Page 9 of Wild Heart
My father reaches for the photo album and flicks it back open. “She was so beautiful.”
He shakes his head sadly, and I wonder if he’ll ever forgive himself for my mother’s death. It wasn’t his fault, but he doesn’t see it that way. It’s also why I have a security detail that follows me everywhere.
“Goodbye Papa.”
I kiss his forehead and am overcome with a wave of affection for the man who practically keeps me locked up, who has a security detail follow me everywhere, who insisted I study at home rather than risk being out on campus. But he’s still my father, and I don’t know if he’ll ever speak to me again after what I’m about to do.
I leave him to his memories and slip out the door.
The guard stands up taller when he sees me.
“Don’t let anyone in here apart from Niccolo.”
“Yes, signorina.”
I stride down the corridor, my heels clacking on the marble floor. Security headquarters is at the end of the corridor, and when I stride in the men stand up.
I pull my shoulders up tall. My father has taught me how to command men. He might be the boss, but they respect me.
“Niccolo.” My eyes find the middle-aged man, with dark hair like my father’s but less silver in it. He eyes me expectantly as if he’s been waiting to be summoned. “I need a word.”
We go into the private room next door, and I explain the situation. “My father needs food, something with a lot of carbs, and plenty of water. And make up the bed in the study. You’ll have to do it yourself. No one sees him like this, you understand?”
“Of course.” He looks wounded as if I’m questioning his loyalty. “It’s the same every year, Isabella.”
It is, but he also knows how important it is that we keep up the façade, that no one sees how deep his grief cuts.
“Don’t worry, Isabella. I’ll look after your father.”
I nod quickly, suddenly overwhelmed by the tears that sting my eyes. I resist the urge to give Niccolo a hug because I haven’t given him a hug since I was a little girl, and he’s too smart. He’d get suspicious.
“Thank you.”
I march out of there as if I own the place, which I kind of do. My father never remarried, and he keeps telling me how all this will be mine one day. I’m just not sure I want it.
At the end of the corridor, my personal guards Chiara and Alessia fall into step behind me. I’m so used their constant presence that I hardly notice.
Since my escape two years ago, I have two guards shadowing me everywhere I go. And they’ve been instructed never to accept food or drink from me.
I’ve been a good little princess for the past few months, lulling them into a false sense of security.
I feel bad that they’ll get in trouble for what I’m about to do. But they won’t be harmed. I asked for female guards to make me feel more comfortable, and my father complied. He won’t harm a woman, I tell myself as I head toward the back door.
I stop at the door to change my shoes, as I always do going into the garden, or at least as I have for the past five months. Ever since my father told me about his harebrained scheme and I knew I had to get out.
I slip my heels off and put my sneakers on. My guards think it’s so the heels don’t sink into the grass. The don’t realize it’s so I can run faster.
I saunter through the renaissance garden, resisting the urge to wipe my sweaty palms on my silk trousers. I stop at the flower garden to pick a bunch of gardenias. They were my mother’s favorite.
The small, whitewashed chapel is at the edge of the property. Thick woodlands surround it on three sides where the brambles have gotten overgrown and thick. My mother rests in the chapel, and it’s the one area of the estate where my father never ventures.
What only myself and Niccolo know is that it’s also a blind spot. My father wanted no CCTV on the place where his late wife rests. Another old-fashioned superstition that would be worth something to his enemies if it ever got out.
They’ll all know soon enough, and I’m sorry for that. But there’s nothing else I can do if I want my freedom.
I pause at the door of the chapel and take a deep breath. The emotion I feel is real, and I have to work to keep my shoulders from shuddering. I was six when my mother passed. Old enough to remember her and grieve what I’ve missed all these years.
Our bond was close, made more so because there were complications with the birth and she wasn’t able to conceive again after I was born. My father’s older relatives told him to put her aside, that a wife who couldn’t bear sons was no wife at all. It’s the one thing from the old-fashioned ways that my father refused to do. He loved her too much, sons or not.
