Tainted Sanctuary

Chapter Seven

The days that followed, an overwhelming emptiness crept in. The rage and bitterness slowly slipped away but the betrayal never left. I didn't go home after the funeral. Instead I drove aimlessly. Aria called and called, message after message. I couldn't deal with that right now, not after she chose her, my husband’s f*****g mistress, over me. The idea, the thought of her trying to protect Gia, crushed something inside me that day. Gia didn't deserve to live, let alone carry my husband's child. Not after I lost mine. Not after I lost my entire f*****g world.

Driving around seeing other children felt unbearable. Each moment was a reminder of what could have been, what should’ve been Marco’s life. How the f**k do you move on from the death of your child? The death of your own flesh created by the betrayal of the man you loved? I wanted to drive off a cliff, I just wanted to die, I wanted to be with my son. Living without him for the rest of my life felt unbearable, it felt like I was drowning all over again. That’s when the rage crept back in. I’d do anything to hold my Marko one more f*****g time.

I gripped onto the steering wheel, my knuckles white as I slammed my head forward into the steering wheel. "What the f**k is this curse you gave me, Lord?!" I screamed before being violently jolted back as my eyes widened in horror, the windshield exploded as razor-sharp fragments flew through the air. My eyes pressed shut, my head slammed forward with a sickening crack, embedding the glass further into my face, the screeching of the tires and the mangled sound of metal went silent briefly. I thought I heard the angels speak as the metallic blood gushed fast, spilling over my trembling lips, pooling in my mouth. Choking, gurgling, I knew God had other plans for me. As the smoke billowed, blooded and battered, I had to move.

I clutched my face, pulling some of the embedded glass out. I winced, but then the pain hit like a tsunami. The current was relentless, deep and disorienting. A crushing pressure on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. Every breath felt like I was inhaling glass. My body felt like it had been torn from the inside out. Blood soaked everything. It clung to my skin, matted in my hair, smeared over my eyes, blurring my vision into a red foggy haze. The metallic stench filled my nose, mixing with smoke and oil. Glass was everywhere. The jagged pieces lay in disarray, lodged in my arms and legs. Moving would make it cut deeper. But staying meant death.

My fingers clawed at the twisted door, coated in blood, but it wouldn’t move. Smoke started to creep in through the vents. I had no other choice but to drag myself through the shattered glass, covering my face with my arm while clawing my way forward with the other. It felt like my body was being ripped open. But I had to crawl. I refused to die like a f*****g animal. That's when I heard his voice, a mix of shock and guilt. "Maria?!" I couldn’t let him see me like this, I couldn’t f*****g face him.

.

He was my first love, the man I was supposed to marry, but my mother was too jealous. Motherhood stole her spotlight, as she would say. Her envy was obvious. I was everything she once was and everything she could no longer be, the gaslighting, starvation, physical abuse, torment, torture all to remain on top, but the worst thing? Drugging me, paying a stranger to r**e me and then recording it, posting it all online whilst he was away, in the army. I was forced into a marriage with Mauro, arranged, bound not by softness, but by scars.

We fell into a shared insanity, a love so twisted we thrived on pain, escaping our f****d up families and fell into deep addiction. I still remember the first time he shoved the needle into my arm, saying, "I love you, how the f**k does that taste baby?" Nobody can ever make me feel the way it did. Nobody has ever given me a high like it, I would pick the chaos a thousand times over. The feeling of drowning and being reborn all at once. Then Marco happened. That’s when everything changed. I was barely twenty-one, but we sure built a f*****g empire from destruction.

Piero Ambrogio was the personification of death. Even the church calls him a fallen angel who spared no mercy, even to the most merciful - I created that man, or should I say monster. He was both a prayer and a curse, a constant lingering shadow in the back of my mind I could never outrun. We were two halves of the same heart, two halves of one soul. Split by time, by fate, by lives lived apart but the soul remembers. It always does, and when it does, it claws at the walls of fate, demanding to exist.

Every inch of my body screams in protest as I pull my body out of the wreckage, deepening the raw and exposed wounds as the stench of gasoline hits me. My hands scrapped against the rough asphalt as I tried to pull myself up and forward, blood trailed behind, staining the road in a path that marked my struggle. I had to get up.

I didn’t have a f*****g choice. I couldn’t let him get to me not after he threatened to kill me, but I couldn’t run. I stumbled as my knees buckled beneath me. Fear coursed through my veins, my breathing shallowed. I was desperate to get away. I needed to get away, but I couldn’t. I collapsed, my limbs trembled, unable to blink, I unconsciously covered my face. My jaw trembled in fear, my voice raw with terror. All I could muster was a whimpered “Please don’t!” "Don’t kill me!" as he towered over me.

Everything blurred into one agonizing, unbearable sensation, the feeling of being dragged deeper, further, into a cold, black silence as the muffled cries "Apply pressure!" "Please f*****g hold on!" "Apply pressure?!" slowly drifted away.