He’s been watching me. That’s the only sane explanation.
After a minute, I make my way back to the bedroom, my brain finally coming back online.
I need to assess, analyze, find a weakness.
Every building has one. That’s what I do. I find the cracks, the stress points, the places where time and weather have eaten away at what was once solid. This room is no different. It’s just a structure. Just walls and windows and a door.
Just a cage.
Windows first. I cross to the nearest one, pressing my palms flat against the glass. Too thick. I tap it with my knuckle, listening to the dull thud instead of the sharp ring of normal glass. Laminated safety glass, probably. The kind they use in banks and jewelry stores. The kind that won’t shatter even if you hit it with a hammer.
The frame is interesting. Old iron, the original hardware from what looks like a sixteenth-century palazzo. But the joins are wrong. Modern welds hidden beneath aged paint. Someone retrofitted these windows, reinforced them, made them look antique while giving them the structural integrity of a vault.
I try the latch and am overcome with triumph as it opens as it swings inward. Triumph which quickly vanishes when the mechanism catches on a metal bar bolted into the frame. Two inches of freedom, maybe three, just enough to let air in. Not enough to let a body out.
Door next. I cross the room and examine it carefully, running my fingers along the edges. No interior handle. The hinges areon the outside, a deliberate choice. The frame is solid steel, painted to look like wood.
He thought of everything.
I move to the walls. Press my ear against the stone. Knock, listening for the hollow sound that might indicate a hidden passage or a weak point. Nothing. The stone is thick, medieval construction, probably three feet at least. The kind of walls that survived centuries of warfare.
The kind of walls that won’t crumble no matter how hard I beat my fists against them.
I complete a circuit of the room, knocking every few feet. Solid. Solid. Solid. The plaster is new in places, covering what I assume are electrical conduits and surveillance equipment. But the stone beneath it is ancient and unforgiving.
This psycho converted a historical building into a prison. Preserved the beauty while engineering the function. Part of me, the part that spent years studying exactly this kind of architecture, is impressed by the craftsmanship. The rest wants to watch it burn.
Every detail has been planned. Professional. This isn’t something he threw together when he decided to take me. This is months of preparation. Maybe years.
How long has he been watching me? Am I the first? Or just the latest?
I need a weapon.
I scan the room with new eyes, cataloging everything. The furniture is heavy, solid wood, bolted to the floor in places. The lamps are mounted to the walls, wired directly into the electrical system. The books on the shelf?—
The chair. By the window. A delicate-looking thing with curved legs and embroidered upholstery, the kind of chair that belongs in a museum.
It’s not bolted down.
I grab it with both hands and swing it at the window with every ounce of strength I have left.
The chair bounces back. The glass doesn’t crack. My shoulder jars painfully, the impact reverberating up through my arms and into my chest.
I swing again.
Same result.
And again, harder this time, putting my whole body into it. My arms burn. My shoulder screams. The glass absorbs the impact like it’s made of rubber, flexing slightly and springing back.
I try to break the chair itself, slamming it against the stone wall. The wood should splinter. Should crack. Should give me something sharp, something I can use. But it holds together like it’s made of iron instead of oak.
Because it probably is. Reinforced. Like everything else in this fucking room.
I grab books from the shelf. Dickens. Dante. Proust. Leather-bound, heavy, the kind of books rich people display without reading. I hurl them at the window one by one, watching each one bounce off the glass and fall to the floor.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Somewhere in the middle of this, I start crying. I don’t notice until the tears blur my vision and I have to wipe my face with the back of my hand. My fingers are shaking so badly I can barely grip the next book.
