AND I'D DONE EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED

Chapter 5

Elowen

I felt something inside me surrender, some final piece of resistance crumbling under the weight of two years of blame and punishment.

"If I do this," I said, my voice barely audible, "will you finally forgive me, will you finally let this go?"

"Yes," Adrian said immediately, and I didn't know if he was lying or not but I was so desperate to believe him that it didn't matter.

"Yes, Elowen, if you do this for me, if you give me this gift, then we can start over when we go home, we can finally move past the accident and build something new."

It was a lie, I knew it was a lie even as the words settled into my chest. But I was drowning and he was offering a rope, even if that rope was made of thorns, I grabbed for it anyway because what else could I do.

"Okay," I whispered. "Okay, I'll do it, I'll tell them."

He smiled and it should have looked triumphant but instead it just looked satisfied, like he'd won something he'd been planning to win all along.

"Good girl, now go back out there and tell them, and remember, Elowen, you have to make them believe you want this, you have to sell it, or they'll refuse and then we'll be right back where we started."

I nodded because I couldn't speak anymore, couldn't trust my voice not to break completely.

I moved past him on shaking legs, out of the living room and back through the villa toward the terrace where Matteo and Kian were surely still reeling from Adrian's proposal.

The evening air hit me when I stepped back outside, cool and salt-sweet and completely at odds with the suffocating panic in my chest.

I saw them both still at the table, Matteo pacing near the edge of the terrace with his hands in his hair and Kian standing rigid with his arms crossed, they both turned when they heard my footsteps.

"Elowen," Matteo said immediately, crossing to me with concern written all over his face. "Cara, are you alright, what did he say to you..."

"I agree," I said, cutting him off before I could lose my nerve, before I could let myself think about what I was saying. "I agree to Adrian's request, I want to do this."

The words fell into the space between us like grenades and I watched them both freeze, watched Matteo's expression shift from concern to confusion to something that looked like betrayal, watched Kian's entire body go rigid, his jaw clenching so hard I could see the muscle jump.

"What?" Matteo's voice was barely a whisper.

"I agree," I repeated, forcing myself to meet his eyes even though what I saw there made me want to die.

"I want this, I want you both to..." I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't say the actual words, so I just gestured helplessly. "I want what Adrian is offering."

"You can't be serious," Kian said, his voice cold and flat in a way I'd never heard before. "Elowen, he manipulated you, he threatened you, you can't possibly actually want..."

"I do," I lied, and the words tasted bitter. "I do want this, and Adrian says if I agree then you won't refuse, so I'm asking, I'm telling you that I agree, that I want you both to give me what my husband can't."

The silence that followed was worse than anything that had come before, heavy, poisonous and suffocating.

And I watched something die in Matteo's warm brown eyes, watched them turn cold and distant and full of something that looked like disgust.

"I see," he said finally, his accent thick and his words clipped. "So this is what you want, to be passed around like some kind of toy, to let your husband pimp you out to his friends because you're so desperate for attention that you'll take it from anyone."

The words were meant to hurt and they succeeded, each one landing like a blow, but I couldn't defend myself, couldn't explain without breaking Adrian's command to sell it, to make them believe.

"If that's what you think," I whispered.

"What I think," Kian said, his grey eyes boring into mine with an intensity that made me want to shrink into nothing,

"is that you're either the most manipulated woman I've ever met or you're exactly what Adrian just made you sound like, and I don't know which possibility disgusts me more."

He looked at me like I was something dirty, something beneath contempt, and I felt what was left of my dignity shatter into pieces too small to ever put back together.

"So you'll do it?" I asked, because Adrian would want to know, would punish me if I came back without confirmation.

"You're actually asking us that?" Matteo's laugh was bitter and sharp. "You're standing there in your pretty red dress that your husband made you wear, asking if we'll fuck you because he told you to ask, and you expect us to what, be grateful for the opportunity?"

"I expect you to give me an answer," I said, my voice hollow.

Kian moved closer and I instinctively took a step back, something flickered across his face that might have been hurt before it was replaced with cold fury.

"You want an answer? Fine. We'll do it, we'll give Adrian his sick birthday wish, but don't mistake this for anything other than what it is, Elowen.

We're not doing this because we want you, we're doing this because refusing would hurt you more than agreeing, and apparently despite everything, we're still fool enough to care about that."

"But understand this," Matteo added, his voice low and dangerous. "When this is over, when we go back home, we're done, all of us, you can have your manipulative husband and your guilt and your martyrdom, but you won't have us, we won't be part of whatever sick game you and Adrian are playing anymore."

I nodded because what else could I do, because I'd gotten what Adrian wanted and that was all that mattered, and I turned to walk away before they could see me completely fall apart.

"Elowen," Kian called after me, and I stopped but didn't turn around. "I hope whatever he's holding over you was worth this, because you just destroyed any respect we had for you, and that's not something you get back."

I walked back into the villa on legs that no longer felt like they belonged to me, and I made it up the stairs to my room before the sobs finally broke free, violent and wrenching and so full of self-hatred that I thought they might tear me apart from the inside out.

Adrian's door was closed when I passed it and I knew he was in there waiting to hear that I'd succeeded, that I'd convinced them, that his trap had fully closed around all of us.

And I'd done exactly what he wanted, I'd sold myself and destroyed any chance of friendship or kindness from the two men who'd been trying to help me, and now we'd all spend two weeks acting out his twisted fantasy while pretending it was what any of us actually wanted.