Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Time passes, and in due course, Angelo comes to me again. I feel a strange tightening in my stomach from fear, as well as a little leaping of hope in my heart as he opens the door. My body is already starting to anticipate him both positively and negatively. I am attuning myself to a new sun and a new moon, and they are both Angelo Vitali.
The observer in my mind is impressed with how quickly he has started to break me down. It’s masterful. He could teach students at the academy so much about how to truly break a suspect. In comparison to Angelo, our techniques are brutal and easy to resist because our techniques are impersonal and cold. I am learning that Angelo is much warmer. He is searing hot.
“Good morning, girl.”
He turns the light on and I see that he has brought a tray of breakfast food. It is the kind of tray you see in movies about happy families, containing french toast with powdered sugar and bananas, and a glass of orange juice that looks to my analytical gaze more like a cipher for homeyness and wholesomeness than an actual beverage.
I am very hungry, though. And I am thirsty too. I have not been fed since my capture, and I had not eaten in hours before that. It could already be a day since I ate. My mouth is dry, though it is more than dehydration. It is fear, a deep, primal proper fear that breeds respect and awe in equal measure.
Angelo is a fucking artist, and his art is in breaking people. Every element of this interaction and this room is controlled. He is giving me his full attention, his eyes locked on me, taking in every reaction I show, calibrating his approach to me while inexorably twisting me into the shape of a new person. I understand what’s happening here, but Angelo is so very good at this, the fact that I understand it is not an effective barrier against it happening.
Some part of me will watch him take me apart and be absolutely powerless to stop it.
I look at the room I am in with new eyes. Nothing new leaps out at me. It is too sparsely appointed. It may as well be a sensory deprivation chamber.
Angelo places the tray on the bed next to me and pulls at one end of the rope that my shackles are attached to. The entire binding falls immediately and harmlessly away. I’ve seen knots like that before, usually used to tie up horses, so if they pull back or get into trouble, they can be released quickly.
He chuckles softly as he sees the look on my face as I realize I laid here all night without trying to escape.
“Interesting, isn’t it,” he purrs in that Sicilian accent that makes me melt and shiver at the same time, alluring and terrifying all at once. “Fascinating what actually binds us to places and people.”
His philosophical interpretation of my fucking stupidity does not take the edge off the swell of regret inside me. Why didn’t I try to get out of my ties? Why did I just assume he had bound me so effectively I couldn’t get out if I’d wanted to?
“Don’t look so sad, if you had escaped, and by escaped, I mean, pulled off the ropes and walked out the unlocked door, you would have found Bobby waiting for you. I do believe the dear boy is jealous.”
“And what would he be jealous of?”
“I can only imagine. But I am sure he would avenge them quite thoroughly,” Angelo says, artfully refusing to fill in the blank, leaving it to my imagination to create horrors he doesn’t deign to describe.
“Eat,” he says. “And drink. And use the bathroom, through that door.” He gestures to a door across the hall. “I will be back for you soon.”
I do what he tells me. I eat. I drink. I relieve myself. And I wonder who the hell I am, and even more, what the hell I am becoming.
Angelo comes for me, just as he said he would, not twenty minutes later. I am no more ready for him now than I was before, but at least I am hydrated and my stomach is not growling. Small mercies.
“Come with me,” he says, leading me through the interior of his home. Angelo is known to establish very luxurious bases. Like most filthy rich people with multiple streams of untraceable income, he likes to be comfortable.
He takes me upstairs through a domicile that is spared the usual accoutrements of the rich and powerful. I’ve busted a lot of criminal rich guys. Usually you can’t move for weird fucking statues that all feel slightly haunted, art that isn’t really that good and yet is worth millions anyway. There’s something about wealth that really ruins houses, turns them from cozy little retreats into big, echoing warehouses of depravity and bad taste.