Page 2 of Truth or Dare

Tessa and her boys moved in with her and I think they’re helping one another heal from the loss of Tom as well as Tessa’s husband James.

Me? I think maybe I need therapy, too. My father, poor excuse for one that he is, the man who sold me to pay a debt to Tommy’s father and who thought it’d buy him an opportunity to be a big shot… he’s still incarcerated, but he’s alive and safe. For now. Last I heard, anyway.

I struggle daily with my situation, with what my life has become. But I can’t imagine living without Tommy being the center of my universe. Our relationship isn’t healthy; I know this. I also know that I don’t want a life without him in it. Hopefully in time we can find our way to a healthier place.

Tommy is so protective of me it feels smothering some days. We rarely leave home; I never get to go anywhere without him. And the sex? Even when it doesn’t come on the heels of a nightmare it’s pretty rough sometimes. But it’s what we both need. We both get release. He gets confirmation that I’m his; he gets full control over one thing in his life. And me? I get to be his, get to help him by giving him what he needs and it’s not altogether altruistic either, because I get to let go of the crap in my head and for a few minutes I feel totally, utterly, free. He takes control and for those few minutes (or sometimes, those few hours) I worry about nothing.

Sometimes too, it’s so gentle I cry when I orgasm because I can feel how much he loves me as it’s etched into his features. He worships my body and stares into my eyes whether he makes love to me or whether he’s fucking me with this passion, this fire that I will never ever get tired of.

Tommy and his brother Dario decided that Dare is going to transition the company and the subsidiaries and then once it’s as squeaky clean as it can possibly get, some or most of it is being sold. Tommy’s not out of the loop but Dare is hands-on. They hired a consulting firm to help and he and Tommy talk pretty much daily over the computer.

When Tommy and I got to Costa Rica and got married on a beach at sunset it was almost perfect. It was breathtaking, exactly what I wanted, staring into the eyes of the man I loved with our toes in the sand and the sky a dozen brilliant colors. The only missing ingredient was the people from my life before Tommy, but I came to terms with the fact that it couldn’t be helped. We need to be incognito for now and I would never want to put the people I love in unnecessary danger. So, this is how it has to be.

I sent them a letter before we left that said I was taking an extended trip and I plan to get word to them again soon so that they don’t worry. I might have Tess mail them a letter soon so that it’s not traceable to where I am.

Tommy suggested I visit to say goodbye before we moved and even talked about sneaking them to our wedding like he had to do with his family. But, I’m not the same girl I was a few months ago and I didn’t want to bring them into the orbit of the danger surrounding this family. I feel like I’ve grown into a different person. I’ve known so much fear, seen so much death, and I’ve felt so much pain that I’d hate to cloud their light and airy lives with that. They probably wouldn’t know me anymore. They’d look at me and see I’m different and they’d worry. Or they’d be sad. And if I looked too long at them, I might be sad too. I might be sad for my lost innocence. I don’t need that. Regret won’t help me.

Tommy got angry when I kept making excuses about not bringing them to the wedding and then I blurted some of what I really felt and he got really upset. He blames himself for this. I blame our fathers. I also can’t help but blame my mother, too. She gave up. She gave up on life. She gave up on me. She fixed nothing before she left. She left so many things at loose ends and so many questions unanswered and I know she was hurt and sad and depressed, but I can’t help but be angry with her for not thinking about how her actions would affect me. That’s what mothers are supposed to do – protect their babies.

As for our safety, I was hoping that here we’d have a fresh canvas, a place where we could move on and live without Tommy feeling like he’s got to be looking over his shoulder all the time. But so far, that isn’t happening. Tommy got fake identities for us so that we could slip off the grid for a while. He knows that there’s a chance that if what he did is suspected there will be people to answer to that are even more threatening than the cops. He also said that if he goes back, he’s afraid he’ll just get sucked into the business and have trouble finding his way out of it.

He kept the farm for us and has someone checking on it once in a while. The house his father bought him for his 29th birthday was sold and he sold his brother the condo as Dario was living there anyway.

Dario and the girls are all on the path to healing, it seems. No one talked about what happened with Tom at the end and they were all here for the wedding acting like there was nothing but love between them all. I guess the girls are all just quietly mourning him as if he were someone they loved and lost tragically. It was tragic. It was tragic how he revealed his true nature in his last days on the planet and hurt his family so deeply, cost his daughter her husband and the father of her children, put his son in a position where he had no choice but to fatally shoot him.

I get a vibe from the girls like maybe they know what really happened because they and a lot of other people saw what went down just before Tom had me taken. No one’s talking to me about any of it. The kiss Tom planted on me at his welcome home party before he abducted me was never mentioned by any of them. I could be wrong, but I get the impression they’re just burying it.

It seems like we’re all just working at healing. They don’t treat Tommy with anger or push him away. If anything, during the wedding it seemed like everyone was closer, tighter than ever. Moods were quiet and somber when they got here but the wedding day was magical, filled with love and well wishes and that’s what mattered.

