Gideon was a sight to behold.
Lisa's well-aimed smack with the bar stool had left him with a long gash above his eyebrow which bled profusely down over his face. Half-blind and mad with rage, he crushed my body back into his, my thrashing and struggling did nothing to deter him. I clawed at his arms to no avail, my nails couldn't penetrate his thick jacket, and I tried scratching at the back of his hand instead. In retaliation, he flexed his fingers and crushed my jaw.
'Don't think I won't break your teeth,' he snarled down at me. 'One of you is going to pay for what she did to me. I'd rather it was her, but I'll settle for you.'
Will advanced on us menacingly. 'Leave her out of this, Gideon!'
'One more step, Darcy,' Gideon warned. He moved his hand down from my mouth to my throat and squeezed until I choked and clawed at his fingers with renewed urgency. 'See what happens to her.'
Will came to a halt in the middle of the piazza, halfway between us and his sister. The moment he did, Gideon eased up, and I drew in rapid, rasping breaths. My gaze darted between Will who stared hard at our teacher, years of pent up anger and resentment clear in his eyes, and down to Amanda who gripped Lisa against her side so she wouldn't rush into danger to help me.
'You don't need her,' Amanda said. 'You can let her go and leave quietly. Please, Gideon,' she implored, 'just walk away before this gets any worse.'
'You really think I'll believe that the moment I'm out of here you won't call the police?' he asked. 'I'm not stupid, Mandy. I know the sort of woman your mother is. Who that little bitch's parents are. You won't stop until I'm behind bars.'
'So, what will taking her accomplish?' Amanda persisted. 'You're making this worse for yourself!'
'Taking her will get me what I'm due,' Gideon said. 'You should have married me and given me the money your idiot father left. That was my right! I should have been in that will! Me! Instead I got pathetic little handouts while the rest of you lived off his fortune.'
'You won't get anything by taking me,' I choked out around his grasping fingers. 'My family has nothing!'
'Your family might have nothing,' Gideon said. A dark smile twisted across his lips. He leaned in close enough that his hot breath beat against my skin and my stomach turned with nausea. Slowly, he dragged his wet, slimy tongue up from my mouth to my cheekbone, his gaze fixed on Will the whole time. 'But I imagine dear William will want to pay up before I take my frustrations out on you.'
I tried to shake my head, but with Gideon holding me so firmly, it was little more than a twitch. I didn't want Will to have to pay anything to save me. Or his family, for that matter. This was our mess, and my friends and I should deal with it. Well, technically it was mine. I was the one who'd confronted Gideon.
'He won't – '
'Whatever it is, I'll pay it,' Will said. 'Just take your hands off her!'
'What do you think?' Gideon asked me in a whisper which made my skin crawl. 'Do you want to go back to them? You're like me, Beth. We're the same. We're not welcome in their world.'
'You're not welcome in any world!' I spat back at him.
'Look at you,' he cooed, 'still fighting me, pretending that you could be one of them. You know how they've treated me. They'll do the same to you. They like you now, but the moment you're out on your own they'll pretend that you don't exist. You're too poor to move in their circles. No matter how hard you try, you can't change the fact that the blood in your veins isn't blue. You will never matter.'
'I don't need to be rich to matter,' I snarled. 'That's the difference between us, Gideon. I'm not so pathetic that I think my worth has a price tag.'
'Beth!' Jenny raced toward us. Meg, Chrissy, and Charlie were close behind her. Will stepped out to block her from getting too close. Not willing to risk my safety if Jenny startled Gideon, and he saw fit to hurt me. She skidded to a halt and tried to push past Will. 'Let me through! Beth!'
Emboldened by their presence, I asked, 'How many people are running here to help you, Gideon? I don't see any of your friends in this piazza. It's almost like they don't care that I'm poor because they're my friends.'
'Friendship won't pay your bills, will it?' Gideon reminded me.
He was right.
It didn't.
'Friendship isn't meant to pay your bills. It's meant to –'
Gideon crushed his hand around my throat, and I was cut off. 'This is all very touching,' he said while my friends shrieked in horror. It took the combined efforts of Charlie and William to keep them at bay. I could only gasp without offering any words of comfort or reassurance that I'd surely come out of this in one piece. I had to. I always did, right? Undeterred by their cries, he continued, 'but I'm getting bored. I'm leaving, and if any of you try to stop me, they'll be dragging her body out of a river by morning.'
I'd hoped that there was enough humanity left in Gideon for my words to get through to him. Once, I'd thought we might be friends. We had both had difficult childhoods. While I hadn't lost my parents, I remembered how frightened I was when my father almost died in his crash. Not only was he an orphan, but he'd been brought up surrounded by wealth that he felt entitled to but knew he would never possess. He was like a starving dog who'd had a steak waved in front of him, only for it to be snatched away.
That kind of envy could drive a man to madness.
