Page 123 of Downfall

The sun is shining like it’s a new day, like I slept the entire night. I feel disorientated. Unsteady.

But I know where I am, somehow instinct already tells me.

And I know he’s here.

Watching me. I can feel his energy, his anger even now.

I sit up. My arms shake as I force the muscles to move. I’m wearing borrowed clothes. Sofia’s by the guess of it.

He’s sat in a chair, one leg thrown across the other with his ankle on his knee. Glaring.

“How did I get here?” I ask. I can see it’s not from the kindness of his heart that I’m where I am, still in the Montague house.

“Sofia carried you up. You were hysterical. We had a doctor check you. You’ve got some nasty bruises but nothing serious.”

I don’t reply. I don’t know how to. It feels like he’s still raging about what I did. How I betrayed him. I drop my gaze with my shame hitting me at how he’d stripped me, how he’d treated me, how he’d almost let his men use me.

He leans forward in his chair, his knuckles white with the intensity of his grip. “Tell me Rose, how long were you planning on keeping Lara from me?”

“What?” I gasp as my stomach begins doing actual somersaults. I didn’t tell him. I know I didn’t. And yet somehow he knows.

“My daughter.” He snarls. “How long were you planning on keeping her existence from me?”

I shake my head, my body trembling as he gets up, stalking towards me.

“You had no right…” He begins.

“No you don’t.” I cry back cutting him off. Scrambling up. Forcing myself to move. To respond. “You made it more than clear what you thought. You made it more than clear what you wanted me to do.”

“What are you talking about?” He snarls.

“You.” I half scream. “You didn’t want to know. You made it clear you wanted me to get rid of her so you don’t get to come back now and play the hero.”

“Rose.” He says screwing his face up. “You never even told me you were pregnant.”

“Yes I did.” I reply. I’m practically hysterical again now but I can’t calm down. I can’t. My heartrate feels erratic, I feel so close to completely and utterly losing it. “I called you. I called you over and over. You just ignored me. And then when I messaged you, you…” I shut my eyes, blinking back the tears at what he’d accused me of. What he’d insinuated. “You left. You washed your hands of me. Of us. You don’t get to come back now and say otherwise.”

“Rose that’s not what happened. I called you. I messaged you. You didn’t respond. I told you where to meet me. I fucking told you.” He shouts the last bit slamming his fist into the wall.

I stare at him wildly for a minute.

He never did that. He never once said anything like that.

“You think I would have stayed?” I reply. “You think I wouldn’t have followed you?”

His face tells me exactly what he believes; that I deliberately cut him off, that I was the one who chose this awful life instead of being with him.

He shakes his head, looking away for a moment. “Why wasn’t she with you? Why was she locked away? Why does no one even know about her? She’s your daughter for fucksake.”

My arms wrap around me as if it could somehow comfort me from the rest of what I’m about to say, the truth I’m admitting to. I can’t even look at him right now as the words come out.

“They took her from me as soon as she was born. I didn’t even get to hold her. To see her.” My tears stream down my face as I admit it, as I feel it too, all the pain, all the torture of what had happened that day.

The grief and the loss that I’ve never gotten over. The longing that’s twisted inside me for years, festering into something bitter, something twisted.

I sink onto the end of the bed as it feels like my legs might give way.

“Who?” He asks pulling me back to face him, narrowing his eyes that are flashing bloody murder right now.

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