Antonio.
No, he can't have it.
I refuse to believe it.
"No," I whispered to myself in agony.
I started to search under our bed when I felt the air around me grow cold.
"Are you looking for this?" His voice was dripping with evilness as my heart stopped.
I removed my head from under the bed and wiped the tears that I haven't even realized had fallen.
I stood up leisurely and faced the devil.
He had a scowl on his face with my notebook in his hand.
For the first time, I was unable to place an X next to one of the items on the list and I will never be able to.
I stared into Antonio's emotionless eyes. His grip on my notebook was so tight that his knuckles were white and his hands were shaking.
I'm fucking dead.
"Antonio, hold on." I pleaded with him as his fist tightened. He was holding on very securely to my notebook.
Everything was going all too well. This was way too easy.
I don't know why I was so stupid.
How could I be so stupid?
I can never leave Antonio. He is always, always a million steps ahead of me. He knows all and he controls all.
I will never be able to escape.
My eyes proceeded to alter between Antonio and the vice grip that he had on my notebook.
"Please," I croaked out.
His hands instantly went up as if to silence me and I immediately shut down.
"What the fuck." That is all he managed to say.
My quivering hands attempted to wipe away my uncontrollable tears.
"This is what you have been doing?" He questioned in a hurt tone.
He didn't even look just angry, he looked heartbroken as well. As if he couldn't fathom the fact that I didn't want to be his punching bag for the rest of my life.
"Going behind my back," He continued.
"Lying to me," He took a few strides closer to me.
"I-"
"Hiding things from me?!" He screamed in my face.
I looked down in not only fear but shame.
I was embarrassed.
I can't believe I was so idiotic and naive to think that I could ever get my life back from the deathly grips of Antonio.
What hurt my heart the most was that I truly believed that I was getting out of here. I was so excited to leave. I was even planning on the things that I would do once I was free.
I had a list of places I wanted to go to, celebrities that I wanted to meet, and clothes that I wanted to buy.
My whole relationship with Antonio was practically slave and master.
He made the decisions and I obeyed them without any protests.
He's taken me to many places and has bought me all the clothes in the world.
But he's beat me in every country that he has ever taken me to, and he's scolded me when I would actually wear the clothes that he bought in public.
I could never win with Antonio.
Yes, we would travel, but the trip would end with us flying back to our home with me injured and half-dead.
Yes, he would buy me clothes, but he'd end up burning them because they exposed me too much.
Antonio is ridiculously suffocating the little ounce of life I have left in me.
That's why I needed to leave. So I can gain control over not only my life but myself.
For some reason, Antonio is way too selfish. He could never let me go. I don't know what it was about me that he loves so much.
But the thought of me ever leaving him would probably set him off and make him burn the whole fucking country down.
In a way, Antonio also has a sort of dependency on me. He tells me that I make him a better person but frankly I believe that I bring out the worst in him and he takes his worst out on me.
I strategically planned out what my life would be like once I left, and now because of my dumbness, I will never be able to leave.
A lot of women out there romanticize men like Antonio. They claim to want that love and to crave the toxicness.
But those types of women don't even know what the hell they are wishing for.
Who in their right mind would support a narcissistic psychopath and want to have a life where they could never go a week without having their bones broken by their "lover"?
Who would ever want to be with someone that can scar them so badly and strip them of their self-worth in the name of love?
Who would rather get shivers when their lover is around rather than butterflies?
Sometimes possessive behavior can be attractive to some, but not when it ends with you bruised, that's never okay.
Plenty of young and impressionable women want that relationship until they are stuck in a hospital with their bodies black and blue and their bones broken beyond repair.
Relationships like this can never end. The victims are too dependent and manipulated into thinking that it's love and the abusers refuse to let them go.
Finally, I've gotten my mind back from the clutches of Antonio. I know he loves me in the sickest way possible but I've realized that it isn't healthy.
It took me so many years of our marriage to come to terms with that, but now I am aware that this is not normal.
But now that I have my mind, my body is still stuck with Antonio and my soul is destroyed.
After years of weekly hospital visits, casts, bruise ointments, and physical therapy, I can never truly move on from Antonio.
He has ruined me.
It's not just physical abuse. He has degraded me and my family and hurt the ones that I loved as well.
He punched my father in the face because he told me Antonio was not good for me, he almost killed my cousin because he hugged me and he pulled a gun out on my family multiply times when they tried to separate us.
I don't know why I ignored the early signs that our relationship would turn sour soon. I was 17 when he did most of this shit and I never questioned it.
I was naive and young, completely oblivious that the "love of my life" was slowly ruining my life.
My family always loved Antonio, but after he came back from Italy after the years he was gone, he completely changed and my family began to despise him.
Of course, Antonio couldn't have me leave him so he gradually turned me against my family.
Antonio has cut off my family and friends from me and I haven't seen or spoken to my family in years.
I don't even know what real love is.
All I have ever wanted in life was love. Kind love, not toxic love.
As a little girl, I would dream of love all the time. I would dream of having a prince swoop into my distasteful life and show me how to live beautifully.
