Love?
Love?
Presley looked at Liborio and then measured her next words carefully.
“You’re wrong, Liborio. I think you believe you’re saving me but you’re wrong.”
“You will see things differently in time.“.
“Have you never said anything in a fit of anger you didn’t m
“No.”
“Lucky you. I do it all the time. Do you know who else shoots their mouth off when they’re angry, frustrated, panicking?” She thought of Cruz earlier calling her a child and yelling at her and knew his fears for her were not faked. He loved her. This man sitting opposite her was never going to convince her otherwise. “Cruz does, Liborio. He’s a big man with big emotions and it is why he says things he doesn’t mean. I also know there isn’t a bone in his body which would truly hurt me.”
“He broke your arm when you were kids. He literally and physically hurt you. You brought it up yourself at the
restaurant.”
“Stop.” She took a breath. “He broke my arm because he didn’t see me riding my bike behind his car. He cried more than I did. Dad was furious with him back then because he should have checked and watched what he was doing, and he didn’t. He was laughing and joking with the boys in his new car, and he ran me over. Odin put it in dad’s head they were trying to wreck my bike. I brought up the broken arm in the restaurant because I was stretching the truth to make his date leave.”
“He still plotted all of this.”
“Yes. I’m sure he did.” She gave a smile, “you know what he didn’t plan on?”
“What?”
“Me. He didn’t plan on me falling for him. He didn’t plan on falling for me. He didn’t plan for our s**** attraction to be off the charts. I don’t care what you think, he can’t fake the way his body reacts to mine. I might be a romantic writer. I might live with my heads in the clouds a lot of the time, looking at things through a lens of rosy colored glasses but I know real emotion when I see it. He loves me. You will never convince me otherwise.”
“You should go talk to Odin.” Liborio grunted. “He’ll tell you the truth, especially if it hurts.”
“I believe it is the truth. I believe Cruz did come at me with the intent of hurting me. I think his motives have changed. I think his heart has changed.”
“The minute you are around him, you’ll be on your knees like a simpering fool. I can’t allow it Presley. You are far too great a woman to be
”
“Oh stop. You calling me a great woman is a load of s**t. If you thought I was so great, you wouldn’t be trying to make my decisions for me. You would trust I know my own heart and you would trust I know how to make my own mistakes. Even if all of this was an elaborate ruse by Cruz, Odin, and Anderson, I’m not some pathetic waif who would die of a broken heart or become mentally unstable the way Ramona did. As far as I’m concerned, you’re worse than all the men in my family put together because you think I need a hero to rescue me, and your method of rescue is the worst one on the planet.”
Love?
“Giving you a life where you will be inspired every day, giving you the family I know you’ve always wanted and getting you away from the cruelty of your family, people who never considered you and your feelings, is not a bad method of rescue. Your father allowed you to be abused in your own home growing up. He knew what was happening because he was the one paying for your therapy for it. He let Marsha pull Odin out of his treatment because he is a lazy man who can’t take action. All he ever cared about was money. He let it happen. He may as well of beat you himself with his ineptitude as a man looking out for his daughter.
She swallowed the anger at the blunt accusation towards her father.
“Your mother is no better. She’s a child psychologist. She witnessed day in and day out but because your father gives her orgasms and money, she was willing to stand by and watch you be tortured by not only her stepson but his two friends. She got you therapy, but she didn’t get you out. What kind of mother stands by idly and watches her kid get bullied constantly? I’ll tell you what kind, a really bad one. Nobody would disbelief she wasn’t beating Odin around and do you know why? Because they all knew she was too wrapped up in Gavin to give a f**k about you. Too many parent–teacher meetings and physician meetings and meetings with counsellors over the years where she attended and was told you were traumatized by those three goons and she made excuses. Nobody would even consider she wouldn’t have been involved because she never stopped it.”
“Stop.” Presley argued.
“Your grandfather favored Odin so much he put your continued torture in the will. It wasn’t to make the family whole again. It was to give Odin what he wanted, which was a constant way to make sure you never knew a moment’s peace. You would spend all your time dreading your next meeting only to get a fraction of the man’s wealth. It’s bullshit. It was geared for the prized son and not for you.”
“It’s not true.”
Pr
“It is true. You’ve been conditioned your entire life to accept abuse, Presley.”
“How is what you’re doing any less abusive? You want to force me to have your babies.”
“Don’t have them.”
“What?” she leaned back incredulously.
