❝ 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞. ❞
When Ricardo Esposito bursts through a door and finds a girl handcuffed on the floor, he decides to take her in and give her something she never had.
A fam...
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I remember reading about the five stages of anger some time ago.
First, there was the trigger phase, where something hits the anger that is buried deep inside you. When I ran outside and saw multiple guards lined up in front of huge gates, all the sadness and disappointment inside of me turned into anger.
Next, there was the escalation phase. One thing is that anger has never been to my advantage. In my case, it comes unexpected, unprocessed, and leads to actions I always end up regretting.
I could feel the anger building up inside me. My breaths became shorter and my hands began to tremble. The only thing I wanted to do was fight each of these men over 6ft with my 5'7, even though I knew it wouldn't end well.
And the fact that Ricardo, Rafael, and Leandro decided to follow me outside made them, especially the first mentioned the target of my next phase. The crisis phase.
"Will you lock me into your mansion?"
"Just listen-" Ricardo started.
"Do you know what you are?" I paused and took a step closer to them. "A liar."
"Before I came here you said- no you promised me that you wouldn't take my freedom from me. You said I could go wherever I want, whenever I want. But this," I said and pointed around me. "This is not what you promised."
"You should've just left me there," I said straight to Ricardo and made my way back inside, but I could still hear Rafael's next words.
"You should've."
I passed Alessandro and Pietro and went up the stairs when Leandro's voice stopped me.
"Why do you believe that if someone is doing something good, they want something in return?" Leandro asked from behind me. One thing I noticed about Leandro is that he also doesn't trust me. None of them does but compared to Rafael he hides the mistrust behind multiple questions he knows I won't answer directly.
"Isn't that how it works?" I asked without turning around.
"What?"
"Life," I answered but in the end, I realized that the last person who could tell someone how life works was me.
I never had one.
• • • •
The hours passed and the longer I sat locked in the bathroom, I went over into the last two phases of my anger, the recovery, and the depression phase. Maybe I did have every right to be angry or disappointed in him, but not before he had a chance to explain to me.
I didn't know why but I wanted to make this work. I wanted him and his family to trust me since at the end of the day I could imagine myself trusting them, someday. And this was something I could take into my own hands. So I swallowed my doubts and went to Ricardo's office. I knocked as quietly as possible with the hope he wouldn't hear it and I could walk away and at least tell myself that I tried.
Since there was no response I took a step back but then the door opened in front of me and Alessandro came out. He leaned to my ear and I naturally leaned away but I could still hear what he said.
"Let him explain first and if you still want to leave then, I will take you anywhere you want tomorrow," he said and left.
I went inside his office and the interior design was incredible. It just simply looked the way he looked from the outside.
He was sitting behind his desk and motioned for me to sit down in one of the chairs in front of him.
He didn't waste much time and told me what had happened. It seems that the two guards heard the conversation telling Alessandro where he found me and misunderstood. They took me there to get recognition from him. However, he didn't answer the question of where they are now.
Needless to say, I was embarrassed and didn't how to ask him for forgiveness for the things I said and thought about him.
"No hard feelings?" was the only thing I managed to say.
"No hard feelings," he said and got up.
He was about to leave but the fact that he forgave me like all of that was nothing made me want to give him something back. So I stood up and I said that first thing that came to my mind.
"Alessia" I declared, which made him stop, turn around and take some steps closer to me. I swallowed and tried to form a proper sentence this time.
"I-" I paused and pointed to me. "I am Alessia."
"Nice to meet you, Alessia," he said and smiled. And for what may have been a long time I smiled too, genuinely.
