“I’m having a few associates over for dinner on Thursday night. I want it to be formal. I’ll have Rita handle the meal. All I need from you is for you to show up looking as beautiful as always.” Antonio stretched his legs out and stretched his arm out behind me.
I’d been about to drop my head back on the seat behind me, but I resisted the exhaustion coursing through me. I didn’t want to touch him if I didn’t have to. “Can’t I miss one, Antonio? I’ve been feeling so tired lately.”
The car paused at the gates to his property and the driver keyed in the always changing code to get in. Antonio waited until the gate was opening to look down at me. “I need you there, baby, you’re my good luck charm. You know things go better when you’re there.”
I also knew he didn’t really believe that. He took the most important business meetings alone. It was just something he’d always said to make me feel wanted. Before I knew the truth about him. “I really don’t want to go.”
His hand landed on the back of my neck and he squeezed lightly. “You wound me. You act like you have it so tough, Clara. I give you everything. Of course, you’ll go shopping tomorrow to find clothes for the dinner. I treat you to the best of everything. When have you ever lacked for anything?”
I snapped my head in his direction and scowled. “I’ve lacked a daughter for the past twelve years.”
Antonio’s lips pressed together and then he shook his head. “I tried to give you a child. I would’ve loved to see you pregnant with my child, baby.”
“I don’t want your child. I want my child.” I dug my fingers into my legs and growled. “Give me my child back, Antonio. Give her to me.”
He snatched his arm away from me and shoved the door open as soon as the car stopped. He was out of the car and reaching back in for me in a blink. His hands grasped my upper arms and he pulled me out. Instead of fighting in front of his men, he simply dragged me inside the mansion he called a house and up to our room.
All the fight had gone out of me so I just stumbled along behind him, silent tears trailing down my cheeks.
He slammed the bedroom door after us and then made his way to the bed. He sat on the side of it and pulled me into his lap. He cradled my body against his chest and stroked his hand down my back. “Clara…”
I buried my face in his chest and sobbed. “I just want my daughter, Antonio. Give her to me. Please.”
He pressed kisses to the top of my head and sighed. “You’re asking for the impossible, love. I would do anything else to make you happy. Deep down you know that. It wasn’t too long ago that you loved me, too.”
My heart ached in my chest because he was right. I’d loved him. Part of me wished desperately to go back to that time, before I knew anything. I wanted to look at him and see Antonio, the man who’d saved me when I needed to be saved. I wanted to see the man I loved, the man who’d swept me off my feet and made me feel loved when no one else ever had. I still wanted him to be everything. I wanted to wake up and spend my day wrapped around him, making love like there was nothing else in the world to worry about.
“I love you, Clara. I’ve loved you since the beginning. Even when you lash out and curse me, I love you. I can’t change the man I am, the sins I’ve committed. I wish I could. I wish I could change the circumstances, but I can’t, Clara. Can’t you just accept that as enough? Accept that I’d give you the world?”
I stared up at him, feeling weak and scared. I’d positioned myself as his enemy and it only wore me down. I couldn’t actually hurt him. He was too big and I was too meaningless. Hearing him, feeling nostalgic, it made me drunk on being on the same side as him for a change. Being in his arms, I could pretend for a few stolen moments that we were still in that happy, ignorant space from before.
When he lowered his mouth, I didn’t turn away. His lips caressed mine, slow and sure. He was warm and real, better than the ghost I’d been dreaming of. He made me feel loved and protected from reality in those moments.
Antonio trailed kisses down my throat, stroking his tongue out to taste my skin and moaning as he did. “I’ve missed you coming to me willingly like this, baby. I want this back.”
Something was wrong with me, but I didn’t stop him. As he laid me back on the bed and slowly removed all my clothing, I didn’t stop him. When he made love to me with his mouth, I didn’t stop him. When he undressed and slowly filled me, I didn’t stop him. I let him make slow, passionate love to me, while I greedily pretended like nothing else had ever existed. I took his love and I reveled in it, even though I knew that I had none to give back.
Maybe he wasn’t the only monster.
*
Seconds after we came together, reality crashed into me in the form of a vision of Blake’s bloody mouth. I shoved at Antonio until he rolled off of me and then ran to the bathroom. I was already vomiting before I reached the toilet, bile and what was left of my lunch splashing against the side of it and the floor.
I cried out as the image rampaged through my brain, singeing all the nerve endings that had just been singing out in pleasure. Shame and grief flooded me and I squeezed the toilet seat as my stomach convulsed and I choked on the bile caught in my throat.
“Clara, what’s wrong?” Antonio pulled my hair out of my face and rubbed my back.
His touch made me want to crawl into the toilet and flush myself away. I didn’t deserve anything, not even to exist.
