Page 30 of Merciless Queen (Moretti Mafia #1)

Harlow

My mind was a pandemonium of emotions and thoughts within me. In the three days since the engagement party, my brain had become an asylum of screaming demons and guilt. I was drowning. All of my emotions were engulfing me, trying to pull me deeper and deeper into a dark abyss. They were winning.

To think I believed for the scarcest second that I could enjoy freedom without the repercussions of Vincenzo Mancini controlling every fiber of my being.

I was fucking stupid to believe that I would ever be free from his merciless grasp.

My spiral had intensified, the demons teasing me with mind-numbing silence.

“I heard something happened at the engagement party?” Serena asked, and I shuddered at the memory. Those once beautiful eyes, dead, lifeless—scared—baring into my soul.

I nodded, taking a deep breath. “Vincenzo killed a girl. He decapitated her and sent her head to Caterina and I. I don’t know what he did to her while she was alive, but I’m sure she suffered. Vincenzo makes all his victims suffer before killing them. It’s his signature.”

“How do you know that?”

“This is what happens to whores who disobey me.” His voice echoed in my ears as the frail girl screamed in agony.

Caylie stabbed one of the men who bought her, killing him.

She couldn’t escape in time, and Vincenzo brought her to his torture chamber.

He brought me here when he wanted to scare me.

I was sixteen; anything this man did scared me.

The moment I met him in my house, his eyes scarred my soul permanently.

The girl was strapped to something that stretched her arms and legs while men cut her clothes from her body, the blade not sparing her skin. By the time she was naked, she was bleeding from different cuts, screaming and begging them not to hurt her.

My mind went blank. I couldn’t watch this brutality.

I’d learned to dissociate at times when I couldn’t handle what was happening to others around me.

All I saw was her eyes. The pretty sea blue was filled with pain and misery.

There was nothing left of the girl she once was.

I knew her when she was brought here. She had fight.

All the new girls fought, but Vincenzo and his men were good at breaking them.

I was snapped from my void when Vincenzo gripped my inner thighs so hard, he drew blood.

She was not screaming anymore. She was not alive.

She wasn’t even whole anymore. I felt my stomach roll seeing her limbs in various pieces.

I leaned forward and vomited. It was more dry heaving and stomach acid than anything.

Her severed head was perched on the table, looking directly at me, her eyes lifeless.

When I could finally breathe again, Vincenzo pushed my body against the wall, choking the life out of me. “If you aren’t my good whore, your death will be just as painful, if not worse. Be my good girl, baby.”

“He made me watch as his men killed people. Sometimes he would do it, and sometimes the others would. Decapitation is his favorite. He likes sending the heads to people. When Caterina opened the box, I knew it was him.”

“Is that what he did to your mom?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what happened to my mother. Xavier brought me my mother’s shirt. It was the only piece of her I had left. He said a client got too handsy and snapped her neck. She had a quick death. They didn’t let me see her body.”

“I heard something also happened with Cat,” she continued.

I sighed, picking my nails.I ran my hand through my tangles of dark tendrils as a lump formed in my throat. “I told her to give me back. I don’t want anyone else dying. She refused. Said I’d die a whore just like my mother if I went back to Vincenzo, so I slapped her.”

Serena’s shock was visible. Normally, she had a neutral face hearing all the gory details of my traumatic life. “Why do you want to go back?”

“I don’t want to, but you didn’t see her face. Her eyes.”

“How did seeing Angel make you feel?”

“It’s my fault. If I went back to him, he wouldn’t be killing innocent people to get me back. I met Angel at Caterina’s club, and she was sweet, so full of life and happy. Now she’s dead because I am here.”

“Harlow, this is not your fault. If you went back to him, he would hurt you and still kill innocent women. Just because he’d have you, doesn’t mean he’d stop his ways. Angel dying is not your fault. It is Vincenzo’s. Angel has an army behind her who will avenge her death.”

I shrugged. “There’s no reason for her to be dead and for me to still be alive.” The look on her face tells me I messed up.

“Are you planning on hurting yourself?”

I shrugged again. “I just want to be numb. I’m tired. Anytime I close my eyes, I see him. I feel him on my skin. I hear my mother’s screams. I see the eyes of the women he’s killed in front of me. I’m so fucking exhausted. I just want it all to end. I don’t want to deal with it anymore.”

“You did a good job today, Harlow. We’re done for the day. You do know I will have to inform Cat of this.”

I nodded. Caterina Moretti was oblivious to me and my misery.

After I slapped her, I hadn’t heard from her in three days.

I was thinking on instinct, and she insulted my mother, the woman who did her damndest to protect me in that living hell, and I refused to let Caterina talk about her memory like that.

