Love Thy Enemy

Chapter 13: Pain

It gets tiring. People ask me if I am okay and I always say yes. I am fine. I am just fine. I am so tired. Here I am, wondering if the world I grew up in has completely fallen apart. My mother is dead, two of my three best friends are dead and my dad might as well be. So here I am, just fine. I am just fine. Maybe if I say it enough times I'll actually start believing it. Sad, pathetic, call it whatever the fuck you want but regardless of what name its assigned—I am assigned— I feel like something inside of me is dying, crawling for a breath of fresh air and unable to find it. I am desperate for air, for the day to go back to yesterday. Yesterday I had allies, yesterday the man I am falling for wasn't a murderer, the cause for my pain, yesterday I knew how to smile. Yesterday I mattered. Today I don't. I don't matter. But, of course I am just fine. I am perfectly fine. In control. I am fine. I am fine. Lies.

I am not fine. I am not fine. Truth.

"how are you?"

"why aren't you smiling?"

"why don't you ever smile?"

I am fine. I smile, you are just not there for it. Lies. I don't need anyone or anything. Not a shoulder to cry on, a hug, a place to sleep in, money, a bed. Fucking nothing. Lies. I have nothing to lose. Truth.

It takes me maybe an hour and a half to get to Valentino's villa. When I get there and the lights in the mansion are turned off. I get off the bicycle and see that the front door has been left open, as though he were expecting me. No one is stupid enough to enter the lion's den, so why bother locking it? My back is drenched from sweat and I am breathing heavily from the hot sun beating on the back of my neck. My arms are shaking and I think my legs as well. Someone needs to pay for what happened to my best friends. But I can't do it alone, I need help. I need to ask the man whose bed I left this morning, the man responsible for my mother's death, for help.

When I get inside I search every room, open every door, every curtain. One room at a time. In the kitchen I notice there is a basket of fruit in the middle of the table. If I wasn't living a nightmare, I would appreciate it. I head into the basement where I first killed those men but Valentino isn't there either. Instead, there are three bodies slumped over a plastic sheet, two men and a woman, a single bullet in each of their heads. Unable to keep looking at their expressionless faces, at the terror I know they must have felt, I leave, heading up the stairs. It will never stop. Bodies upon bodies, blood haunts every corner of my life, and every corner of this town. Bow down or die. Pay, or die. Eat shit, or die.

I imagine what they must have felt, and I let myself drown in the image of their tears, and their fear. I am not the ice princess, I am the fire and the warmth of a burning house.

I head into the kitchen and sit on one of the chairs around the marble table, waiting for Valentino while attempting to control my emotions. How could I have let this happen? How did it get this far?

Remembering that he is staying at the cottage in the woods instead of the villa I call him. He answers after three long rings.

"Adelaide, what are you doing at my house?" He asks before I can bother with the formal "hello".

"How do you know I am at your house?" I wonder, toying with a grape.

"I activated the cameras two nights ago" he responds. I look up, searching for their location.

"You won't find them" He informs me. I stop searching and go back to playing with the grape between my fingers.

"Are you watching me right now?" I ask.

"Yes. I got a call fifteen minutes ago." Of course he did.

"I need to talk to you. How quickly can you get here?" It feels wrong to ask for his help but I really don't have a choice. I need justice for my best friends.