Tangled In Strings

Chapter Three

I twist my head to the side and shut my eyes as if that will make it go away. When I open them, I've gathered myself enough to focus on Giovanni. He's completely still, both his hands on the sides of the stove. His head is bowed, but his posture hasn't softened. He's livid, and I can tell just by the back of him.

"Giovanni, I'm sorry," I whisper. I hear him inhale.

"You did this last time. I don't want to hear you apologize for him, Scarlett. Don't. You have to see how fucked that is."

"I'm not apologizing for him. I'm apologizing for me. I should have done things differently, and I didn't, and now–" I lose the sentence with an exhale.

"If you think I'm going to reprimand you, you're wrong. You were a scared woman who was still in love with a man who knew exactly how to make you care for him."

Something that has captured my mind for some time now makes me speak. I've spent months pondering the thought. "That's the horrible thing... I don't even think I loved him."

Giovanni turns, his eyes sharply aware. My fingers curl around one another.

Keep going, Scarlett. Keep talking.

"I think he made me believe I did." My chest expands. "It has to be that... because nothing I felt for him came within a hundred miles of what I feel for you."

His features soften, but the mask I'm so used to seeing is still up, concealing all the raging emotions within him.

"I'm sorry for this. So much could have been prevented, and now, he may make our lives harder."

"Then we will handle it when it comes," he responds. "We will handle it together because I know what he wants is you and I apart. That's probably why he came back here after all this time. Because we went public."

I step up to the table, placing both hands on the chair. "I'm scared he's dangerous."

His brows furrow at my words. "I will protect you, Scarlett."

"I know you will."

We simmer in silence, both shaken by the encounter. I loathe when Dixon is near because it brings back my old life, who I used to be, like a tsunami, a threat to destroy the new world I've begun to build for myself.

"I need you to tell me what he's done, Scarlett. You've told me he was abusive. I know nothing else... I have to know how much of a danger he is."

I tear my face away, blood drawing quickly from my face.

"You told me you would never ask me to do that."

"I know I did. But things have changed since then."

All I can think of is how much I don't want to even think of this, how much I wish we had just left and gotten on the plane we're just hours from boarding.

"You know I wouldn't ask you this if it wasn't important," he adds at my lack of an answer.

"What he's done is in the past, Giovanni. He was a bad person, who, yes, could definitely be dangerous."

"Scarlett."

"What?"

"He's hit you?"

I blink at him, aghast. He's not going to deter from this.

"Yes."

"He's strangled you?"

I nearly bite my tongue. I now feel my face heating up rapidly- with fear. "Yes."

His knuckles are white against his crossed arms. When he swallows, steeling himself, I know what's coming next without asking.

"Has he raped you?"

His words send off a distress signal within me, and I enter a state of uncontrollable panic. I want to run. "H-He–"

Giovanni nods reassuringly. "Tell me, baby."

"There were a few times... I was asleep. I'd wake up, and he was... I'd tell him to stop..."

I can't get a coherent sentence out, and that frustrates me, so I focus on my hands.

"He raped you. If you did not want it, then he raped you."

"It was a few times..."

"Say it, Scarlett," Giovanni demands, despite my unraveling. "You need to say it out loud. You need to know it."

I close my eyes, trying to picture sunny skies. A crowded street I saw in a movie once of Italy. A gelato. An unmade bed. Anything to transport me from this conversation.

For so long, I forced myself to push the sexual situations Dixon would put me into away, to focus on the beatings. The sex seemed like something else. The beatings were a foreign thing; the sex was something he and I had regularly as a married couple. But I knew. I'd beg him to stop, try to throw him off to no avail because his strength always overpowered my own. I always knew he was forcing me.

"He raped me," I whisper as a confession, unable to look over at the man in my kitchen. I shouldn't be angry at him for forcing me to say it, but I am. He won't ever let me stay in my denial. He forces me to feel this fucking pain.

When Giovanni finally speaks again, the words he utters softly make my heart come to a full, screeching stop.

"I want you to move in with me. In Los Angeles."