Arranged Revenge

Chapter3

The flashbacks were faster than lightning; first the accident, the crash, her mother screaming, her father's face, and with this were the unrelated snaps. Dinner time called her name; her fathers warm arms should have been enveloping her after a tiring day; her brother should have been in the living room, laughing around, teasing her about some silly thing.

Her brother sitting on the couch and laughing as he was showing her something on his phone. There was her father's booming voice calling her to help with yard work. Then there was the comforting brush, pat, or hug from her mother after a bad dream. And then the crash: the awful screeching of metal into metal, blinding lights, her body feeling shock waves of being thrown, almost like a ragdoll, and the final sound she heard amidst it all- an unnerving moment of silence and empty terror.

Elena standing aloof in the gray twilight spilling with low light in the livingroom; an otherworldly vision to the window, through the blinds the failing sun enters, casting a faint shadowy darkness within. The house was cold yet warm; she still could not figure out why this place did not seem to be her home. To her, it doesn't feel like home.

The accident took everything family, friends, and life. Everything had just…disappeared. Bits were stuck somewhere in her mind, mental fragments that made no sense; they had been torn from her memory, so now she existed inside a body in a house that felt wrong, surrounded by people rooted in hoping that she would get back to normal. Normal, that word does not even seem to correspond with anything Elena might understand.

"Elena, it's time to take dinner," was Dante, gentler now, as if even the silence were fragile. "Your favorite has been prepared."

She turned her head, gifting him with a lame smile that somehow failed to reach her eyes. What had been her favorite dish, for real? Pasta? Something else entirely before the crash? She could not remember.

"I'm not hungry," she said, sounding distant, yet firm.

Dante hesitated at the door for an instant, and his height made a deep shadow cast into the room. He seemed to think wearily, but he took one step and entered under the heaviness of his presence.

There was a strangely tight tension in his movement, something that dripped with a sort of oblique desperation Elena had never recognized. Yet it made no sense to her and likely didn't want to.

"You need to eat something, Elena, and you have to start caring for yourself again. It has been months," he said. "You have been through a lot, but" he hesitated, and for one, a quick moment.

Elena was allowed to see something entirely different in his eyes-an unexpected vulnerability. He worried for her; that much she knew. But to what end?

"Low-whispering with an emotional burst of frustration: I don't even know who I am anymore, Dante. I don't know what really matters; in fact, I don't even know if I am supposed to care about this."

"True. But you are still Elena, the same girl that existed before the accident. We just need to get you back on track. And going ahead is part of that."

He went down to her eye level and inhaled deeply. "This is home now," he said. "I know it feels odd right now, but trust me; it will come together. You don't have to remember all at once. But you take the first step," he finished gloomily.

"I don't even know where to begin," were the words Elena’s could manage to say, the words forced out from the heavy hindrance of the disturbance on her chest. "I don't recall who I am. And then... and my family? My brother? I can't even remember my parents well enough."

Dante's jaw clenched, and though his eyes reflected something else-entangled in a near sense of guilt, he dropped his hand on her shoulder. His indication was almost unbearably warm, not soothing at all.

"I know it's tough," he said softly, "and I don’t want you to forget your family. But there is nothing we can do right now to change the past, Elena. The crash… took away everything from you. But you are still here. You are still alive. That is why you have to go ahead. You cannot just remain where the past commands."

"Moving forward means I'm forgetting them, and I will never forget," Elena insisted as she pulled her hand away from his. "I refuse to ever forget who they were. Who I was."

"You won't forget them," Dante countered, pressing ahead before she had much chance to frame her rebuttal. "But Elena, you have to live. I know it's hard. It doesn't feel like it, but please try to understand: this is part of it. This arrangement, the marriage... that's in the package. That's part of moving forward."

Marriage felt like a stab in the core, and Elena cracked her head up to stare at him, her eyes vast with doubt. "What the hell are you talking about?" she exclaimed, her voice growing. "Marriage? I don't even remember love, Dante. And you want me to marry someone I don't even know?"

Dante's face hardened, though he tried softening his tone. "You don't know, but I meant that you're never supposed to be alone. The marriage is part of what it's about for you to heal; it is not only about love. It's also about safety. About stability."

"Stability?" Elena repeated, then a bitter laugh left her lips. "You're telling me this marriage with a stranger, one I do not even remember, is bound to give me stability?"

"It's not only for you, Elena," said Dante, hardening his voice. "This is for your future. It's about your inheritance. About the family legacy. You have lost it all. And yet, you are part of the bigger picture. The marriage is not just for you; it is for all of us."

Elena felt her chest beginning to evoke tight knots inside. "That there, is business. That's a contract, not a marriage."

"No, I don't mean that, I'm open to the possibility that it could go beyond that," Dante rejoined, with a tone of patience underlined by insistence, "But you'll understand someday, although you may not now. It's about restoration, Elena. You must get married for the family. It's what is expected. It's what's good for you."

Tears began rolling out of her eyes as she shook her head. "I can't take that. There's even part of me that I can't recognize anymore, and you're asking me to marry some guy? You want me to live in a life I can't remember living for the sake of ...what? A legacy? A business?"

Elena turned and faced away from him, eyes focused on the window once more. Sound came out of things he said that did not register within her.

"This is really tough," she whispered, her tone so faint as to be hardly audible. "But I don't know how to live with that," and she turned to stride out of the room, leaving her uncle behind, who still held hope that she would one day accept the life he was trying to create for her even if she did not understand it.