Page 24 of To Hell

“Virgilio, it’s nothing, I promise,” she tries to shrug away from my grip, and it enrages me the more that she would lie for the bastard responsible for this.

“What bastard did this to you, Zoe?” My finger digs into her skin.

“You are hurting me,” she whimpers, and I instantly let go, then punch the air for the lack of the face of the douchebag who did this to her.

I try to breathe. “Have you told your father?”

She shifts nervously and then unties the cardigan. “I told you it’s nothing.”

I scoff, realization dawning on me, “It was him, wasn’t it?”

Of course, it’s him. My father is no different. I can take a few punches, but her? She can’t. I have to do something about it.

“Have you told the cops?” I crouch beside her, “Zoe, we can fight this, you don’t have to put up with this,” I reach out to take her twitching hand and cramp gently. “Please.”

“We can’t,” she shakes her head, masking her sadness well.

A siren goes off, and she tenses up. A police car pulls into the basement, and the instant her eyes catch it, she snatches her hand and starts to wear the cardigan hurriedly.

“You have to leave, Virgilio.” She folds her arms across her chest. “Please, don’t make it worse for me tonight.”

Shit.

I want to stay with her and find a way to give her back some of the light she has given me in my darkest days, but I understand the pattern here. If I stay, she will be the one to get beaten.

A man steps out in a police uniform, hands on his waist as he looks in our direction.

Double shit. Now I know why she can’t call the police.

Her father is a cop.

Chapter Fourteen

ZOE

Ilift my sketchbook and study the last design I am working on to see if I need to add some finishing touches somewhere around the shoulders.

I should put something there. Maybe a little… I narrow my eyes, then scratch my jaw. I freeze, a memory of the only other time I had this same feeling while sketching flashes through my mind.

Virgilio.

Creating that blue suit for him had been somewhat easy and difficult. He was my muse. And yet, everything I was sketching had felt fitting but also a little underwhelming in terms of what I should be adorning him with. The same is happening now with Ettore.

Virgilio’s laughter echoes in my head and I shake it out, needing to focus on a world without him. He is dead. Because of me.

I chew my pencil, then crawl to the floor-to-ceiling window on my knees for a better look.

I have been up all night sketching, and so far, I have come up with three different designs for Ettore to choose from. Any of them would look good on him. I’m hoping he picks one of these designs and doesn’t send me back to sketch more.

They will be black, which I guessed must be his favorite color.

I swell at my handiwork. I forgot I had it in me until I made him my muse. It became so easy, and all I wanted to do was keep creating.

One of the designs requires a tie and has embellishments on the lapels—tiny black stones. The second has a shoulder cape on one side, and on the other, the same tiny stones will cover the entire part. The last resembles an Indo-Western suit and has embellishments around the small collar, lining the edges of the slit in between the invisible buttons, the tip of the cuffs, and the edges of the suit.

The last is the one I want to touch up. I think it would come out better if I made the lining of the stones like the slashes of his scars up to his shoulder.

I let my eyes move towards the sun shyly coming out, its glow kissing some other adjoining house to his estate, one that I had missed on the first day he brought me here.

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