If I am smart, and God, I have to be smart. If I bide my time, I can play a longer game. I can learn the rules of his twisted world, find its weaknesses and when the moment is right, I can use them against him.
I can bring down the Kingmaker.
A bitter, metallic taste fills my mouth. And there is the other, more degrading part of my reasoning, the part I have to swallow like poison to make this palatable. He’s fucked me once already. The violation is done. The line has been crossed so it’s not like I’m really sacrificing all that much more of something he hasn’t already taken.
The logic is flimsy, born of desperation, but it is all I have. It is the armour I must wear today.
I push myself up, my muscles protesting, a sharp twinge in my side reminding me of the beating I endured. The silk whispers against my skin, feeling impossibly intimate and violating all at once. I don’t look in the mirror. I can’t bear to see the ghost that stares back, the purple shadows under her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the fading yellow bruise on her jaw.
My bare feet make no sound on the cold marble floors as I tiptoe from the room.
I know his rhythms by now, have learned them through the silence. He is a creature of rigid habit. The sun might only just have risen, but he will already be up. He will be in his office, consuming the world through screens and reports, playing God before most people have had a sip of their first coffee.
The walk through the cavernous hallways takes an eternity. Every portrait seems to watch me, their painted eyes judging my surrender.
This is madness.
This is suicide.
He’ll see right through me. He’ll laugh, he’ll…
I stop before the heavy, dark wood door of his office. It is slightly ajar. I can see a sliver of the room beyond: the edge of the massive mahogany desk, a shelf of leather-bound books, the glow of a monitor.
I push the door open.
He is there, exactly as I knew he would be. Dressed in a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the corded muscles and dark hair on his forearms. His focus is absolute, consumed by the data scrolling on the screen in front of him. The strange mesh of his scarred skin highlighted in the cool light of the monitor.
He doesn’t look up immediately. He finishes reading something, his brow furrowed in concentration while I stand there, just inside the door. A supplicant in a silk shift, waiting for an audience with a king.
Finally, his eyes flicker away from the screen and land on me. There is no surprise, only a flicker of irritation, as if a mildly annoying insect has buzzed into his space. His frown is deep, impatient.
“What do you want?” His voice is flat, devoid of any warmth.
My carefully rehearsed words, my plea for forgiveness, an offer of compliance, die in my throat. They feel absurd, theatrical even. He has reduced the moment to its basest terms: an interruption. My plan, which felt so shrewd and calculated in the solitude of my room, suddenly seems naïve and so fucking childish.
He doesn’t wait for an answer I can’t form. He gives a dismissive, almost bored wave of his hand, his attention already returning to the screen as he starts to type away. “Get out. I’m working.”
The dismissal is the final blow. It shatters the last fragile vestiges of my pride. There is no negotiation here, no bargaining. There is only submission. Absolute and total.
My knees buckle. It isn’t entirely an act; my legs simply give way, the strength fleeing them in a rush of cold fear and hopelessness. I drop to the floor on the lush Persian rug, the impact jarring up through my bones.
“Please,” I whisper, the word scraping my throat raw. I hate the sound of it. I hate the person saying it, I hate it all. “Please, Antonio. Let me stay. Just… let me stay here.”
I keep my head bowed, my hair falling like a curtain to hide my face to hide the turmoil, the calculation, the self-loathing I know must be blazing in my eyes. I am a thing begging for scraps.
The clicking of the keyboard stops.
The silence that follows is different now. It is no longer just empty; it is charged, scrutinizing. I can feel his gaze on me, dissecting my bowed head, my trembling shoulders, the way my hands are clenched white-knuckled in my lap. He is a predator, and he has just seen his prey adopt a posture of surrender, trying to decide if it’s a trick or not.
I don’t move, I don’t breathe. I pour every ounce of my will into my performance of brokenness.
After a moment that feels like a lifetime, he speaks. His voice is different. The impatience is gone, replaced by a low, considering tone that vibrates through me.
“Come here.”
I look up, confused. He hasn’t moved from his chair.
He gestures with his chin to the space on the rug beside his desk, next to his leg. “Kneel here.”
