, too, but you know my face and my name. Come. I need you. Maybe I need to hate fuck you right now.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I say.
I put the bottle to my lips and drink some.
She goes inside.
To make her turn on me like that, to make her beat herself up? She’s got survivor’s guilt because I saved her and didn’t save any of the hundreds of girls that I saw come and go in that place.
I sit and ponder my life, I sit and ponder all of it. The decisions I’ve made. How selfish I’ve been. The ways I could’ve maybe done it all differently.
Holly
I wake up alone. He didn’t come to bed.
I went to bed naked and waited, figuring he’d come to bed and take me. Maybe he’d take me sweetly, though, showing me he’s not a monster. I know he’s not. I know he’s spent a lifetime in pain with remorse and I can’t ever think it’s okay that he hurt those slaves, but I also know that I don’t know what it’s like to be in his shoes.
Zack told me that his father made him and his brother as well as his other guards do stuff to the slaves. Alessandro told me a dozen times I shouldn’t love him, I shouldn’t have hope. How do I feel today? I feel like maybe yesterday needed to happen. It brought us both a dose of reality. Maybe it brought Julie some sort of closure, too.
Maybe we can more easily find a way to move on from here.
I get dressed and go out, expecting to see him sleeping on the couch or sitting out on the terrace.
He’s not here.
I look and see that the condo’s alarm is armed. His keys and wallet aren’t by the door. I go to the kitchen to start the coffee and see a piece of paper sitting there. My heart sinks as I lift it.
Holly,
I’m leaving. Not because you were mad at me last night. I know you and I know that by this morning you’ve got stars in your eyes again, hope for me. But, I won’t steal any more of your life away from you.
I’ll never be what you deserve. Your hope for me is beautiful, little flower, but it’s wrong, and it’s wasted.
There will be a cashier’s check in a safety deposit box located in Melbourne, Australia at the bank across the street from the Little Hollyhock Flower Shop in a couple days. Fitting, right? Use the money to reboot your life. Open a gallery. Paint something beautiful. You are so talented. Be happy.
Just don’t ever marry anyone else, okay? You can make some guy the happiest man on earth if you want by being with him, but don’t ever call anyone else your husband. That’s all I ask.
Be happy. You deserve so much more than I can ever be. The demons in me are alive and breathing and even with the dragon slayed, they’re right when they tell me that I don’t deserve you. I never did. But thank you for all that you gave me.
Alessandro.
The letter floats to the floor. I crumble and fall, like a pile of used up shredded ribbons.