Page 77 of He Should Be Mine
Cunning plans. May they work. And may they work quickly.
I get to my feet and grab the bottle of good stuff. Normally, I like to save the finer things for special occasions, to prevent the allure from wearing off. But fuck it. Life is far too short.
I sit back down on the sofa and top up Molly’s glass before refilling my own. Molly grins and takes a sip. He hums in appreciation.
“I take it she’s going to spike him again.”
He says it so casually, with so much nonchalance, that at first my mind doesn’t register what he has said. It hits me a moment later and then all my blood runs cold.
He is right. This was a battle, not the war. The danger has not passed, it has merely been postponed.
Molly is not safe, not at all. And I’m in no position to make my move yet. I’m months away, at the earliest.
Fuck. This is terrible.
What the fuck are we going to do next time Riccardo visits?
Chapter twenty-one
Molly
Ican’t sleep. It is pointless. I might as well give up.
Rick has well and truly rattled me. My insides are churning and my mind is spinning. I’m not going to find any peace tonight.
It has been days since I pretended to be sick. He keeps texting, asking if I’m better. I keep saying, ‘nearly’. And any day now he is going to run out of his very limited patience.
Sighing, I roll over from my side to flop on to my back. I stare up at the ceiling. Colors slowly swirl across it as the fairy lights silently change shade. The soft hum of the city seems to pulse in time with the pretty effect.
It’s late, very late, but there is still traffic. It feels like a million miles from the small shitty town I was born in. There, everything was far too quiet, especially at night. It was like being dead.
I prefer this. This feels like being surrounded by life. Whatever time of night I wake up, or if I don’t go to sleep, there is evidence that there are people nearby. It’s a little less lonely. Even if it is only an illusion. The people I can hear, don’t care, and they couldn’t help even if they did.But nevertheless, it is still soothing. It makes me feel a little less alone.
I sigh again. My hand runs over the fancy sheet I’m lying on. Egyptian cotton, stupidly high thread count. It’s everything I used to dream of. This bed is huge, fancy and comfy. It’s in my very own room, in a fancy apartment in the middle of London. But I hate it.
I hate it because it is the bed I allow Rick to use my body in.
And isn’t that a ridiculous thing to be melodramatic about? I’m warm, dry, well fed. Surrounded by luxury. God knows things have been an awful lot worse, so I don’t understand why I am whining.
So what if I’m not safe or free? That’s nothing new. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.
A mental image swims into view. Rick’s green eyes as he glared at me in anger on his last visit. There had been a dangerous gleam in them. I could see the parts of him that are broken. The parts that pulled wings off flies and drowned kittens as a child.
I shudder even though it is summer and the night is warm.
Rick scares me. He always has. But it has intensified since he put me in the hospital. My body remembers how sick I was. It remembers that Rick was the cause. So now when I’m near Rick, a dark, deep primal terror claws at me. It whispers at me to flee, to run, to hide. To not let the predator get me.
If only things were that simple. If only modern day life was like a primeval forest. Rick is dangerous, but I can’t run. I can’t go anywhere. I’m trapped and cornered. There is no burrow to flee to.
Rick is going to kill me. It’s only a matter of time. And there is not a thing I can do about it. I’m a fly already caught in the web. I’m simply waiting for the spider to be hungry.
Two things are true. He is going to kill me. And Dario is going to break my heart.
I don’t know which is going to happen first, and I honestly don’t know which one is worst.
Dario.
Even the thought of him is enough to overwhelm me. I swear I can almost feel him on the other side of this thin wall. I think his room is a mirror image of this one, so his headboard is aligned with mine. If I pressed my palm against the wall behind me, I’d be nearly touching him.
