If you have not read Part 1 of our story, please do so first so this will make more sense.
After coming to terms with the realities of my then husband's criminal activities, I turned even more inward and stayed on the internet in connection with Padrone more. He was my only anchor and the only one helping me keep my mind and spirit intact.
My husband became increasingly angry at everything. He became more and more distant, colder than before, and scarier. His attitude and mannerisms became neurotic and paranoid, and the mental and verbal abuse increased. Padrone and I had been in almost constant contact because he was worried about my husband snapping and physically doing harm to me or the children. He came close with me a couple of times, but never physically harmed us. He never showed any signs that he would ever harm the boys, and I never thought he would.
In late July 2011, our internet and lights got cut off because he didn't pay the bills. I still have no idea where all the hundreds of thousands of dollars he conned from those poor unsuspecting people and investors went. He definitely wasn't using it to pay bills. He let the plates and insurance expire on both of our cars and didn't even pay the monthly payments on them. But luckily, I still had my connection to the internet through my Blackberry and to Padrone. I could not loose that connection. He was the only ray of sunshine in an ever darkening world. At that time, things were so bad for me that I couldn't even find joy in my children anymore, even though I loved them unconditionally. My mental health was literally deteriorating.
I told Padrone about the problem with the bills because I had to get it off my chest. Completely and unexpectedly, he sent me $1100 via wire transfer. He had never met me in person. He just went with his instincts and followed his heart and trusted that I wasn't scamming him. I went to Walmart and picked it up, telling my husband my Mom had paid the bills for us to get the internet and electricity back on. After getting everything reconnected, I had about $700 left over. I hid it in an old purse that I wasn't using in order to keep it from being taken by my husband. For about 1 1/2 years prior, he never allowed me to have any money, except for very specific things. He would only give me money to go get coffee with my friends because he expected me to keep up appearances. He wouldn't even give me money for gas. He wouldn't allow me to use any debit or credit cards. I was completely and totally at his mercy.
Padrone made plans to come to the US to see me in mid-August of 2011. At that time, we had toyed with the idea of moving so we could finally live together, but had not made any solid plans because we lived in different countries, I had children and was still living with my husband. For my own mental health and because of my growing dependence on Padrone for guidance, strength and emotional support, I had been spending all of my time with my head buried on my phone. No matter where I was, as long as I could talk to Padrone, I was going to do so, even if it was just mundane things.
My husband started getting suspicious because of the amount of time I was spending on the phone. He had paid little to no attention to me in over 4 years or longer, but all of a sudden took an interest. I think his increasing paranoia made him suspicious of everyone and everything. He believed that someone was always trying to "get him". By then, he didn't care anything about me, but didn't want to lose his free housekeeper/cook/babysitter/secretary. He stayed up for three days and nights, barely sleeping, trying to find evidence of what I was doing because he had no clue. He was that detached from what was going on in my and the boys lives, as well as to our daily routines. I had been online for at least 2.5 years reconnecting to the BDSM community.
He found evidence of my relationship with Padrone and went ballistic! He started throwing stuff all around the house. He got in my face and kept threatening to beat me and hoping that I would have a seizure and stop breathing. He looked like a completely insane or psychotic person. I had never seen him that crazy before. I was shaking and yes, I did have many seizures because of his emotional and mental abuse.
He took my cell phone away and demanded the password to get in. I wouldn't give it to him. He took all of my identification away. He took my car keys and house keys away. He took all the home phones out of the house, as well as disconnected the computers, except for one in the office. He then slept in the home office to guard the computer to ensure I could not use it or have any contact with the outside world. He would not let me leave the house for three days. In those three days, he took over all of my email accounts, vanilla and BDSM online accounts, and every other account I had. He changed the passwords and pretended to be me.
All of my friends on FB thought I had gone crazy at first, but quickly figured out it was him and they blocked that compromised account. He sent threatening, demented sounding emails to Padrone telling him he better not come to California because something bad would happen to him. When he wasn't harassing my friends online, he was harassing me at home. He would make threats to hit me. He would grab my shoulders and shake me hard and yell in my face. He said that if I wanted to be a somebody's BDSM slave, he would keep me chained up in the house and beat me until I bled. He threatened me so much that I literally shut down and curled into a ball. My children were there the entire time he was doing this stuff. In an effort to protect them, I sent them to play for hours at the next door neighbor's house or would tell them to stay in their rooms. He kept me in constant eye supervision and I had no way to get away or any means to contact anyone, not even my family.
After his own scare tactics on Padrone failed, he turned to a different strategy. At first, he made Padrone believe that I had changed my mind about our relationship and about him coming to the USA to see me. He had read my emails and studied the way I wrote and the words I said to Padrone in normal conversation and wrote a few emails under my name telling Padrone I had changed my mind and did not want to meet him, that I loved my family and was going to try to work out my problems. Padrone believed it at first and kept asking for explanations as to what had changed my mind and if I was sure. For a couple of days, my asshole husband almost did a very convincing job. Padrone was extremely depressed and could not understand why, all of a sudden, I would not want to see him, even if it was just to meet in person and nothing more. He contacted everyone of our mutual friends he could think of, to try to find out any information he could. He even contacted a person that lived in the same area I did, to see if he knew anything. Remember, he and none of my other friends knew that I was being held hostage inside my own house.
As my friends on FB began to know he was impersonating me, they became increasingly adamant that he give me my access to the internet back because they were afraid at what he might do. They had heard the stories of how crazy he was, and were all worried for my safety. Padrone said that had been one of the longest 72 hour periods in his life.
On the fourth day, we were out of everything and needed food. He gave me $10 and told me to go to Costco and what exactly to buy. He sent our oldest child with me to and told him to tell him anytime I got on the phone and what I said when we got back. Luckily, my son was more interested in some candy and a new toy than what I was doing. I got on a messaging system called Pinger that only Padrone and I knew about and sent him a message telling him what had happened briefly and that everything that had been sent to him and said to him by my husband was total bullshit. I told him I still wanted and needed him to come because he was my only anchor to reality. He was the only reason I had stayed sane. He was the only one that understood me and believed in me and actually cared about me.
At first he didn't believe that it was me. But after a couple of messages, the last message that day was "I have bought you a one-way ticket to come back to Italy with me to stay". There was no talking about it. There was no asking me. He just did it. It would be up to me if I used that ticket or not. I had exactly 1 week to figure it out. Those were some of the longest, scariest, loneliest days I have ever experienced in my life.
I had a lot of thinking to do. I had to come to terms with my decision one way or the other very quickly. On one hand, if I stayed, I would lose Padrone, the person that had come to mean so much to me even though it was such a short amount of time we had been together and the fact we had never met in person. I would still have my children, but my situation was so bad, and my husband so unpredictable towards me, I had no idea what could happen.
On the other hand, if I got on that plane with Padrone, I would have to leave my children behind because of the laws, their father, and because I could not just uproot them and take them to a foreign place where they didn't speak the language, know the customs, or understand what was happening. I would also have to leave behind all of my family, friends, and even my country.
That was the hardest decision I have ever made. If I left, I knew that their father would take care of them, but that there was a real possibility that he would never allow me to talk to them ever again. I also knew that if I left, he would tell the children all kinds of lies and try to turn them against me. I also understood that they may never want to see or talk to me ever again, even after they grew up. But what choice did I have?
What would I do? What would be my decision?
