He knew exactly where to leave the note. Gambino's collection of books by her favorite author are among her most cherished possessions. And for good reason. A self-confessed hopeless romantic, she had long dreamed of a life worthy of one of Sparks' characters, of a real-life fairy-tale punctuated by the discovery of her prince.

She recognized the handwriting immediately. It belonged to the man she'd married less than two months earlier, Andrew Straughter.

"I would torture you to the brink of death, laughing endlessly at the tears in your eyes as you gasped for air. Chains would tear at the corners of your mouth, warding away any joy."

Straughter's words, which filled both sides of the paper, didn't surprise her. They simply fit the pattern — written confirmation of the rage she says her husband had learned to hide so well from everyone but his new wife, of the brutality that, until then, had been measured in the bruises, welts and cuts she'd done her best to hide.

If there had been a kernel of doubt dangling by the root somewhere deep in Gambino's mind, the razor's edge of Straughter's words had cut it away. After months of doubt, she now was as sure of this as she was of anything in her life. Straughter's fury, the jealousy, the manipulation, they weren't her fault. Gambino had to leave her husband or next time, she might be dead.

Gambino had left the books for last as she packed her belongings from the Fort Bragg house she'd shared with Straughter, an Army medic who worked on base in the emergency department at Womack Army Medical Center. She put the books in a box, walked out of the house and away from her husband.

It was for good, this time. But the story of "Cee," as she is known by those close to her, and Andrew, the seemingly doting soldier who made Gambino the envy of her friends when he showered her with gifts or insisted on walking her to the restroom when they were out, could never end as neatly as a Sparks novel.

"I loved the person I thought I knew," says Gambino, who has since returned to Lake Norman after finally leaving her husband this past August. "I loved (an) Andrew who was false. I'm grieving the loss of my best friend and my significant other, because he never really existed."

Gambino's real-life prince had become pure fiction. The next chapter in the epic begins Friday (Oct. 28) at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in Charlotte, when Straughter is scheduled to enter pleas on domestic abuse charges related to an Aug. 30 altercation that left Gambino so battered, the fairy tale had officially become a tragedy.

That was the day, Gambino now says, when Andrew Straughter "became the man he really was."

"Blood would flow from your eyes as you slowly cry out your soul. I would catch every tear only to throw it back in your face to watch the drops fall to the ground again.

Like many romantic relationships, theirs had started with friendship. Gambino, who was working as a nanny for a local family, met Straughter through mutual friends. When Gambino, then 20, went through a tough breakup, Straughter was there to console her, even if it was long distance much of the time. Gambino found comfort in her conversations with Straughter, and as her trust in him grew, the emotional barricades fell away, one by one.

Her confidante became her suitor. And she was happy about it.

"He was my knight in shining armor," Gambino says. "He never raised his voice. He never cursed. He showered me with gifts."

Gambino began making occasional trips to Fayetteville, and the two kept in touch by phone and text message the rest of the time, But after a few months of dating, Straughter's armor began to show chinks. If Gambino didn't respond to his phone calls or texts within 15 minutes, she says, he would become furious. He also disapproved of her friends.

After six months, Gambino recalls, Straughter's possessiveness escalated. If Straughter called while Gambino was out with friends, he expected her to ignore them and talk to him. He began to monitor Gambino's Facebook account, she says, and ordered her to delete any comments he didn't like, especially those posted by male friends.

"I finally just de-activated all my (social media) accounts, and he seemed very pleased with that," Gambino says. "Within two days, he went and bought me a set of black pearls because he was so proud of me because I wasn't going to let Facebook or anything else get in the way of us."

But the interlude was short lived. Gambino liked to wear black clothing and red, "poppy" lipstick. Straughter, she says, started criticizing the way she dressed — and the way he thought others were reacting to her.

"If a guy looked at me," Gambino recalls, "he would say, 'Do you like him? Do you want to (have sex with) him? They only look at you because you look like a whore.'"

A guillotine would fall sharp and heavy across your neck, and my hands would stitch you back together just to see the life drain from your eyes once more."

