He steps forward and before I can react, he takes my limp left hand. His grip is like iron, impersonal and firm. He presses the small, cool glass vial into my palm and folds my fingers around it. The gesture is grotesquely intimate, like a demon’s blessing.
“Be grateful,” he whispers, his breath ghosting across my cheek. “God, or fate, or simple pragmatism is giving you this way out. You should take it. It is more mercy than a bitch like you deserves.”
He releases my hand, turns, and walks away as calmly as he entered.
I am paralysed. I can’t move, I can barely breathe as I look down at my clenched fist. Slowly, achingly slowly, I unfold my fingers.
The vial lies in the centre of my palm, catching the sunlight. It winks at me, a tiny, malevolent diamond.
Out.The word echoes in my mind. This is the out I’ve fantasized about, prayed for. An end to the fear, the degradation, the constant, gnawing dread. A final act of control, the only one left to me.
A coward’s exit.
Tears begin to slide down my cheeks, silent and warm. They drip onto my hand, onto the vial. Do I have the courage to live in this hell? Or do I have the courage to end it?
Neither is an option I want, and yet there is no other available to me.
Ihide the cyanide. It feels like the only logical thing to do. I stash it in the bottom of my bag hoping it’ll be safe there, because it’s not like I have anywhere else to hide it. I don’t know how long we will be here, how long we will remain in Italy.
But as I turn around, I spot something. Something Antonio has clearly left for me.
My fingers tremble as I open the scarlet red box. Diamonds, so many diamonds sparkle inside.
It’s a collar, a beautiful, decadent collar with diamonds cut into long thin stones that look like a thousand daggers.
It is the most beautiful, most terrible thing I have ever seen.
It represents everything about us, about me, about what I am to him. My gilded cage. My body, my presence, my fractured spirit, all boiled down to a price tag he can casually exceed.
I let out a sigh that could be a scream, that could also be my soul fracturing into a million tiny pieces.
I’m losing my mind.
I shouldn’t feel this, I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t look at that collar and feel betrayal when all I am to him, all I ever have been is his pet. His plaything, his damned trophy he can show off and abuse.
I flee the room, flee the space that we share, and return back to the brutal heat of the sun. I’d rather burn up in it, rather fry in its rays than deal with my thoughts right now.
I don’t know how long I stay out there, how long I am lost in my bitter tormented thoughts but I know exactly who it is when I hear the door open, when I hear the sound of footsteps approaching.
I stiffen just as his fingers brush my shoulder.
“You didn’t like it?” He asks and I see what he’s holding out, dangling from his hand.
It feels like a war rages inside me.
“It’s breathtaking,” I whisper, and the honesty of that is its own kind of lie.
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. He leans down, his cheek brushing against my hair as his scent wraps around me. “Then why haven’t you put it on?”
I swallow. I’ve had hours to concoct a dozen answers but only the truth, the carefully curated truth he expects will suffice. “I thought you’d want to do that,” I say softly, layering the words with a subservience I know pleases him.
The effect is immediate. His smile widens and he looks pleased, as if I’ve paid him a great compliment, acknowledged his dominion in the way he most desires. “A good thought,” he murmurs, his voice dripping with approval.
He turns me to face him, his movements efficient, sure. I tilt my head back, baring my throat in a gesture of surrender that has become second nature. His fingers are deft as they brush my hair aside. The metal is shockingly cool against my skin. I hear the tiny, definitive click of the clasp closing.
The weight of it is immediate. Not just the physical weight of the diamonds, but the symbolic heft. It’s a shackle. A crown. I am never allowed to forget what I am to him.
He steps back, his eyes sweeping over me with a critic’s appraisal that quickly flames into something hotter, more possessive. “Beautiful,”he breathes. “You have more diamonds than a queen now.”
