“Fucking go away,” I snarl. “I just watched my mother blow her fucking brains out. How the hell do you think I’m doing?”
Paulina gapes at me and Victoria quickly ushers her away from me. I continue my pacing. Father has to be okay. We’ll get through this and make a plan to get Niles back.
My blood turns icy.
Melody.
If she’d kept her damn mouth shut, my mother may not have lost it like she did. But she didn’t. Melody blabbing to my mother was the catalyst for the events that took place. As soon as I can fucking think clearly, I’ll send Adrian to fetch them for me. Melody, her pussy husband, her prissy parents. I’ll fucking destroy their entire line in one swoop. Phoenix too. But Niles, I’ll save him to torture him slowly.
And Talia?
I stop pacing and retrieve my phone. She’s tried to call me. I’m reminded of the way she held my hand at dinner. Hearing her voice might bring me some peace at the moment. I sure as fuck need it.
I dial her back.
It rings and rings and rings.
Did she leave? She better fucking not have.
I’ll drag her back kicking and screaming.
She’s mine.
“Mr. Demetriou,” a doctor calls out, rushing over to me. “I have good news. He’s stable. Your father is going to live.”
I let out a heavy sigh of relief. “I want to see him. Now.”
Talia
With nothing but a towel wrapped around my body, I run home. My bare feet trip and stumble over the rocks that have been kicked up onto the pathway, but I don’t stop until I’m standing outside my door. With shaky hands, it takes me four tries to get the code right so the door will unlock. The house is pitch-black, and I breathe a sigh of relief that Kostas isn’t here.
My first thought is that I need to get him off of me. Rid myself of the evidence of what he did. Turning the shower on, I set it to as hot as it can go. I drop the towel and step inside, the steam hitting my senses and allowing me to take my first deep breath. For several minutes I just stand here. I’m not sure if I’m in shock, but I can’t find it in me to move. And then I remember why I’m in here. To rid myself of him.
With my mind and body completely numb, I work the soapy loofah over my flesh. Scrubbing. Cleaning. Getting him off me. I scrub my face where he kissed me. My neck where he bit me. I scrub my arms and legs where he grabbed me. But it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. I scrub and scrub and scrub, but I can still feel him on me, over me, in me.
When I spread my legs and wipe between my thighs, the loofah turns a light shade of pink. And it’s then the reality of what he did to me hits me full force. My already shaky hands begin to tremble, and my knees go weak. My body gives out, and I fall into a heap on the floor of the shower as grief pours down my face in a flood of uncontrollable tears that mix with the pink water. I watch as my blood and tears run down into the drain and disappear, reminding me that only a couple short hours ago I was in the shower with him. Trying to comfort him. Washing the blood off him.
How could he do this to me?
He took something from me I can never get back.
Something that wasn’t his to take.
It was mine. Mine to give. Mine to share.
And now it’s gone, and it feels as though a part of me is gone as well.
I scrub my body until my skin is bright red and hurts to touch. Until the water turns ice-cold and runs clear once again. Until I have no choice but to get out and deal with what he did to me.
Feeling exposed and wanting to hide my body—as if hiding it will make what he did to me any less real—I find a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie and throw them on. When I go back into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I spot the towel on the floor. Needing to get rid of it, to get rid of the evidence, I scoop it up and bring it into the bedroom with me. I light the fireplace, not caring that it’s nowhere near cold enough to justify having a fire going, and when the room dances with bright reds and oranges, I throw it into the fire. Grabbing the blanket off the bed, I wrap it around my body like a cocoon, then I lie down in front of the fire and watch the fabric burn, until my eyelids can no longer stay open, and I allow myself to shut down.