“Don’t have them. For now, I’m going to take you to Sicily. You will be put in a cottage on my ancestral property. You will be allowed to write if you wish. You will meet with a counsellor to deal with the psychological trauma. When you’re ready, and I know eventually you will be, you will want to have my children. You will see, I am the only person in the world who genuinely cares for you.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“I have not.”
“You definitely have.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand why you’re so bent on saving me. There are women all over the world in far worse situations than one I am in. Why are you not saving them? It’s bec I remind you of your sister?”
He looked away, his tongue tracing the front of his teeth as he contemplated her words.
“Tell me the truth, Liborio. Why me? Why save me when there are women in this world, trafficked, abused, hurt?”
“Because I can.”
Love?
“Not good enough. You’re lying to me. You’re lying to me, and it makes it worse than what everyone else is
doing.”
He punched the top of the table, “f**k you might be the most infuriating woman I’ve met.”
“So, I’ve heard.” She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him angrily. “You are taking me away from everyone I have ever loved.”
“They don’t love you back! They use you. They hurt you. They sit back and watch you ache and so long as it doesn’t affect them financially or interfere with their lives, they don’t give a flying f**k! Why do you want to stay with people who would hurt you over and over? God damn Presley, your father sold you out to your enemy knowing Cruz was going to make your life a living hell and your mother didn’t give a s**t. They didn’t come to France to save you from Odin. They flew to France to save Odin from you. When are you going to see what is right in front of your face? They don’t love you?”
“And you do?”
“Yes!”
The admission made them both freeze and she felt she was on the verge of hyperventilating. “What are you
saying?”
He got up from the table and walked away before smacking his palm against the wooden panels of the wall. “We’re done here. Finish your dinner and Estrella will take you back to your room.”
“No. I want an explanation.”
“There is none to give.”
“I want to talk to Odin.”
“Fine.” Liborio slammed out of the room.
Presley closed her eyes and felt the tears edging the corners. What kind of weird, twisted world was she in when a mob boss was telling her he was in love with her but refusing to discuss it? It made no kind of sense
at all.
Estrella opened the door, “are you finished eating?”
“I didn’t even take a bite.” She wiped her tears off her face. “I’m not hungry though. Take me to my brother.” “Liborio has agreed you can talk to him for a few moments, but I don’t know what, if anything you will get out
of him.”
“I don’t care. I want to see him.”
She followed Estrella through the ship again and she was helpless to stop the tears as she got up close and personal with Odin. His face was battered almost to the point he was not identifiable. Both eyes were nearly sealed shut from their swelling, his nose very clearly broken and his lip was split and yet, she knew it was
him.
“Odin,” she whispered as she stretched shaking fingers towards him.
One eye partly opened, and he stared for a second at her and then gave a short bark of laughter. “Presley.”
“I’ll get you out of here.”
“I don’t need your help.”
<
< Love?
“You’re tied to the mast of a fishing trawler. Quite sure you need my help.”
“Drug ship,” Odin corrected, his lips twisting in a sneer. “The ship runs drugs and picks up fish to hide it. You’re now on a ship doing a drug run, Presley which makes you complicit and if you get caught, you’ll go to
prison.”
Her stomach dropped at the words and then she shook her head, “except I was kidnapped.”
“Were you? I bet you told more than one person you were having his babies.” Odin’s voice was raspy.
“Odin, why are you being so mean to me? I want to help you.”
“I would rather die than accept your help. Liborio Bartoli is going to kill me because of you. All of this is your fault. He’s the one who managed to get that w***e to extort me. He’s the one who made sure I f****d up so he could get his claws into you. All of this is your fault, Presley, and I hope you know it makes me hate you even more. When I die, and he will kill me on your behalf, I hope you live all of your life with the guilt and pain of knowing I’m here because of you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s been watching you since you were in college.”
“Enough!” Estrella called out and got between them. “Keep talking and your death is going to be far more prolonged than you could imagine.”
Odin just laughed and closed his eyes. “It’s worth it. I’d let the fucker torture me for decades just to know she’s the one who will ultimately pay the price. I hate you Presley. I f*****g hate you and I’m thrilled you’re taken away from Cruz. You don’t deserve to be loved by him, Presley. You deserve whatever that monster is going to give you.”
“Cruz loves me,” she whispered to herself as Estrella pulled her away, a smile tugging her lips. Out of all the things Odin said to her, this was what she was going to cling to. There was hope for her.
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