Antonio was that prince when we were kids. But something went wrong and he suddenly began to hate everything and he became the most heartless and frightening person ever.
When I was hurt he would take my pain away from me, now he's the cause of me being hurt most of the time.
When I was a little girl I would have never been okay with how my life turned out. Especially not at the hands of Antonio.
Confined in an empty home with an empty husband and an empty heart.
I am utterly miserable. I don't have anything to live for since I have nothing.
I don't even have a life, I'm alive but I'm truly dead on the inside.
All at the hands of the man in front of me that I will forever be stuck with.
Now that he was close enough I was able to see my notebook up close. I stared at it long and hard in distress.
That notebook was the only thing keeping me alive, knowing that I could escape and finally leave like a human again.
I squinted my eyes at the notebook and noticed that it didn't have the star embedded in the front like I thought it did.
My eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Was this even my notebook filled with my escape plans?
I have plenty of notebooks so it wouldn't be a surprise if this is another one of my many notebooks and journals.
As I examined the notebook I noticed a few strange things.
Instead of a star, there was a heart.
The room was awfully dark but I could make out the color of the notebook. It was red with a golden heart in the middle of it.
This wasn't the notebook.
My notebook that actually had all of the things I needed to keep from Antonio was black with a white star in the middle.
I sighed in relief internally, completely oblivious of Antonio, and focused on the notebook.
"You hid this under the bathtub." He spoke up confirming my suspicions.
This was not my notebook filled with my escape scheme.
Well if this wasn't the notebook then where was it?
I was growing worried. Antonio seemed to not like what was in that notebook in his hand and I could have potentially written some shitty things in there towards him.
Suddenly he grabbed the back of my head and brought it close to the notebook in his raised hand.
"Let's take a look, shall we." He said all to calmy.
Has he even seen what was inside yet?
He let go of my head painfully and I rubbed away the soreness.
He flipped between the pages with his eyes squinted.
I stared at the back of the notebook that was held tightly by Antonio's tattooed hands.
With a thud, he slammed the notebook shut and placed it down on the nightstand.
My eyes were wide in fear.
Did he see something bad?
"Why did you hide that?" He questioned me.
"Um, I must have dropped it when I was in the bath." I quickly lied.
"Alright." He simply stated.
What the absolute hell did he even see in there?
"Is everything okay?" I hesitantly questioned him.
"I don't know Drea, is everything okay?" He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed down at me.
"Of course." I quickly blurted out.
"If you hide anything from again-"
"I won't. I promise." I smiled at him and placed a kiss on his lips.
He had a suspicious glare on his face as if he was suspecting me of something but nonetheless, he kissed me back.
"I trust you one hundred percent right now. Don't fuck it up." He sternly said.
I nodded and he brushed my hair behind my ear before walking out of the room moments later.
I let out the loudest sigh that I have ever let out and ran over to the door to lock it.
I sprinted back to the nightstand and opened the notebook curiously.
I examined the notebook and saw mindless doodles in it and a few random words in different forms of handwriting.
I must have had this notebook while I was supremely dying of boredom because the things in here were extremely random.
I shut the notebook and placed it back on the nightstand with the same question revolving around my mind.
Where the hell is my actual journal?
I stood up from the bed and lifted the mattress once again and searched it thoroughly this time. I sighed and placed it down when my notebook still wasn't in view.
I was about to give up and start my list all over again when I noticed a faint bump under the blankets.
I quickly shot up from my seated position and ran to the end of the bed.
I pull the comforter up and smiled when I saw my notebook.
I am so glad that I got to my notebook before nighttime because if I didn't, then Antonio would have gotten to it.
And he would have actually killed me, no doubt.
I grabbed my notebook and hugged it tightly to my chest.
"I will never lose you again." I smiled at it.
I probably look crazy right now but I don't care.
A few minutes ago I was positive that my life was over.
I'm starting to think that I am just as bipolar as Antonio. I could have sworn that I would kill myself a few moments ago and now I'm super happy.
I opened my notebook with a shit-eating grin and for the first time placed two checks in one day to the two items next.
"Anti-Antonio", was such a funny title for my list. I couldn't stop laughing when I first thought of it. The maids thought I was nuts when they heard me laughing to myself in my room.
I was halfway done with my plan. Five down and five more to go.
Not only did I manage to build muscle, but Antonio claimed to trust me one hundred percent meaning that he had no suspicions.
I hid my notebook back under the mattress and fell down on the bed with a huge smile on my face.
For the remainder of the day, I fantasized about everything that I would do once I am free.
ANTI-ANTONIO
1. TRICK THE CAMERAS ✘
2. GET ON HIS GOOD SIDE ✘
3. GET FEWER GUARDS ✘
4. BUILD MUSCLE ✘
5. END ALL SUSPICIONS ✘
6. FAKE PREGNANCY SCARE
7. WIRE MONEY INTO A SECRET BANK ACCOUNT
8. FAKE DEPRESSION
9. DEACTIVATE THE WIFI
10. ESCAPE