"Of course you don't."
We sit in silence, the weight of everything unsaid pressing down on us.
"What do you need?" he asks finally.
The question breaks something inside me. "I don't know. I can't tell anymore. How could I? I don't even know who I am anymore." The tears start then, hot and angry and unstoppable. "I don't know what's real, what's programming, what's trauma, what's actually me. I don't know if I can trust my own feelings because you've been manipulating them for weeks."
"Camilla—"
"I don't know if I really hate you or if I'm just supposed to hate you or both. I don't know if I want to run away from you or never leave your side. I don't know if I'm strong or if I just think I'm strong because you conditioned me to believe it." I'm sobbingnow, all the control I've been maintaining finally shattering. "I don't know anything anymore. I’m lost."
He moves like he wants to comfort me, then stops himself.
"I don't even know if I want justice or revenge or just to forget this ever happened," I continue through the tears. "You're asking what I need like I'm a rational person making rational decisions, but I'm not rational. I'm broken. You broke me, and now you want me to tell you how to fix it."
"I want to try to fix it."
"You can't. You can't undo weeks of psychological manipulation with good intentions and honest conversations." I wipe my face with shaking hands. "The damage is done."
"Then what do we do?"
"I don't know." The admission feels like defeat. "Maybe nothing. Maybe time. Maybe impossible things."
He's quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks, his voice is careful. "Do you want me to leave? Give you space to figure things out without me hovering?"
"Maybe. Yes. I don't know." I laugh bitterly. "See? I can't even answer simple questions anymore."
"Time," he says finally. "Maybe you need time."
"Maybe. But time for what? To get over this? To figure out who I am when I'm not being held prisoner or prepared for sale?" I stand up, suddenly needing to move. "I killed a man, Renato. I drove a pen through his throat and watched him bleed out."
"You were defending yourself from a man who was assaulting you."
"A man who was assaulting me as part of your elaborate show." I turn to face him. "Don't you see? Even my one moment ofgenuine strength, my one act of real defiance—it was all part of your game. It wasn’t real either."
The look on his face tells me he hadn't thought of it that way. Let him live with that.
"What about Lorenzo?" he asks quietly.
"What about him?"
"He was the one who stepped aside. He was the one who chose money over protecting you. He was part of this too."
I think about Lorenzo, about the calculating look in his eyes as armed men surrounded me. About how he weighed my life against his family's reputation and found me wanting.
"I want him to understand what it feels like to be powerless," I say slowly. "I want him to lose everything he values the way I lost my freedom, my sense of self, my ability to trust my own mind." I meet Renato's eyes. "But I don't want to kill him. I don't want to become someone who murders more people, even people who deserve it."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want him to suffer. I want it to be justice, not revenge. Does that make sense?"
"Yes, it does."
"Can you do that? Make him pay without turning me into a killer?"
"Yes."
"Promise me."
