Sweet Truths & Silent Lies ✔️

CHAPTER 27 - ❝how is this even possible?❞

“Hmm?” He asks, lifting his hand to wrap a strand of my loose hair around his finger. “Who messaged you, dear Scarlett?”

I swallow hard, looking at my phone as another message came through from Giovanni. His name was in bold letters and the nickname I gave him the other day popped up on the screen again. Asstiglione.

“G-Giovanni.” I stutter, trying to avoid Vincent’s piercing gaze but he lets go of my hair to tip my chin upward with his forefinger, his thumb held my face in place. I couldn’t look away now, not even if I tried.

“You’re going to pick the phone up from the floor and you’re going to tell him that you are fine.” Vincent says, the tone of his voice demanding but at the same time amused. He found it amusing that I was so afraid of him.

I nod as he lets go of my chin so that I could pick the phone up from the floor. I go into the chats of Giovanni and message him back with shaking fingers. The palms of my hands were covered in sweat. I nearly dropped my phone as I typed a message to Giovanni to tell him that I was fine.

I send the message, swallowing hard. I see my message being delivered and not long after, Giovanni has read the message. But he doesn’t respond to it.

I hope he has figured it out—that the message I sent him was strange.

Vincent snatches the phone from my grasp and throws it against the hardwood floors of my brother’s old room. The phone cracks in a lot of places and I was surprised that it didn’t break in half.

Vincent smiles at me before he grabs me around the arm. He twirls me around so that my back was flush against his chest. I feel his warm breath fanning the side of my neck—close to my ear—when he speaks.

“Night, dear Scarlett.”

That was all I remember before I blacked out.

• • •

I woke up when I hear a pan, or something metallic of some sorts, clanking against a hard surface. There was a door directly in front of me, that’s where the smells of burnt toast and eggs came from, and so did the sounds.

I was in a seating position, my hands tied to the wooden chair’s armrests and my feet were tied to the legs of the chair so I was practically moulded into the chair itself. I couldn’t move my hands or feet, and when I managed to move just slightly, barely, the rope dug into my wrists and ankles more.

I focus on my surroundings seeing that the door was still closed. I was in some sort of garage. There was cement floors below my feet, stained with oil stains and there were muddy tracks of a car.

There was metal shelving all around me against the walls with power tools resting atop each shelf—drills, a circular saw and even a damn sander. There were also motor oils, tubs of nails and cardboard boxes with contents unbeknownst me resting on the shelves.

There wasn’t a car, though.

The entire garage smelled like motor oil, dust, cold cement and then I caught an occasional whiff of breakfast being made through the door directly in front of me.

The smells of the food made my mouth water and my stomach clench. I don’t remember the last time I ate or how long I have been tied up to this chair. It could’ve been hours. It could’ve been days. I don’t know.

The metallic clanking stops, coming from the kitchen I assume, and the door to my front opens. Vincent steps out with a tray of food in his left hand and a glass of water in his right.

“You made me breakfast?” I question, eyeing the tray with food in his hand.

“Dear Scarlett,” he says in a whimsical tone, “you better be grateful that you’re getting anything to eat at all. It is breakfast in bed,” he says but then a frown settles between his thick eyebrows but then he smirks again, “or should I say breakfast in chair.”