102. Maybe, I was still asleep

ERICA

“Are you really okay?” Ami asked for the hundredth time since I came to live with them yesterday.

I smiled at her. But I doubted I was able to pull it off. I hadn’t slept last night and whatever fitful sleep I’d gotten, for once it didn’t bring me dreams of Antonio, but of monsters in the shadows. It happened because I came face to face with the man who had introduced me to those monsters in the first place. He was there. In Gabriel’s home. Under the same roof as me.

The thought made me shiver and Ami squeezed my fingers, comforting me without knowing what affected me. I met her gaze and she asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

I felt my eyes prickling with tears. Ami knew about monstrous fathers but I couldn’t bring myself to share what my father did to me. Antonio knew because he wouldn't leave it alone. He was stubborn and arrogant and obsessive to a point that no one could stop him when he puts his mind to it, just look at me— I was in love with him, needed him like air a