Hold You Against Me (Stripped 4)

Could it work? A real marriage.

No, normal people go on dates. They didn’t drug the glass of water beside your bed. Except what if it did work? What if the boy I loved was still underneath all that armor?

No, not armor. Scar tissue. Three months.

I slip out the side door into the darkness of the night, more conflicted than I’ve ever been. Running with my sister was an easy decision—not even a choice, really. She’s my only true family. And she was the one in the most imminent danger from the fiancé our father had chosen for her. Technically I was in danger too, but no one knew about that.

If I survived that, I can survive whatever Giovanni does to me tomorrow night.

And stay with him for the rest of my life?

God, I’m going crazy—torn between what I want most and what I fear the most.

In the end, I can’t walk away. Enough of me still believes in Giovanni, enough of me still wants desperately to believe, that I can’t leave without knowing. Of course there’s no litmus test to find out if a man is a monster. Tomorrow night, our wedding night, I’ll find out for sure if he’ll truly force me. But if I stay to find out, it will be too late to escape. I need to find out now.

Meet me in the pool house after. I know where he is right now.

Chapter Seventeen

I was fifteen with the biggest crush imaginable. The boy was older and so cute I flushed every time he met my eyes. I did every silly, hopeful thing a teen girl can do—writing our names in my notebooks with little hearts, making excuses to see him.

In fact the first time he met me in the pool house, he was supposed to tutor me in algebra. It wasn’t even that hard to play dumb, because I felt completely clueless whenever he was near me. Of course he figured out that I was actually already doing math at a college level. Benefits of a personal instructor and lots of free time.

For whatever reason he continued to meet me in the pool house after dark. I would climb down using the trellis under my window and cross the plush grass, so out of place in the desert, dampened by hours of sprinklers.

This time I’m coming from a slightly different direction, but it feels just the same.

I know all the shadows to duck into while I wait to see if the guards are patrolling this area. The schedule may have changed, but the mansion has not. The pool house was usually dark, with Giovanni waiting. This time there was only the faintest glow from somewhere deep inside, a light on somewhere but not the front room.

The ball of my foot sinks into a dip in the ground, almost marshy after being freshly watered. I suck in a breath as the cold liquid stings the cuts on my feet. Two dark silhouettes appear in the windowed doors, and I dart to the side.

The doors open and close quietly.

I watch with bated breath while someone in a suit walks back to the house, too stocky to be Gio.

Due to a recent sandstorm, the air smells particularly sharp with ozone. That’s probably why the patio doors were closed, keeping the party inside. Or maybe he somehow predicted that the pool house would be needed for some dark purpose. Maybe they always use this place to hold enemies, the way my father used the basement. It makes me feel sick that he would use the place we’d met into an instrument of torture.

The basement is soundproof. I have never been there, but everyone knew. Why isn’t he using that? I’m afraid I know the answer. That’s where he was kept. Three months.

My stomach turns over.

The door we always used was technically a side entrance to the pool house, opening directly onto the patio. There’s a separate front door to the house with a driveway that left the grounds via a different exit than the main entrance. As I skirt the corner, I see light flooding onto the lawn from the window, slatted by thick palm plants.

The thorns cut into my arms and back, but I’m grateful for the relative cover they provide. Especially when I stand frozen, sickened by the sight inside.

A man stands in the center of the room, his broad shoulders turned away, his gaze on the ground, a gun in his hand. I would recognize him anywhere. Giovanni. His name catches in my throat. I want to call out to him through the glass, to deny that this is happening, to somehow turn back the clock so a man isn’t bleeding out in front of him.

The man on the ground is wearing a tux, like the maids said. His knees are a mess of flesh and blood, so mangled my mind doesn’t even know how to reconcile them as legs. He’s sobbing. Sobbing.

My breath won’t come at all. I hadn’t thought there was a litmus test, but God. Only a monster could watch impassively as someone pleads for their life, desperate, clinging to impossible hope in the face of death.

Giovanni turns enough that I can see his profile. He says something. Asks a question?

The man on the floor shakes his head, frantic. Hands clasped. Begging or praying or both.

I can’t watch this.

I can’t turn away and escape, knowing this is happening.