Heart of Stone - Stone and Fire #1 [17+] (REWRITING)

Chapter 20

sorry for the wait. 

Adriana's POV

He was here. Somewhere.

I paced my room. The house had begun to feel more like a gilded cage rather than my supposed freedom, and I could practically feel Petrov's presence bleed under my door. 

I walked over to the window and unlocked the latch before sliding it on up. The air was cool. Refreshing. A better sanctuary than this stuffy, gloomy room. It was a beautiful day, the kind that begged for sandaled feet to press on blades of grass and hold hands with someone as sprinklers soaked them wet. I loved the outside.

But somehow, even the lilly-dotted shrubs looked to thorny to walk past.

I traced the outline of the windowpane, trying to find some sort of solace. But even then, it was too quiet. The quiet that banged against my eardrums as my skin crawled with thoughts he was having. Of me. Of what he did to me.

Was my own sense of pride not enough? I'd spent hours, days, reliving it. Thinking about what I could've done. What I should've done, because I didn't want to fucking victimize myself like some frail girl without a backbone. I had one. I'd grown one since that day, and it was the only thing that kept my head up high. And questions? If there were any in the first place, I'd answer to them like wildfire. 

I could- I wanted to do so much. 

Cut his eyes out.

Grab his fingers and rip them off, piece by piece, until he could feel even a fragment of the pain I did.

I wanted to make him feel. 

But no matter how much I bit down the past, it all came rushing back the second his eyes hit mine. Like two holes, jarred with terror. Inscribed with a curse that latched onto me over and over, bleeding me dry. And I'd bled a lot. Far more than the average made man in the Cosa Nostra. 

But nobody knew. 

It was almost like the motel's red sign became a bandanna around his forehead. A blinking flash, replaying the memories like a movie tape. No pause button. No big, red X. 

It prevented me from doing anything at all.

How the fuck was I supposed to kill him? And that was the jarring part. The actual horror. It was what kept the leverage in his very hands and pushed me under his boot. I fucking hated being controlled. It was like being strangled, until I could do nothing but play dead and pretend it felt normal. 

That's why Papa had given up on me. Years of arguments, and what progress? Getting me married? Even that had been an act my own doing. Papa was the underboss, for goodness' sake. 

How was I letting a man with a lesser title dictate my sanity?

I pushed away from the window.

I never agreed to this marriage for revenge. 

I did it to reclaim my life, my power.

I did it to finally give the eight-year old me in a pink church dress the satisfaction she never got from sitting and listening to a pastor drone on about the right way to live.

What I wanted was Petrov's head at my feet. Carnage dimming the room around me while I dug my ruby hemmed dagger into his skin and carved out the one place I had a guarantee he would end up in.

But what I needed, what I ached for without knowing it, was solace. A never-ending sense of peace I'd been chasing for years, past all the impediments that were the visits to a cousin's baby shower, or the occasional wine tasting Mama dragged me to.