Here, we’re also Tommy and Tia, but on our passports we’re Tommaso and Valentina Caruso, names I picked. I chose the surname for Rose’s parents. He says we don’t have to worry about money, he’s got enough put away to look after us for years and once the company’s taken all apart and sold we’ll never have to worry about money again. He tells me that to comfort me, but money probably can’t buy my husband what he needs the most – peace.

In an argument we had a few days after the wedding when he was being moody and broody and refusing to leave the house, Tommy said he wished he could turn back the clock to the day he first saw me and leave me behind that ice cream counter untainted by his poison. I slapped him in the face when he said that to me. In reaction to my slap, he pinned me against a wall with my arms held over my head and scowled at me as I screamed in his face that poison or not, his love is mine and how dare he wish that away. It turned my blood to acid to think that he’d wish what we have away for even a second. What we have is everything to me. It’s all I have.

That heated argument resulted in my getting a wicked spanking in retaliation for slapping his face and then sex so rough and so totally amazing that I limped the next day, my body feeling like I’d run a marathon. Sex is a common argument ender for us. It’s a common way to share joy or deal with frustration or fear; it’s what we do. Sometimes he gets wound so tight that I know it’s what he needs, so I push his buttons until he takes what he needs.

I’ve changed. I don’t know that I’m stronger but I do know that I find ways to deal with my anger and frustration now… usually through sex.

A few days after that argument, we had another. I wanted to go for a walk and he made an excuse about waiting for a phone call. I waited two hours but then told him I’d just go and be gone half an hour. He wouldn’t let me and refused to bring his phone on a walk, mumbling about bad reception and missing the call. So I told him off and left the house anyway. I saw him come out behind me and I said, “I’m going for a thirty-minute walk. Just let me go!” He grabbed me and threw me over the shoulder and carried me back and when we got back in the house he snarled, “Don’t you ever do that again!”

I stuck my tongue out at him and took off back out the door toward the water and he followed me, so I ran. Of course he chased me. He tackled me to the sand. I pushed, shoved, and swore at him, telling him I couldn’t spend 24/7 with him without losing my freaking mind and that I just wanted a half an hour walk on the beach to myself. He responded by apologizing for being so overprotective but then he fucked me hard down in the sand, telling me he loved me more than anything, begging me to be patient with him.

I’d often said it was a fantasy of mine to have sex on a beach. But the reality? It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. First, there’s the sand. It gets … everywhere.

E-v-e-r-y where!

I had sand in my vajayjay, up my butt, everywhere. We were kissing and there was sand getting in our mouths. There were freaking bugs on us, too. It was not as sexy as Hollywood makes it out to be, especially when it’s as rough and tumble as it is with Tommy.

But that release of frustration helped us both that day and fortunately or maybe unfortunately, that plus the spanking after the slap in the face meant the start of a cycle of me goading him into rough sex whenever he got moody or broody.

After the beach sex, he took a two hour walk with me. But during that walk we didn’t talk. We just held hands and walked, the air heavy with all we were both feeling.

She’s irritating the fuck out of me. She’s walking on eggshells with me and mothering me one minute and trying to tell me what to do the next. I fucking hate it. When she gets particularly bitchy it turns me into a fucking animal and I know it’s turned into a cycle. She senses that I need release and she knows I hesitate because I worry about hurting her. She purposely pushes me over the edge so I’ll take what I need from her. I know it isn’t healthy. Since marrying me and promising before God and my family to obey me and be mine forever it’s given me an even more dark and possessive sense of entitlement to her body. But the depth of my love for her makes me feel guilty about it. I’m twisted in knots all the time.

It’s like we’re both uncomfortable in our own skin or something. Sometimes I don’t know how she can look at me after all I’ve done to her. I have a hard time looking at myself. I thank God that she survived everything I put her through but now that I’m not Tommy Ferrano, heir to the Ferrano family business, I don’t know who I am.

And her? She’s mine. She’s my wife, my lifeline, my life. I’m so obsessed with her that it borders on insanity and I too frequently breach that border.

We arrived in Costa Rica and Tia loves the house I rented. It’s got a billion-dollar view, it’s five thousand square feet, it’s private with ocean views and a pool on top of the roof, and it’s got every basic amenity we need just a two-minute drive or ten-minute walk away. It has a long dock that she can sit and fish from and we often sit out back around the outdoor fireplace while she cooks campfire concoctions. There’s no one but us. No one here knows who we are. I finally have her all to myself and there’s no reason why another drama should put her in danger again, but I know better than to become complacent. And I can’t handle having her out of my sight yet. I tried. I let her go to a fruit vendor while I was on a patio of a restaurant the day after the family all left to go back home and five minutes later, I had to find her. I was physically ill with anxiety about her being vulnerable.

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