Breaking Midnight (Il Paradosso Series Book One)

Chapter forty-nine

What you offered was a love laced with poison;
And left behind the traces of your blemished soul.

***

I wasn't crazy.

I was beaten and torn into bits and pieces but I hadn't completely lost my mind. It took me a solid three weeks to regain some of my strength and senses, before I was released from the hospital.

The remaining five weeks of my recovery, I spent locked inside the bedroom to the three-story mansion that had been my prison for the past ten months.

The physical wounds were beginning to heal but spiritually, I was without a doubt, damaged beyond repair.

My mind drifted back to the eerie woods and the images of that night kept flashing before me.

Pushing myself up from the bamboo chair, I waddled to the rail, placing both hands on it to steady myself and tightened my grip around them until my knuckles were white.

Allowing the sun-rays to tickle my forehead, I drew in a long breath of air, savoring the momentum of late spring that had taken over the island.

The silence was both peaceful and daunting, with only the occasional wind blowing through the trees in the garden below.

The water flickered in the large basin fountain that was encircled by various flower beds, the colors adding to the breathtaking scenery.
Although my back was turned, I could sense his presence, aware of his eyes on me but made no effort to acknowledge him.

I felt a thousand miles away, cold and distant.

We were poles-apart.

It was as if the universe had shifted and the earth had drained the energy out of me.

Even the sun shone differently, the air in the atmosphere was thicker, the planets were no longer aligned and the stars were mismatched in the sky.

"Cecilia informed me that you haven't eaten today."

Facing forward, I walked back to the chair and without as much as a glance towards him; I carefully lowered myself onto the cushion.

"I'm well capable of making my own decisions," I replied while looking out to the lake, refusing to make eye-contact in fear of breaking down in front of him.

He stood against the railing with his hands inside his pockets, keeping a good amount of distance from me, which I couldn't blame him for. The last time he had tried to come near me I'd attacked him.

"I don't want to be here anymore, Antonio," I said, suppressing the heavy weight on my chest and disguising it with the steadiness in my voice that I somehow managed. "I want to go back to New York. I need you to let me go and if you care about me the slightest bit, you will not reject my request."

His silence was unsettling.

"I need to redeem myself or I may be on the verge of going insane, do you understand that?"

My question was more of a statement, to let him know that I was at the end of the road and adamant on leaving this toxic environment that had destroyed me, and nearly taken my life.
The birds were chirping in the near distance but their song was no longer pleasant to my ears, instead they instilled sadness and melancholy as if they were mourning my final days in this house.