Love,Written In Ruins-Chapter 27: I Am Traumatized

The world outside the train station, a swirling canvas of hurried commuters and exhaust fumes, seemed to shrink and hush the moment the matte black Rolls-Royce Ghost came into focus. It was a vehicle that didn’t shout wealth; it simply existed in a different stratum, a mobile whisper of absolute, devastating power.

​Luciano held Eloise’s elbow, his grip possessive but not painful, a velvet shackle guiding her toward the open rear door.

Ian, stood beside it, his perfectly tailored suit a stark contrast to the urgency in his posture. His face, however, was a blank slate, a perfect, practiced mask of indifference.

​As Eloise reluctantly climbed into the luxury car, sinking into the plush, custom-stitched leather seat, she saw Edward on the platform, staring after them. He stood frozen, a look of profound confusion and utter helplessness etched onto his kind face.

She managed to hold his gaze for a second, her own eyes silently pleading for forgiveness for getting him involved in her mess, for shattering his picture of a ’good man helping a lady.’

​Luciano didn’t wait for Ian to secure the door. He leaned in, his body brushing against hers, the closeness making her retract into the corner of the seat. He reached across her torso and pulled the seat belt over her chest with deliberate, almost gentle force, clicking it into place.

Eloise leaned backwards, holding her breath, acutely aware of the heat radiating from his powerful frame. His nearness did something visceral to her—a terrifying mix of fear and a traitorous response she hated to admit.

​He turned to Ian, who still stood by the open driver’s door, awaiting instructions.

"Ian, find your own way back."

Ian looked visibly surprised by the sudden order. Luciano never drove; he found it tedious, an unnecessary chore for those without means. Ian blinked once.

"Sir... you’re driving?"

​Luciano didn’t even look up at him. "Did I stutter, Ian?"

​Ian obeyed immediately. He stepped out of the driver’s door, walked around the car, and disappeared into the crowd.

Eloise realized the terrifying implication: Luciano wanted an utterly private space. He didn’t want even his most loyal assistant privy to the conversation that was about to unfold with her.

​Luciano slid into the driver’s seat, the movement unhurried, yet consuming. He filled the space, the air temperature seeming to rise by several degrees as he settled the Ghost’s powerful engine to a near-silent thrum.

He started the car, pulling out smoothly into the city traffic. He took a slow, deep breath, his hands resting on the steering wheel, knuckles white. He then spoke, not looking at her, his profile sharp and cold against the side window.

​"Eloise. "Do you know how trust issues begin?"

​He didn’t wait for her to open her mouth, the rhetorical nature of the question clear.

​"It begins with what you did," he answered his own question, his voice dangerously smooth, the low frequency vibrating in the floorboards.

​She turned her head to face him fully, ready to defend her action—her desperate, impulsive scramble for freedom.

​Luciano cut her off with a sharp, decisive slice of his hand through the air. "First, you burned down my estate—a thirty-million-dollar act of vengeance. And how did I, a man of rational consequence, respond? I rewarded you. I made you my fiancée instead of sending you to rot in a federal prison, or worse."

​He shifted gears, the movement barely perceptible. He turned then, his eyes, usually an icy blue-gray, hardened into chips of cold granite. He didn’t raise his voice, but the contained fury in his gaze made her stomach clench.

He gave her ’hurtful’ look—a magnificent, Oscar-worthy performance of betrayal. He was successfully making her question her own sanity, her own flight, so much so that Eloise actually doubted her decision to run. Was he right? Had she truly misjudged the monster she was trying to flee?

​"I even gave you a nice present to welcome you to your new life," he continued, his tone thick with irony. "And even knowing what you are capable of—which is, let’s be honest, killing me in my sleep with a rusty spoon’—I still planned to share a room with you after a week. After one week, I will put my life in your hands. And that, Paloma, is trust."

​Eloise could only stare at him. The man was mad. Utterly, clinically unhinged, yet his logic was terrifyingly consistent within his own brutal world view. She’d forgotten that moment in the foyer when he admitted as much, when she first asked if he was crazy.

​"That nice present of yours," she countered, her voice shaking slightly but steadying as she went on the offensive, "was the severed testicles of William."

​She knew she was being a hypocrite for pointing that out, since a dark, twisted part of her had enjoyed William’s suffering, the vindication of seeing the man who had hurt her broken by a greater force.

But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was his masterful attempt at a guilt trap, an emotional manipulation designed to make her feel beholden to her tormentor.

​Luciano blinked, his expression shifting to a look of mock shock, a theatrical gesture that infuriated her.

