STOLEN || 18+ (Monsters #3)

.72. Blood

"Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined."

- Ocean Vuong

. . .

Tw- mention of SA

. . .

"How did you survive it?"

I lifted my eyes from the piece of cake on my plate. Rosa and I were sitting on a balcony that looked over the garden of the mansion. We had decided to dress up for having cake. I had done that because Rosa's life was stuck in this circle which I knew she didn't like but was too grateful for everything to say.

I knew what she was asking.

I gave her a one-shoulder shrug, feeling my curls flutter in the gentle wind. I tucked a strand behind my ear. "I felt helpless at first," I said. "So helpless. I felt weak as if I was shattering continuously. I didn't survive that, Rosa. I just am somehow alive. But I did not survive that. I mean..." I sighed. "Aren't you supposed to be stronger after surviving something like that? But I am terrified whenever I think of it."

Rosa watched me. She had worn a beautiful golden and white dress, her blond hair down on her shoulders, lips painted red, a shade lighter than mine.

"When my mother gave me away," Rosa said. "I was terrified. I was a teenager. I went through...owners. So many of them in the starting because I was...disobedient." Her eyes moved away from me, looking at the city far away. "Then I ran away. It was thrilling. It was so good." She smiled. "I had stolen so much money from my last owner. I lived almost comfortably for months but then...he found me."

I listened silently.

She looked back at me. "I ran. Valentinos have been trying to shut the system down for years and they help women like me. I was saved by Dante and instantly, I was in awe of him. He was my knight in shining armour. But..." She sighed. "Well, you can't expect love from a man who doesn't have a heart."

I watched her. "He doesn't have a heart? He is that cold?"

She nodded, taking a sip of her champagne. "I'd say he's the coldest, even though some believe Fabiano is."

"Fabiano isn't cold," I muttered. "He is...him. And Giovanni feels like wild rage sometimes yet he has so much control. I don't think I can ever describe them in one word."

She hummed. "How would you describe them?"

"They can be nice. They can be mean. They are unpredictable yet somehow...safe?" I sighed. "I realise I sound like an idiot but Giovanni and Fabiano are most probably the most complex men I've ever met. Possibly because they don't make their intentions known."

"Intentions known?"

I hummed. "I still do not know what I am doing here."

She watched me, her face holding absolutely nothing. "Can you picture your life like this? Staying in this mansion?"

"Makes me feel suffocated."

She smiled. "You're not a picket white fence woman."

I smiled. "Yeah, I've never been that."

"Do they know that?"

"I don't think so." I drummed my fingers on the table. "And I don't see why that would matter. Yes we have...grown closer and their presence no longer feels...bad. But I cannot imagine them letting me go. That is something they have made clear will not happen."

She nodded. "They fought with people over that. I cannot imagine them letting you go and neither can I imagine them being bad to you, now."

"What does the mean?"

"They have fallen," she said, looking me dead in the eye. "I've lived here for years. I've seen women come and go. None of them ever even said their names."

"That does not sound good."

"It doesn't," she agreed. "But they were not submissives. They were slaves."

"Fucking colonizers." I drank deeply from the flute.

She smiled. "Yes, but the women were willing. More than willing."

"Cannot blame them for that one," I said. "Is that what you think they would expect from me?"

"No, and I cannot imagine you being okay with that either."

"I am not," I said. "How many women?"

She raised an eyebrow. "When Creeds didn't have Olivia. They'd be here and there would be...so many women. All these men did was fuck and fight."

"Olivia knows?"

"Olivia probably knows everything about them. And besides, when they got Olivia, they didn't touch anyone."

I hummer, remembering the women Fabiano and Giovanni had had sex with when I was here.

"Giovanni and Fabiano had no feelings for you. All they craved was revenge. So they were blinded by it. They would not have touched them if they liked you back then. And you didn't like them either."

"I am not holding that against them."

"Okay." She gave a one-shoulder shrug.

. . .

It was late in the night when I felt him.

Giovani.

My eyes opened and fell on the twirling knife in his hand. He was sitting on a chair, in the darkness of the room he was barely visible.

He twirled it around his finger and then stopped as I sat up.

"Bambina."

His knife disappeared in the darkness as he pocketed it. "You look so pretty sleeping." There was something wrong with his voice. It sounded hard. As if he was controlling himself. It sounded like he was on the edge.

I opened my mouth but then close it. What was he doing in the darkness like that?

"Go to sleep," he said. "I will take a shower and then join you, si?"

I nodded. "Yes."

He stood up and moved to the bathroom and that's when I smelled it. Blood.

Under the moonlight infiltrating the room through the translucent curtains on the window, I saw the dark spots on his shirt.

My heart thundered.

He opened the bathroom door and paused.

He looked at me, over his shoulder. His hair was messy, his eyes beautiful and haunted, and on his face were dark dried drops.

Of blood.

He didn't say anything. He opened the bathroom and walked inside.

. . .