Page 45 of Reckless Sinner

There were no trees. There were no bushes beneath me to help break my fall a bit. The brick of the brownstone was smooth, no random parts jutting out to make convenient foot and hand holds. Shit.

However…

My window faced the back of the house, where we’d set up a nice back patio and a grassy area to entertain people. Dad would have associates over at times, and a couple times a year we would have a proper party, usually one at Christmas and then two during the summer, and obviously the summer ones would have people outside enjoying the sun. While the front of the house was meticulously maintained by gardeners, Dad allowed the ivy at the back of the house to climb up the walls, thinking it gave the house a sort of old-world manor charm to it.

Could the ivy hold me?

I knelt on the thin ledge, trying not to wobble, facing in towards my bedroom as I groped with one hand for the ivy. Once I had a good handhold of it, I shook it firmly.

The ivy didn’t move. It had embedded itself into the house, it was holding.

Okay. Okay. I took a few deep breaths. If this ivy broke or came off the wall in my hands I might very well put myself in the hospital, even further under my father’s control. But that was a risk I’d have to take.

I held on tightly with one hand and felt along the ivy with my foot until I was able to wedge it in. Slowly, not even breathing, I leaned over, putting more and more of my weight on the ivy until I was off the window ledge completely.

Oh my God, I was standing on the ivy.

For a moment it felt so surreal that I almost burst out into hysterical laughter. My legs and arms trembled from the effort of holding onto the ivy. It was just strong enough to keep me upright and not falling to my doom, but it was like rock climbing, requiring a lot of my own strength to keep me there.

If I made my way out of this, I vowed to do so much more exercising from now on. I never wanted to be stuck in this situation again.

Not that I intended to be stuck in a room and trying to escape by climbing ivy down the side of a brick wall after I got out of this, but… clearly you never knew what bullshit life was going to throw at you.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Okay, okay, you got this.”

My legs and arms shook as I began to climb down. I felt like I was taking hours, inching down bit by bit, feeling carefully with my feet until I could find a section strong enough to hold my legs and then moving a few inches down with my hands bracing and balancing. By the time I reached the ground, my whole body was shaking from exertion. Would I actually have any strength left to move by the time I reached the ground?

After what felt like forever, I was close enough to the ground that I could jump lightly onto the grass. To my embarrassment, my knees immediately gave out and I collapsed back completely, staring up at the sky.

My arms and legs felt like they were made of jelly. I breathed hard, my eyes blurring with exhausted tears. I’d made it. Okay. Now I just had to… figure out where to go from here.

Luckily, I wouldn’t have to climb the fence. Dad didn’t want the gardeners to have to tramp through the house to get to the backyard so there was a little gate in the fence that led to the alley between our house and that of the next-door neighbor.

“Get up,” I whispered to myself. “C’mon, get up.”

My body screamed in protest as I got to my feet and walked as quietly as I could out of the backyard and down the alley. I had to hope that no neighbors had seen me, and that my father hadn’t happened to be in any of the rooms that overlooked the backyard while I had been in there.

My mind scrambled to come up with somewhere to go. I had no friends. No one I could trust. Everyone knew me through my father and thought he was amazing. How could I trust them if I went to them and said he’d locked me in my room like some modern-day fairytale nonsense?

Dante. Dante would believe me, wouldn’t he? He was the one who’d said he didn’t trust my father, that I needed to think about how my father treated me. I could go to him. And he had connections through his family—he wouldn’t like talking to them but surely he could get the name of someone who could fence my jewelry for me? I’d happily give the Russos a cut if necessary, I just needed enough to get… somewhere far away from my father.

I had no real plan beyond ‘sell jewelry to get my own money’ but Dante was a planner. He was a lawyer. He could help me.

I had no money on me, so I couldn’t get a cab. I didn’t even have my driver’s license. No form of I.D.

I would have to walk.

By the time I got to Dante’s apartment, it was late, and my feet were on fire and I was dying of thirst. I wanted to burst into tears, although I wasn’t sure if it was from hunger, frustration, or exhaustion. Perhaps all three.

The doorman’s eyebrows shot up when he saw me. “You look like you’ve had a day.”

I didn’t even want to know what my face looked like. “You could say that. Is Dante home?”

“Go on up.”

I sagged back against the wall of the elevator, breathing carefully. I didn’t want to collapse right when I saw Dante. I needed to be somewhat composed.

The elevator stopped and I got out, knocking on his door.

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