Many abusive partners become masters at masking their dominance, and Gambino says Straughter did so expertly. When they were out together with friends, Straughter had learned to control her the way a ventriloquist guides his puppet. A vise-like squeeze on the back of her arm meant, "Shut up! You're talking too much!" If he wanted to deliver the message verbally, he'd whisper it in her ear while smiling sweetly at those around them, as though he were feeding Gambino sweet nothings.

"He put me in social situations with people he knew so he could show them how wonderful he was," she says.

And when Gambino needed to go to the restroom, Straughter would insist on accompanying her.

"Our friends all thought it was sweet," Gambino says. "But he really just didn't trust me to be out of his sight."

Like many abused women, Gambino saw the signs but tried to explain them away.

"I was young," she says. "I thought I loved him. There were times when he was so perfect. I thought I could do something to make things better."

Which explains why, last December, Gambino accepted Straughter's marriage proposal. More trouble soon followed, though. When she showered the next day, Gambino instinctively removed the ring because she didn't want to get hair gel or mousse on it.

Straughter, she says, considered her removal of the ring as a slight, and he didn't speak to her the rest of the day. Later, when they went out, Gambino says, Straughter drove his Chevrolet Camaro 125 miles per hour on I-77, "just to scare me."

Looking back, Gambino now knows she wasn't scared enough.

"Agony would surround you as razorblades danced to their own tune across your skin. I would grip the brush and gracefully paint a masterpiece of your misery, packing your fresh wounds with salt ... ."

While Gambino wanted a traditional wedding, Straughter insisted on a courthouse ceremony and, last December, she finally relented.

Now, with Gambino as his wife, Straughter's behavior became more menacing.

While they were play wrestling, Straughter once punched Gambino's arm, leaving a bruise that horrified her friends. And the comments Straughter once just whispered in her ear now were often made for all to hear.

"We'd be out with mutual friends and he'd humiliate me," she recalls. "He'd say things like, 'You know my wife's Italian. Look at her nose.'"

Last Christmas, Gambino says, Straughter's father gave him a rifle. A few months later, as they sat in their living room, Gambino says Straughter loaded two shells into the gun, and put the barrel to the side of her chest.

"You know," Gambino recalls Straughter saying, "I'd kill you if you left me."

"Get outta here," Gambino told him with a laugh as she pushed the gun away. "Then he came over, put his arm around me and said, 'Let's watch a movie together.'"

And so it went, Gambino says. Rage or manipulation, followed by "honeymoon periods, anywhere from three days to three weeks," during which Straughter was a model mate.

If love could somehow be measured in pain then I would be sure to destroy you daily with no thoughts of how to rebuild a foundation from the dust and rubble."

If Gambino went to the Fort Bragg commissary to shop and Straughter thought she'd taken too long, she says, he would check the car's odometer and mobile phone to make sure she hadn't gone anywhere else or talked to anyone.

After one of those trips, Straughter went into a rage. He grabbed the carton of eggs Gambino had just taken from the bag, she says, and began pelting her in the head with them until, finally, he left the house, slamming the front door behind him.

A distraught Gambino cleaned up the kitchen, then went upstairs, sobbing, to wash the eggs from her face and hair. Later, Straughter returned home with roses and apologized.

"He said he didn't know what he'd do without me," she says.

The same week, though. Straughter's rage returned. While Gambino showered, Straughter filled a bucket with ice water and dumped it on her.

"I was so angry, I got out of the shower and yelled at him," she says.

After getting back in the shower to rinse off, Gambino came back to the bedroom. Straughter, she says, had packed her clothes in suitcases, and now lay on his back across the bed, his hands locked behind his cocked head, and a smile on his face. Gambino says she asked him to leave while she got dressed, but he refused, then began throwing Gambino's belongings down the stairs.

When Straughter came toward Gambino, she says, "I pushed him to get away from me. He threw me down and put his whole 250 pounds over me. He was suffocating me."

Straughter finally let Gambino up. She ran downstairs, grabbed some clothes, went into another bathroom and locked the door behind her. Even after Straughter stopped pounding on the door and yelling, Gambino says she stayed in the bathroom for four hours.

She finally left the bathroom, but she didn't leave Straughter.

"I didn't tell anyone what happened because I was embarrassed," she says. "People told me I was too young to get married. If I left, I'd have to tell them they were right."

Next Week: A violent end. A new beginning.