I was sorry to say that it was an envy I'd felt.
I may have professed that friendship was the only thing worth having, but I hadn't always felt that way. It was difficult to be the only poor girl in a school full of rich young ladies. My friends had never tried to actively remind me of my circumstances, but every time they talked about some new outfit they'd bought or a trip they'd taken, I remembered the insurmountable social divide between us. In claiming to hate money and the people who used it to their advantage, I'd constructed a wall between myself and my friends. It was a wall made of my bitter resentment of their charmed lives. I shut myself off behind it whenever I made snide comments about their shopping habits, when I rebuked their gifts, when I mocked the grandeur of their homes, and when I assumed that they would forget that I existed when we weren't forced into one another's company at school.
The only real difference between me and Gideon was that I still had a chance to see past all that and embrace what I had; sisters willing to do anything to save me.
Gideon took a step backwards and dragged me with him. I dug in my heels and tried to take a step in the opposite direction, but it was a futile effort. I wasn't as strong as a full-grown man. I was just a teenaged girl. To counter my feeble efforts, Gideon just lifted me off the ground by a few inches. He told Will, 'I'll contact you with a time and place to exchange the money for her. Until then, I suggest you don't follow me.'
'I'm not letting you take her out of this square!'
'Neither am I!' Charlie announced boldly.
'None of us will!' Meg added.
'How touching,' Gideon mocked. 'But you don't have any choice in the matter.'
Perhaps not, but that didn't mean I had to let him take me without a fight.
Oliver had said that I couldn't kick my way out of my problems, but with my feet off the ground, that was exactly what I intended to do. I raised my legs, bent my knees, and thrust my feet backwards into his legs. I'd been aiming for his knees, but if I collided with something, then I would take it as a win.
One of my feet missed. The other got him just beneath his knee-cap. I twisted myself in his arms. The strangle hold was becoming excruciatingly painful, but I only had to put up with it a little longer. I was reassured that the others were quickly taking action to help me when I heard their footsteps beating down on the concrete. I was torn from Gideon's arms roughly, and Will pushed me toward Jenny and Charlie, who hastily escorted me away from the pair.
Before Will could show Gideon exactly how he felt about what he'd done to me, someone else stepped in.
Gideon was hit square in the cheek with a powerful punch, then in the nose, followed swiftly by an uppercut to his gut. Still reeling, Gideon whimpered when Amanda's knee struck his groin. Not done with taking out what I assumed was many years of pent up rage. She turned him around and ran with the back of his collar in one hand and a clump of his hair in the other. They approached the fountain at dizzying speed and Amanda released him. The momentum was more than enough to send Gideon face first into the water as he tumbled over the low perimeter wall, resulting in an impressive splash.
Stunned, Will asked, 'Mandy, how did you –'
'There were self-defence classes at my university,' Amanda said breathlessly. 'I was a good student.'
'Good? You mean amazing!' Charlie professed.
Gideon would not be held back by a little water. He struggled to his feet, slipping on the glittering coins resting in the bottom of the fountain as he fought to regain his balance. Lisa sprinted towards us and clung to my arm. I couldn't tell if she was trying to protect me or if she expected me to keep her safe. I wasn't in any fit state for the latter. All I wanted to do was lie down in a dark room and sleep for a week. Will stepped forward, ready to fend Gideon off should he come back at us.
It was then that we heard the sirens.
'You called the police?' I asked Jenny hoarsely.
'I did,' Chrissy said. 'While everyone was screaming. Shouldn't I have?'
I could have kissed her.
The police didn't hesitate to drag Gideon kicking and yelling from the fountain. The more he resisted the officers, the more trouble he'd be in, but he was too angry to do anything but struggle. It took three men to wrestle him into cuffs and then into the back of a waiting car. It was immediately obvious to the officers we were little more than frightened foreign students, but it took Amanda's excellent grasp of Italian to explain to them which school we'd come from, where we were staying, and that Lisa was the missing girl that they'd had reported to them.
There were threats of ambulances, and hospital stays from the police who eyed my injuries warily. I could feel my neck bruise and every inch of my body ached, but I begged Amanda not to let them call for the paramedics. I'd had more than enough excitement for one night. I just wanted it to be over.
While she negotiated a ride back to the hotel for us from the officers, Will drew me away from the others and pulled me into a gentle hug. I winced, but I didn't pull away. I'd been longing to feel his reassuring arms around me ever since I'd found Gideon in the alley. It was only while I was held against his chest I believed I was safe.
That this nightmare with Gideon was finally over.
'Never scare me like that again.'
'If I ever get the urge to be attacked by a complete lunatic again, I'll do everything I can to resist,' I vowed. I pulled back to look up into his eyes and offered an exhausted smile. 'Can we go back to the hotel now? I need to lie down.'
'You can't do that just yet,' he said.
'Why not?'
'You need to explain all this to your father.'