“Clara?”
I spit and turned my ruined face up to him. “You. You’re a monster.”
His face hardened after a split second of pain twisted his handsome face. He stood up straight and moved away. “And what does that make you, Clara? My seed is still spilling from between your legs. If I’m a monster, how bad are you?”
I cried harder, feeling his words like physical blows. I’d hurt him and he wanted to do the same to me. I was already breaking, though. Or maybe I was already broken. “Kill me.”
If the words shocked me, they almost knocked Antonio over. His mouth fell open, losing its angry edge, and his eyes filled with real tears. “Clara… You don’t mean that.”
I blinked and flushed the toilet. I didn’t. Not yet. I didn’t think I did, anyway. I just wanted to hurt him more. He’d almost killed me before, without ever touching me. Maybe he would finish the job one day.
“Tell me you don’t fucking mean that.”
I ripped a handful of toilet paper off the roll and wiped my face. Looking back up at him, I held my arms up, revealing my naked body covered in vomit. “I have nothing left. If you won’t give me back my daughter, you may as well end it for me.”
“You have me!” His voice boomed out so loud that I knew everyone in the house heard.
I pulled myself up and turned on the shower. “That’s the funny thing about having things that you don’t want. They’re not what you fucking want, Antonio. It doesn’t matter to me that I have you. I just want Helena.”
His hand snaked out so fast that I didn’t even see it. It was suddenly just there, at my throat, holding me to the cold shower wall. Gone was the gentle touch. His fingers tightened as he got in my face. “You’ll never get her back. She’s safe where she is, but you’re pushing me, Clara. There’s nothing stopping me from making a phone call to end her. She means nothing to me. She means less than nothing to me. I will have a bullet in her head before sunrise if you keep talking to me like this. I love you, but I’ll hurt you, Clara.”
I coughed and grasped my throat when he yanked his hand away, covering it in case he came back to actually finish me off. Funny how I’d just been asking for it, but suddenly the reality was terrifying.
“Get yourself cleaned up. You smell like vomit and you look like a whore with my come dripping down your thighs.” He turned his back on me and strode to the door. “I’ll send Rita up to take care of this mess. I hope tomorrow is better, Clara. I don’t like these fights.”
He slammed the bathroom door as he left, leaving me to sink against the tub floor, sobbing. As much as I hated him, I hated myself more. He was a monster, but I was sleeping with a monster. Knowingly. What would Helena think of her mother? Fucking the man who’d taken her. It was more than that, but it was all so complicated and mixed up that I’d never be able to explain it away.
I was so lonely.
Rita quietly opened the door and, with her eyes down, started cleaning up the mess I’d made. She ignored my naked body and sobs, used to seeing even worse in the house of Antonio Carver. Her pale hands were marked by the sun and age but she was efficient and fast, never complaining or coming up against a job too big or hard for her. I knew she’d removed blood and brain matter from a Persian rug on the first floor.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked up at me with pity in her eyes. “It happens to the best of us. Can I get you anything, Miss Clara?”
I shook my head and wiped at my eyes, trying to regain some dignity in front of her. “No, no. I’m okay. Thank you.”
She finished cleaning and then moved to the door. “Mr. Carver said that you’ll be out shopping tomorrow. Maybe you spend a little extra, huh? We’ve got to take our revenge where we can.”
She left before I could respond, but it was the same either way. I was silent, thinking of her words. She had no idea how little I was spending to get a little revenge. It didn’t cost much when you did it right.
I stood up and turned the showerhead on my body and turned the water to as hot as it would go. It scalded my skin and I’d be red into the next day, but I wanted the feel of him off of me. If I could’ve opened my brain and boiled it, I would’ve done that, too.
I finished my shower and dried off before pulling on pajamas and crawling into bed. Antonio had granted me my own room when I’d first found out that he’d been behind Helena’s kidnapping. He said it was because he knew I needed time and space, but I knew it was because he was afraid to wake up from me shoving an ice pick into his ear.
So far, he hadn’t taken my room away from me. Some days, I woke up with him crawling into my bed, holding me even as I pulled away. Most days, he left me be. He had work that he did at all hours of the day and it was easier now that he wasn’t hiding everything from me. The devil worked better at night, apparently.
I pulled the covers over my head and swore when the scent of him filled my nose. I deserved the reminder. I couldn’t just shower him off of me and act like it’d never happened. It’d been weeks since he’d touched me that way and it could’ve gone longer. For the devil that he was, Antonio never forced me. We’d only had sex because I let it happen. I’d consented while wide-eyed and sober. I should have to stay in the bed and smell the reminder that I’d done it.
Every crime had a punishment. No matter how much Antonio proved that wasn’t true. When you were human, there were consequences.