He Ruined Me—Now He Crawls Back Begging novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Two Hundred and Ten Days
Wynn walks out of the cartel's basement, comes home to a welcome dinner where her mother hides her scar from Bella, and ends her engagement at the table; then the man whose leg Bella shattered rings the bell.
Seven months ago, my sister Bella drove drunk through a red light on Lower Wacker and shattered a man's leg.
The man was Santiago Arango.
His family runs the biggest syndicate in South America.
My father runs a freight company.
So three days later, when the Arangos' black SUV pulled into our driveway in Winnetka, my parents walked me out to it.
"You'll take the blame for Bella," my mother said, fixing my collar. "She's fragile. She'd never survive a place like that."
"You grew up hard," my father said. "You're used to it. It'll be over before you know it."
I fought.
I grabbed the doorframe of the SUV and called my fiancé with my free hand.
Gino Abbate was in Detroit that week, closing a deal for his father's guns.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Gino, they're giving me to the Arangos. Please. You have to call them."
I heard a car engine on his end.
I heard someone crying softly in his passenger seat.
Then he hung up.
His text came as they pushed my head down into the back seat.
"A few months. It'll go fast. Bella's heart can't take this. You have to understand them."
That was February.
This is September.
At six in the morning, two men walked me out of the basement of the Arango house, up a hill road, and left me at a bend where the trees came right down to the asphalt.
A black Escalade was idling there.
The back window slid down.
Gino looked exactly the same. Clean jaw. Gold watch. Charcoal coat in the heat.
"Wynn."
I caught myself in the tinted glass.
My hair was hacked off at the jaw.
My cheekbones stuck out.
My right leg dragged, because a guard broke my kneecap in April and nobody set it.
And a scar ran from my left eyebrow to my jaw, thick and pink.
I did that myself.
Around day forty, the guards started coming down at night, two and three at a time, laughing on the stairs.
I broke my water glass on the floor and opened my face with the biggest piece.
After that, they only hit me.
Gino got out and took my wrist. His fingers went all the way around it.
"These months must have been hard on you," he said. "I'll make it right."
I looked at myself in his eyes.
Then I took my hand back.
"Mm."
Two hundred and ten days.
That's a long time to think.
I didn't want to marry him anymore.
He flew me home on his father's jet and talked on the phone the whole way.
Once, he looked over at my face and quickly looked out the window.
I had one thing of my own in my pocket. A cheap phone, and a business card with a handwritten number.
A man on crutches had given them to me the night before, in the basement doorway.
I hadn't decided what to do with either.
The first number I dialed when we landed was Peg's.
Peg Mahoney fostered me from fourteen to eighteen in Gary, Indiana, and she was the only person on earth I wanted to hear.
It went to voicemail.
"Peg, it's me," I said. "I'm alive. I'll call you."
My parents threw me a welcome-home dinner.
There were flowers on every table in the house, white lilies, and a caterer in the kitchen.
My mother hugged me on the front step and stepped back fast.
"Oh, honey," she said, looking at the scar. "Oh, we'll find someone for that."
My father shook my hand.
Bella came down the stairs in pale blue cashmere and burst into tears halfway.
"Wynnie! I prayed every single night!"
She threw her arms around my neck.
She smelled like the same vanilla perfume she'd worn the night of the crash.
At dinner my mother moved my place card.
"Sit here, sweetheart. Away from the candles." She lowered her voice. "Bella's heart. She shouldn't have to look at it while she eats."
I sat where she put me.
Gino sat across from me, next to Bella.
She passed him the bread before he asked.
He took it without looking at her.
My father raised his glass. "To family. To putting this behind us."
"To Wynn coming home," Bella said, wiping her eyes.
"And to the wedding," my mother said. "We'll push it to spring. That gives the surgeons time with her face."
Everyone drank.
I looked down at my left hand.
The diamond Gino gave me was still on my finger. The guards took my shoes and my watch. They left the ring, because they thought it was fake.
I pulled it off.
It came easily. My fingers were bones now.
I set it down in the middle of the white tablecloth, next to the lilies.
The room went quiet.
"There won't be a wedding," I said.
My mother laughed, high and thin. "Wynn, you're tired."
"I'm not tired. I was in a basement for seven months because you gave me to the people Bella hit."
Bella made a small sound and pressed her hand to her chest.
"Don't," my father said. "Not in front of your sister."
"I'm talking to Gino."
Gino set down his fork.
"You called me," he said, quiet and reasonable. "I couldn't do anything that night. You know how it works."
"You hung up. Bella was in your car, crying. I heard her."
Bella's face went white.
Gino didn't even blink.
"Pick up the ring, Wynn."
"No."
I stood, and my knee buckled, and I caught the edge of the table and stood anyway.
"I'm leaving this house tonight. I'm not your daughter for this anymore, and I'm not his."
Nobody moved.
Then the doorbell rang.
It rang again, long.
The housekeeper went. We heard the front door open, and a man's voice, low and polite, with an accent.
A cane tapped across the marble.
Santiago Arango stopped in the dining room doorway in a black coat, his left leg in a brace, his dark eyes going around the table one face at a time.
They stopped on mine for a second.
Then they moved on, to the pale blonde in blue cashmere.
"Good evening," he said. "I'm here for the one who was driving."
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