Page 90 of Alessia
Sympathy and regret are visible in his eyes. He puts his hands on my shoulders and I press even harder.
“I… can’t,” he brings out stuttering from the lack of air in his lungs. “I wish I could, Harper.”
“Harper…” Alessia whispers behind me, “Let him go, we’ll talk.”
I soften my grip on Elio and he pulls in a breath.
“What can you possibly say, Alessia? What can you say that will justify a little girl being dead? SHE WAS THIRTEEN ALESSIA! THIRTEEN!”
I sink to the floor and cry; sobs wreck my body. I’m so angry and hurt I don’t know what to do with myself. Elio crouches beside me and puts his arm around me. That snaps something inside of me and before I know what I’m doing I dive away. I turn around and my fist hits him square on the jaw.
“Harper!” Alessia exclaims.
Elio looks at me with a look of surprise.
“Good, so there’s still plenty of anger in you. Hold onto that, you’ll need it.”
His condescending tone causes the last bit of restraint I have in me to snap as well, and I lash out at him again. This time I hit him on the nose, blood drips out.
“Ouch that hurts like a motherfucker,” he growls.
He doesn’t do anything back and undergoes my blows as I hit him again and again until my fists hurt and bleed.
Alessia pulls me off him and I scramble out of her hold, shrugging her off before I run back into the bedroom and lock the door behind me.
“HARPER, OPEN THE DOOR!” Alessia shouts at me.
“NO! Leave me alone!”
“You have every right to be angry right now but we need to talk about this!”
“No, we don’t! Leave. Me. Alone!”
I get back into the bed and cover myself to try and drown out Alessia at the other side of the door. She keeps wriggling the door handle as if it will magically open on its own. After ten minutes of pounding on the door and telling me to open it she leaves, finally giving me the space I want to drown myself in the darkness that filled me last night. I let it swallow me wholly and completely; no light can find me here anymore. That light has been blown out by everything, Anna’s murder at the hands of Gianni and Manchini, the countless times they’ve raped me and cut me with their knives, the terror of not knowing if I would come out of it alive.
It should have been me…
It should have beenme…
Anna had her whole life ahead of her…
I am not worthy of this life anymore!
I throw back the covers and grab the sleep medication off the bedside table. I pop the bottle open and let a few pills slide out of it onto the palm of my hand. Five pills… Will that be enough? Will it be enough to make me feel nothing ever again? I bring my hand to my mouth and let the pills fall into my mouth. I take one deep breath in before I swallow them and lie back down. I stare at the ceiling and wait for another kind of darkness to envelop me.
Alessia
“Two days, two days she has locked herself in that room and won’t come out. She hasn’t eaten anything that I know. She won’t communicate with me, my cameras have her lying in bed the entire time. I can see her moving around but other than that she does nothing.”
“And do you think it’s healthy to watch her through your cameras?” The shrink, intended for Harper, raises his brow at me.
“No, but you would too if your girlfriend was kidnapped and raped.”
The shrink’s raised brow softens, but his voice remains steady. “I understand the concern, but surveillance might not be the solution here. Have you tried,”
“I’ve tried everything!” I snap, my voice ricocheting off the walls.
“I’ve knocked. I’ve pleaded. I even left her favorite tea outside the door, hoping she’d come out. Nothing works.”
