I stare at the unfamiliar sports cars in the drive, one dark slate or black and one a sort of dark navy, even in this darkness I can see they are not the same colour, although they are the same model. One is parked like it’s been abandoned; half on the grass at an angle and something deep down is telling me this means something.
Mico has a four by four, it’s not here and neither is the other car some of his other goons use. Just two new sports cars, identical except in colour and my head keeps racing back and forth to two twins who are identical in every way—except with different coloured eyes. Grey and blue.
Fuck!
I take a deep breath, count to ten and realise it will never be enough. I will never be ready to walk in that door if he’s here.
Crapping myself mercilessly and having to dig deep for an ounce of courage I have inside of me. I can’t even think up a plausible lie as there is nothing to explain my missing person for the last few hours. I literally legged it from Mico.
Mico must have told him, he must have come and that has to be his car. It’s way too expensive a sports car to be generally used by his suits, and I imagine being twins means the same taste in cars is plausible. He did say Gino was close by and I brace myself for the inevitable.
Be smart, think about this, he won’t physically hit me or beat me. He might try to use sex again, but I won’t let him. Not after the last time. I physically do not want him to touch me ever again and I think he has killed the power of seduction he had over me now, so it takes that out the window too.
Tying me up? I have endured worse, and if that’s the route he chooses then I’ll numb myself out and make myself zone into another place like I used to. I have the skills to survive so much more than Alexi Carrero. I have and will survive anything he can throw at me. I just have to have some self-belief and stop thinking my recent couple of years respite from this life has made me soft. I endured hell and have the internal scars to prove it.
I can survive anything if I set my mind to it. I just need to find my courage and stop letting my fear of him drown it out. I need to stop goading him and fighting him, try to keep my head down and behave. Become a ‘‘Yes sir’’ woman like he wants. Stop giving him reason to do this to me.
I jump when a car drives by in the street and realise standing out here is pointless, I need to just bite the bullet and go in before this gets any worse, and before one of his people in the house see me out here, standing like a terrified freak and contemplating the end of my life. I take one last breath, eye up the abandoned black car that looks like Alexi parking in a rage, chewing his own lawn up and giving no shits about it. Seems like something he would do.
I take the steps up to the huge front door while my body aches to run in the opposite direction, swallowing down the lump of tightness in my throat and straining to breathe through a heavy chest. I am on the verge of an all-out panic attack. Faced with two huge wooden doors that are normally kept locked, they are all that stands between me and certain torture, except I didn’t bring a key and I figure I should try the handle before I knock.
Hand trembling visibly and I tense myself in a bid to make myself reach out and grab the cold metal knob. It’s not locked and that just feels more like a sign that he is probably here.
Shit!
I open it and push it slowly to slide inside, blinking at the bright lights of the hall and dredging up courage from somewhere down in my toes to do this. White marble and cream walls blinding me after the darkness of outside as my eyes adjust to the modern interior. I don’t get very far into the hall when a voice makes me jump ten feet in the air. My heart flips over, and that voice alone can make cold fear sweep my body in a nanosecond.
‘’Where the fuck were you?’’ Alexi shouts in a rage and a real one. Not that cold scary tone, but a very verbal angry tone, such as I have never heard. It’s the worst sound ever, his growling, accusatory and fury ridden voice makes me melt into a puddle of shaking jelly. Visibly recoiling into myself. I turn to the direction of the voice, seeing him coming at me from the other room and I just freeze. My eyes wide and misting up.
He’s walking towards me at speed with a killer look in his eye that makes me doubt whether he would physically hit me, as Gino intervenes by walking in front of him and stops him with a palm on his chest. He murmurs something to him, two bookends in white shirts and black trousers and even though a set of cold grey eyes under a furrowed brow are giving me the death glare, he stays put, listening to his brother and just growls at me instead.
That look could melt steel. He’s like an animal waiting to be unleashed and I’m the Sunday roast. His brother restraining him in a way, and even from here I can see the energy of rage bubbling under the surface and how badly he wants to beat me to within an inch of my life.