The Driver

CHAPTER 6

                                        Izabela

            Without visual stimuli, I focused on the other senses, mainly on smell and touch. Enjoying the sensation of feeling his warm and big hand and breathing his perfume, I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. It did not work.

        When I felt another wave of a panic attack coming, I approached him and tried his lips. I was going to kiss him so I would not start again. He realized what I was going to do and helped me by getting closer to my lips.

        We kissed with passion and desire. A desire so immense that it could be read in our eyes from the moment we met at the airport. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the light had come on in the elevator.

        The receptionist had heard my scream for help and took some time to figure out where it was coming from. We finally got to the ninth floor. We were extremely tired and after saying goodbye we each retreated to its room.

        I was shocked by the attraction. This had never happened to me before, and I had never had a man in my life for too long. I had already forgotten what it was like to feel a man's warmth next to my body.

        Ever since I ran away from the man who took away my right to life and happiness for so many years, I had not let a man near me.

        I was afraid of any man and I did not want to suffer anymore. I was shocked that Alex was inspiring me confidence and I felt an attraction I could not explain.

        I had never known such feelings and I did not know how to approach them. I did not know there was love at first sight in real life. In the books, I wrote there was love at every turn, but in my life here I had never known that feeling.

        I was born into a family with an alcoholic father and a mother desperate to please him even when she got beat up. I was the only kid and maybe it was better that way. I have suffered enough for ten other children.

        My mother was still too young when she got pregnant with me. My father took her as his wife at the insistence of his family because they did not want to embarrass themselves. That is how it was back then.

        It was a shame for a woman to get pregnant without being married and a shame for the family of the man she had the child with if he did not marry her.

        After marriage and shortly after I was born, my father started drinking a lot.  He always stopped at the bar in front of the building where we lived after he finished work.

        He got home more crawling and often carried back by my mother. When he was coming into the house, the nightmare began. He could not stand up to that much alcohol, but he could beat my mother until he leaves her on the floor almost dead.

        I never understood why she did not leave him from the first slap she got from him, even though it was difficult to raise a child at the time, as a single mother, I'm sure she would have done much better without him.

        Or she could just give me to a children's home because all the fights and beatings in our house were just because of me. Because I had the courage to appear in their lives and because my mother did not want to have an abortion when my father insisted.

        I have never felt parental love. I knew my mother loved me, but she was not able to show me what maternal love meant. She was far too preoccupied to be at my father's feet, literally and figuratively.

        A lot of times I have been locked in my room so my dad would not see me when he came home from work.

        That is how my mother thought she would calm him down and she will not be beaten like an animal. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not.

        From the window of my room, I had a view of the park. I always watched the kids in the park play to distract me from the howls in our house. I envied them for having parents so loving as to take the time to get them out of the house.

        My mother could not expose herself to the neighbors with the bruises on her face. She was masking them as much as she could with makeup when she had to go to work. She worked the night shift at a factory, so she did not meet too many people until there.

        That is how the first sixteen years of my life went. After I grew up, I ran to my mother's sister who lived in Bucharest. We lived in Slobozia. I wanted to go to a good high school to run away into the world.

        My aunt prayed for many years to my mother to let me live with her so that I would no longer be a part of all the abuse, but my mother would not accept it.

        I do not even know whether to hate her because she did not want my happiness or because she was selfish. She probably could not bear the thought of just her getting beat up.

        My aunt helped me get into a good high school. She was divorced and had no children, had never managed to get pregnant.

        She had done all kinds of treatments until a doctor told her she was infertile. Her husband left her shortly after she gave him the news.

        He now has four children and she has been left with this regret for the rest of her life. She knew what life I had with my parents and she really wanted to raise me to alleviate her suffering. She was like a real mother to me and it was until I got to her that I realized what motherlove really meant.

        I grew up with the idea that all men are just like my father and I was afraid to trust one.

        That is why I hid my identity behind the books I started writing when I was a kid. I was getting lost in fantasy worlds just to forget the world I lived in.

        After I finished college, I became a writer and started publishing all the books I had written.

        When I met Marcel, I thought I was going to run out of air. He was totally different from my father and more than ever, I began to hate my mother for accepting such a man by her side.

        I also hated her for letting me think that all men are the same. I met Marcel ten years ago. I was at a book show. I had a table of my own prepared with the books I had published.

        After the dozens of people who came to buy a book and ask for autographs, Marcel also appeared. He was a tall man with a very well-trained body at the gym, brown hair, and ebony-black eyes. His eyes attracted me a lot.

        They were so black, I got lost in them for a few moments. He already had a book I wrote in his hand and he just wanted his autograph. I wrote in the book "For the most beautiful eyes in the world".

        He smiled when he read the message and I winked at him.  On the last page of the book, I left my phone number. He had to read it all the way to find it.

        It passed three weeks before he called me. He invited me to dinner, and I was happy to say yes.

        I wanted to see him again so badly! He was charming and had an extraordinary sense of humor. Since that night we have met every day. He was very attractive, and I could not resist him. It was like a magnet that always drew me to him.

        When I first made love with him, I thought I had gone to heaven. He knew where to touch me and how to touch my body to make me vibrate.

        He knew how to make me feel like a woman, to feel wanted and loved. No man had ever given me that much pleasure. No man had ever made me so happy.

        I decided to move in with him shortly after we met that night for dinner. He had a super-luxurious house. You could tell he was a rich man. I did not think about these details at first. He told me he had a lot of business, but he never gave me much information.

        He was very mysterious in some ways and I had the patience to wait for the moment when he would trust me to tell me everything. I was just happy with him and that was all that mattered.

        When he was gone, I would write all day, and when he came home, he would take me out. We would either go to dinner at fancy restaurants or parties where only rich people were allowed.  Sometimes he would take me on trips outside Romania.

        Even from those parties, I had never been able to find out more about his business. It seems that they were all mysterious and not even their wives knew what their husbands were doing. They were pleased that they had access to the gold cards, and they could buy anything they wanted.

        They were happy with walks through malls, salons, and beauty clinics. None seemed interested in discovering the mystery that was enveloping the whole room.

        At a private party where the prom mask was mandatory on the face, an elderly gentleman approached me, that is all I could assume from his voice.

        He whispered in my ear if I was ever curious to find out what is behind the mysteries.  If I ever wondered what my boyfriend was doing and why he is so mysterious.

        I did not get a chance to answer him because he walked away from me as soon as he said the last word "run."

        I searched everywhere for him that night and I could not find him. I could not find him because everyone wore masks and all the men seemed the same.

        I could not look at him because he came up behind me and I could not even see his eyes. Maybe that is how I would have recognized him through the crowd.

        His words remain in my mind and especially the fact that he told me to run. Runaway from what or from whom? That is what I did not understand, and I had to find out.

        If there was anything dangerous about what Marcel was doing, I should have known before it was too late.