​"Would you have preferred a bouquet, Paloma? Perhaps a hand-drawn cartoon from that dreadfully gentle man, you just met? What was his name, again? Ah, right, Edward." He spat the name out like a bitter taste, an insignificant piece of dust. "We will address him later, by the way."

​He paused, letting her swallow, letting the weight of his gaze press down on her.

​"Eloise," he said, the anger receding into a deep, philosophical bitterness. "In this brutal, hurtful, and painful world of ours. Flowers are for funerals, and you, my phoenix, are far from dead. You, Eloise, didn’t need gentleness."

He took her chin gently, forcing her to look into his icy blue-gray eyes, "because if you did, you wouldn’t have burned down that estate. You wouldn’t be defensive when I asked you about why you left your mother and your home at age eighteen and you wouldn’t still be wearing that pathetic, sentimental chain around your throat."

​The casual savagery of the truth struck her like a physical blow. Her eyes burned. He saw everything. He knew everything. She hated how right he was. She blinked back the tears, refusing to grant him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. He released her chin and she turned her head, looking out the window, trying to compose herself.

In the reflection, she stole a look at his profile—the elegant, sculpted cruelty of it—and noticed, with a flash of perverse fascination, the small, damning beauty mark beneath his right eye. How could she have never seen that before? The tiny mole was the only imperfection on the flawless canvas of his skin.

​Luciano continued, his voice softer now, almost a confession, as if he didn’t notice her sudden fascination with his mole. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

​"So I have decided to wait. Wait until the moment you are ready to confess the trauma, the secrets, the ugliness you hide behind that spectacular façade."

​Her breath hitched in her throat. He was ready to wait. He was willing to be patient for the moment she could finally share those horrific past events with him. It was an astonishing, bewildering offer of grace from a man she knew to be ruthless.

​But of course, Luciano’s gentleness, like any luxury in his world, had a strict expiration date.

​"Now, where was I?" He tapped his perfectly sculpted forehead with a single, tapered finger, as if summoning the next dark thought. "Ah, yes. The trust issues."

​His gaze snapped back to her, cold and assessing.

​"Back to the topic at hand. You asked to visit your friend. And as a trusting fiancé—a foolish one, apparently—I allowed you the field trip to see her. And not only was I starved of dinner, but you also attempted to execute a cinematic escape."

​Eloise said nothing, only bowing her head, the shame of being so easily foiled mixing with her anger at his manipulation.

​"Your friend," he continued, a note of dark admiration in his tone. "She is very good. Very loyal. She managed to fool Ian, making him think you were in some innocent cafe having fun with her."

​A cold, terrifying realization hit Eloise, knocking the breath from her lungs. Jayla...

​"She is safe," he confirmed, sensing her sudden, sharp panic. "But I am not, Paloma. I am traumatized."

​The word, coming from him, was absurd, yet he managed to sell it with a look of theatrical, convincing suffering that almost made her laugh, if she hadn’t been so close to weeping.

​"Because not only did you plan to run away, but you also sat in the same cab with another man who wasn’t me. Your fiancé. You took that right from me. The right to be alone with you in one of our cars. You gave it to a stranger." His voice dropped to a wounded, almost petulant whisper, a man deeply offended by a perceived slight to his ownership. "That should have been our first time."

​Eloise stared at him, speechless. Of all things, he was fixated on this bizarre sense of entitlement? It was a shared ride, a desperate move!

It was then that a startling realization struck her. Luciano hadn’t sent Ian away because of the conversation. He was jealous. He needed this intimate, sealed-off space to reassert his sole claim to her attention, to her proximity, to her very breath.

​"I’m sorry," she said, quickly, honestly, sensing the need to appease the tyrant. "I didn’t mean to share the cab with him. I was just in a hurry to..."

​"To run away," Luciano finished for her, the car gliding past a wrought-iron gate the size of a small country. He offered a charming, utterly sincere smile. "No problem. I forgive you."

​Eloise knew better than to believe him. Forgiveness from Luciano came with a price tag heavier than his estate.

​"But the trauma is still there," he insisted, giving her a truly spectacular, convincingly ’traumatic’ look—all wide, tortured eyes and a quiver of the lower lip. "So, in order to trust you again—for your little mistake of running and for daring to be near another man—I wrote a very nice contract for both our engaged and married life mi corazón."

​As the final, chilling words left his mouth, the colossal gates of the mansion swung open, and the baroque nightmare of their prison came into view. They had reached home.

​"It’s the only way to solve our little trust issues, Eloise," Luciano concluded, pulling the Rolls-Royce to a silent, perfect stop.