Page 39 of A Sinner's Virtue
“No, it’s fine. I can take her.” Eloise pushes up from her chair and starts to manoeuvre around Gio.
“You don’t have to do that, Ellie,” he whispers but I hear him.
“I want to,” she responds, and I follow her out of the dining room, glancing over my shoulder. Watching everyone watch us leave.
As soon as we turn the corner, I step up next to her, being sure to keep my voice low. “I can get you out of here.”
“Excuse me?” She stops short.
“I can get you out. You don’t have to stay here,” I tell her.
Eloise moves back a step, putting distance between us almost like she’s afraid I might hurt her. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s okay. I can help. Who did that to your face? Was it your husband? I can help you.” Truth is, I need to help her. I can’t just leave her here.
“You think my husband did this? To me?” She shakes her head. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t, and if you knew any of those men in there, you’d also know that none of them are capable of hurting a woman.” Then her arm shoots out, gesturing behind me. “The bathroom is down the hall, third door on the left.” Before I can respond, she’s already walking away. Back towards the dining room.
I can’t stay here. I need to get out of this house. I tried to do the right thing, offer her help. What can I do if she doesn’t want it? I don’t know, but I’m not sticking around to find myself trapped in another nightmare. So I do the only thing I can.
I run. Or at least I attempt to.
“Zoe?” Marcel’s voice follows me down the hall, and then he’s in front of me. “Are you okay?”
There’s so much concern on his face when he looks at me like this. It’s hard to believe that he would sit by and let a woman be abused. But I also saw her face, and I can’t unsee that. “I… ah… I forgot I had a thing to do. At home.”
“Don’t leave. Whatever happened… I’m sure we can work it out,” he says.
“I can’t.” I shake my head and take a step back.
“Follow me.” Marcel grabs my hand. His grip isn’t tight though. He keeps it loose, giving me the ability to pull back if I want to.
It’s the little things he does that make me feel safe with him. Things like this. I just don’t know if I’m being an idiot or not. My feet follow him up the stairs and then I find myself standing in a bedroom. His bedroom.
Chapter Seventeen
She’s ready to flee. I can see it in her eyes. She’s scared and I fucking hate seeing her like this. I don’t think she’s afraid of me, though. It’s something else. I have no idea what happened with her and El.
All I know is that El came back into the dining room shaking. But being away from Gio does that to her lately, even if he’s just out of reach. I didn’t tell Zoe about Ellie’s attack. I mean, how do you bring up that your sister-in-law was raped and beaten? It doesn’t exactly come up in conversation. Especially when I knew that Zoe was already struggling with her own inner demons.
In hindsight, I probably should have told her, prepared her for what she’d see.
Truth is, I selfishly thought I wouldn’t have to tell her. Zoe finding out that we have no fucking way of keeping our women safe is the last thing I want. She was already on the fence, and now she’s going to know there’s no escaping the De Bellis curse.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. Because I’m pretty sure, whatever it is, it’s way off from the actual truth.” Walking into my closet, I open a drawer and pull out the red-ribboned bracelet I was given as a child. It was a gift from an old Italian woman, one of the wives of a soldier.
She was the one who told me about the curse and then handed me the red ribbon, claiming it would protect me. I was ten back then. A kid who rushed back home and hid his latest trinket before his father could throw it away. After Shelli, I dug the thing out of an old shoe box. Even wore it for a couple of days before I felt like a fucking idiot believing a ribbon could protect us from anything.
The old woman was wrong, though. Because it’s not me who needs protecting. It’s not my brothers either. It’s the women we bring into the family. It’s Zoe.
I walk back out of the closet, clutching the red ribbon in my fist. “This is going to sound crazy and it is. But I’m going with it anyway, because if there’s the tiniest hint of truth to it, I’d rather you be protected as much as you can be.”
“What are you talking about?” Zoe asks.
I open my hand and watch her eyes flick down to my palm before looking up at me again. “Remember how I told you that my family’s cursed?” She nods, and I continue. “Well, it’s something I’ve known for a long time. It’s why Shelli is dead, why El looks the way she does right now. And it’s why I should let you walk away. I don’t want to lose you, though, Zoe. So I’m going to need you to wear this instead.”
Her eyebrows draw down in confusion. “What do you mean? Who did that to El’s face?”
“A family looking to hurt Gio, and they used his wife to do it.”
