Page 98 of Bene

“I’ll never be yours. Ever.”

He needed to know that.

She had to say it.

It should be clear.

“But you are. And you didn’t get a say about it.”

She shook her head, as much as she could manage in her current predicament with the tears streaming down her cheeks. It was getting harder to breathe now, too, but he didn’t show any sign of letting her go.

“Not like that,” she whispered painfully, “not like he has me.”

Mario shoved her harder against the wall, starting to say, “I—”

“I’ll never love you—I love him.”

“Fucking bitch.”

His words were punctuated by him shoving her against the wall, then he let her go, and slammed his hands to either side of her head. Vanna sucked in a deep breath before he stepped back altogether, fists clenched down at his sides while he stared her down with enough contempt to burn her from the inside out.

If only she cared …

He pointed a finger at her. “You will not fuck up what I have worked for all these years—do not make me look like a fool to the clan, and my father, or I will be the one who chokes the fucking life out of you, and I will enjoy doing it, too. Go near the Guzzi bastard again, Vanna, and that’s it. You’re done—you hear me? I will kill him, and you.”

He would.

She knew it.

“Do you hear me?”

She nodded. “I hear you.”

“Things will be changing soon. Understand that. You’ve lost the right to have your life the way you wanted it, and you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself for it, too. Try to fight me from here on out, and everyone will know what you’ve been doing. I’ll let you live just long enough for you to suffer for the whore you are before I kill you. Be ready—a truck will be here tomorrow to move your shit out. This is over.”

He didn’t give her time to respond before he was leaving. Vanna slid down the wall, her backside meeting the floor while her palms dug into her eyes to press the tears away, as the door slammed shut.

It felt appropriate.

An end.

The coffin closing.

This was her life.

Mario was right, though.

She did this.

Vanna’s life in the week after coming home to find Mario waiting in her penthouse became a series of her doing only what she had to. Wake up, get dressed, go to school, and come back to a home that wasn’t hers but where she now had to live. It felt like she had walked straight into a fog with no way out.

But at least like this, she didn’t feel as much.

It didn’t hurt as much.

She stayed in that hazy bubble, content to let it drag her under until it swallowed her whole and drowned out everything else. At this point, feeling and being nothing was better than the alternative option.

Maybe that was why she hadn’t expected the detective to be waiting right outside the last class of the day at her college, if only because the fact that she completely ignored his calls should have been more than enough of a hint to him.