Regardless, she killed a man for Angel. Caterina already told me the story of how she protected her girls, and I was now included in the mix, but she didn’t know me.

She might’ve pitied me, but she loved Angel.

I was a pawn to be used at her will, my emotions be damned.

Leaving Serena’s office, dread ached down to my bones.

This storm was relentless, and I was caught in the center, desperately trying to find my way out, but there was no safety, no bridge.

There was nothing but loud, grueling chaos.

I wanted it to fucking stop before what little sanity I had snapped.

My heart pounded ruthlessly as I rushed into my bedroom, locking the door and rushing into the bathroom.

I couldn’t think clearly, my thoughts spiraling into a frenzy.

Quickly, I stripped out of the clothes I had on, freeing me from the suffocation, but not from the mayhem inside myself.

I needed to feel something, to drown the demons inside my head so they could shut up and I could have a moment of peace.

The steam from the scalding water filled the bathroom, dancing in the air as I watched myself in the mirror, my reflection slowly being consumed.

Serena said I was healing, said it would take time, but this was torture. I felt like I was losing control, and my grip on reality slipped through my fingers. The rational part of me was lost, a stranger amongst the monsters screaming in my skull, their voices earsplitting.

It is my fault.

Everything was my fucking fault.

Fighting to survive was exhausting, and I was not strong. I just wanted it all to end. Sweet oblivion would be a symphony.

I screamed, but the sound that escaped my lips was more of a guttural, soul-wrenching sob, something that would come from a tortured animal.

It reverberated through the bathroom, echoing the shattered spirit inside myself.

Each shuddering breath, each ragged sob, felt like an attempt to expel the constant anguish in my mind.

It was a desperate plea from a broken soul, and I was fucking desperate for silence. Sweet oblivion.

My fist connected with the bathroom mirror, shards embedding themselves into my knuckles as glass flew everywhere.

The pain in my hand was numbing, the desire I craved for the raw, gnawing turmoil aching in my chest. I wanted numbness, a chasm of nothingness.

I knew I needed to be strong, to fight, but the thought of facing all those tangled emotions and domineering demons felt impossible.

I was tired, so fucking exhausted of constantly fighting.

The shard I wrapped my fingers around dug into my palm as I stumbled to the shower, slumping to the floor as the scalding water drowned my body.

It should’ve hurt, my fair skin already turning shades of red, but I felt nothing.

I wanted it all to fucking stop. No more.

Nothing ever again. No more pain, no more anguish, and no more taunting demons controlling me.

When the glass punctured my skin, I paused, thinking of Lizzy. Her sorrow-filled eyes dancing in my mind like my conscience telling me to stop, but I was not brave like her. She was a warrior, a survivor; even in captivity she fought. Fighting was pointless, no one could save me.

“I’m sorry, Lizzy. I’m not strong like you are.

I don’t have the will or the fight to survive like you.

” My voice was broken as I drug the glass vertically down my wrist. With shaking hands, I repeated the process, digging into the healing scab of my previous injury, this one stinging as pain thumped from the disturbed scar tissue.

It was going to work this time. I’d truly be free. I’d finally be reunited with my mother, following her sweet voice until I was safe in her arms again. She was going to wait for me, and I was ready to be in her warm embrace away from the harsh reality this life had caused.

Everything was hazy, swirling together in a blend of shadows and light.

Was this the in between? I felt as if I was teetering on the edge of life and the sweet caress of death.

Red caught my eye as my blood flowed from me, staining the tiles and flowing with the water.

It was funny how we needed this beauty in our bodies to survive.

It was such a beautiful color, alluring and seductive like the dress that clung to Caterina’s lush curves.

Maybe in another life, loving a woman like her would be a reality, but not this one.

My breaths were shallow, my heartbeat like a thunderous drum in my ears as my senses weakened, but glory be, my demons were quiet.

It was finally fucking peaceful. Peace was all I wanted.

I finally had a choice—even if it was a choice no one else would agree with.

It was mine. The world around me felt distant, muffled like I was submerged in bathwater instead of a shower. Serenity . Finally.

The sound of ferocious pounding on the door made my head loll to the side, but I didn’t move, my body clinging to the oblivion waiting for me just a few feet away. “Harlow, goddamn it!”

Sweet darkness was coming to take me away.

A perfect oblivion.

Freedom.

I screamed, the noise feeble and raspy, fighting the person taking me away from my sweet abyss. My fight was frail and desperate, but my body was weak as muffled voices filled my subconscious.

“Stop it!” My words were slurred, barely audible. “I just want to die! Please. I want my mom. Let me go to my mom, please!”