AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nice, is she?” Beatrice laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Then we’d never get along. I’m the opposite of nice.” She sighed, straightening. “You need to stop this. Is that why you keep sending Giulia to me? It seems like she’s there to greet me most mornings.” She shook her head, beginning to pace. “Having a woman to talk to isn’t going to fix me, Montrell.”
“I’m not—”
“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” she interrupted, whirling around to glare at him again. “You think I’ll open up to them. Then these women will tell you all about what happened to me. If you want all the sordid details, ask me yourself.” Her hips had an extra sway as she walked along the table, her hand trailing. “Is there something you need to know, Monty?”
The singsong way she butchered his name made him want to hurl. His mother had sometimes called him that. He swallowed as she perched on the table in front of him, and he shoved back from it so he wouldn’t touch her by accident. One of her legs moved toward him, the tip of her heel pressing into his chest as if it were a knife.
“Are daydreams of what happened to me making you all hot and bothered?”
Montrell’s gaze moved to hers as her taunt loosened his throat. “That’s not it.” He couldn’t prevent the harshness of his tone.
Her leg dropped as she studied his face. Whatever she saw there had her wrapping her arms around herself.
Montrell swallowed his frustration. “You never talk about it.” That truth allowed him to soften his tone. “You don’t have to. And you don’t have to come to the Di Salvos’ estate. I just thought a potential friend would be nice. I like Nera Di Salvo.” He shrugged as he watched her look away.
“Yeah, but you also like Vespa.” Beatrice’s tone went for flippant but didn’t quite hit the mark.
Montrell smiled anyway. “Hey, Vespa is a good friend. And I never said she was nice.” He never expected niceness from his best friend. She’d rip him a new one even as she took a bullet for him. That was worth more than “nice.”
A small smile hovered on Beatrice’s face for the briefest second. “That’s true.” She stared out the far window. The morning sun was bright as it shined through, lighting her face. Her eyes dilated as she stared into it. Then she returned her gaze to him. “Is there something you want to know?”
Montrell wasn’t sure how to interpret her tone. It was flat this time, as if just asking made her feel dead inside. “I’m never going to push, Bea. You can tell me anything you need to, but that has to be your choice.” He leaned forward in his chair, wishing he could get closer but hating the idea of it making her flinch. “I just want you to know you don’t have to be in this alone.”
He had expected the twist to her lips. He was a fool. Hadn’t he just broken her trust the night before?
Beatrice sighed as she looked back toward the window. “I tried once, you know. To not be alone.” Her arms tightened over her chest, and she thrummed with tension. “I tried to ask for help.”
Montrell nodded, though she didn’t see it. He didn’t think she was seeing anything. “You went to your father.”
“I had been beaten so badly, my husband never suspected I’d try to run. Didn’t think I was capable of it.” She shook her head. “I almost wasn’t. I still don’t know how I managed it.” Her shoulders drooped, as if she was giving up yet again. “Such wasted effort. My father called my husband to come get me. I don’t remember the immediate days immediately after. I had broken bones and a blood infusion.” Her head shifted, her gaze so damn sad as it met his. “I learned the lesson.”
Montrell didn’t argue with her. Those words would be just that, words, and there were others pushing for release. “We can still kill him. Your father.”
To his surprise, her arms loosened. The smile she gifted him didn’t reach her eyes as she moved closer. He held very still when she reached out, her hand barely touching his face as she cupped it in the same way she had the night before.
“You really are sweet,” she murmured.
Montrell was still trying to find his breath as she left the room.
Chapter 12
Beatrice knew she shouldn’t have tried to sleep. When she’d been with the Albanians, fear had kept her awake. She’d never known when her husband would come to her room. Now he was dead, but the fear lingered.
Maybe it was because his death had been so abrupt that her subconscious still couldn’t accept it. When her body gave in to its need to rest, her mind would show her all the things she hadn’t forgotten.
She should have never talked to Montrell about running to her father. Talking never helped.
Her husband had left her alone for a time after she was returned to him. It made her recovery almost peaceful in a way. The fracture in her jaw had healed first, and she’d lost weight with the four weeks of soft foods. It was the delicate bones in the wrist he’d broken that seemed to take forever. The doctor had switched the cast to a brace after six weeks. She had been cupping it with her other hand in the hallway, wondering if she should ask to call the doctor back because days after switching to the brace, it continued to ache.
Her husband had paused at the top of the stairs. As he continued to stare at her hand over the brace, she dropped her arm to her side. His dark eyes narrowed, and his mouth set in that way that meant he was unhappy with her.
A part of her hadn’t cared. When he began crowding her back toward her room, she lashed out. The slap at his jaw hurt her injured wrist more than it hurt him, and he grabbed the brace with one hand, her jaw with the other.
The memory of the pain he’d inflicted after she ran swamped her, letting him shove her into the room. He didn’t bother closing the door as his weight pinned her to the bed. The Velcro coming free was loud even over her heaving breaths. She cried out as he dragged her arm over her head by that barely healed wrist.
“Stop your lying!” her husband had snapped. The force of his words sprayed a light mist of spittle onto her jaw. His eyes were on hers as he dragged her skirt up between them. She tried to buck and kick, but his hold on her wrist tightened, and a wave of dizziness rushed over her. She closed her eyes, praying that she’d pass out.
“You shouldn’t have milked it for so long,” he told her. “A wife needs to fuck her husband regularly. Or it turns into this.” He was making it her fault. He liked to blame her when he got rougher. She bit back a cry as he ripped the strings on the only underwear he allowed her. It dug into the top of her hip, leaving an abrasion she’d feel later. She’d feel all of it.
