Back in my room, I catch myself in the mirror.
Clean. Fed. Color returning to my cheeks. Dressed in his colors, his choices, his taste. I look like someone who belongs inthis world. Not a girl from South Boston with callused hands and a lifetime of proving herself.
Someone that ishis.
Worse. At that table, in his lap, some treacherous part of my bodywantedhis warmth. His steadiness. His hands.
I dig the caliper from under the pillow and clutch it until the metal bites into my palm. Images crash over me. His hands in my hair. His palm on my stomach. My body tightening for all the wrong reasons. The hitch in his breath when he felt me respond. Him hard and tensing beneath me.
You’re disgusting,I think to myself.He kidnapped you. You do not get to want anything from him.
It’s just my body. My body is not me.
I can use this. Let him think I’m softening. Let him think I’m malleable. He wants me to break? Fine. I’ll let him think I’m breaking, while I plan exactly where it’ll hurt him the most.
I fall asleep clutching the caliper.
His soap on my skin. His food in my stomach.
Furious at every cell that responded to him.
11
VIOLET
The days blur together like watercolors left in the rain.
Eight. Maybe ten. I’ve stopped counting by sunrises and started counting by him.
He brings breakfast at eight. Coffee, warm bread, eggs with herbs, fruit sliced thin and arranged like someone gives a damn about presentation. Every morning, the same ritual. The lock clicking, the door opening, his footsteps crossing to the chair by my window. The chair that’s starting to look like it belongs to him, like some territorial marker he’s left in my space.
He talks while I eat. Yesterday he talked about Sicily’s history. Its wars and saints and earthquakes. Families who ruled cities like private kingdoms. Blood feuds that burned for generations. Bodies buried beneath foundations that tourists walk over without knowing. Everything he says about long-dead barons sounds like a blueprint. Like he’s teaching me something about power, about how things worknow, and I’m too slow to catch the lesson.
Lunch is always with him, he hasn’t missed a single day. While dinner is served in the dining room. With me sitting on his lap. His hands feeding me bite by bite while my body learns the shape of his chest against my back.
I tell myself this is conditioning. Classic Stockholm shit, the kind they warn you about in those true crime podcasts I used to listen to while restoring water-damaged frescoes. Captives bond with captors. It’s survival instinct, not affection. Not anything real.
But my muscles stop tensing quite as violently when he touches me.
That’s its own horror.
The first time I noticed it, I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. His palm settled on my waist during dinner, and instead of going rigid, my body just... accepted it, leaned into him. Like my nervous system had decided he was safe before my brain got a vote.
I’m stronger now. Less shaking when I walk. The dizziness has faded to a background hum instead of a constant roar. There’s color back in my cheeks, steadiness in my hands.
The more I eat, the more dangerous my own reactions feel.
Because I can no longer blame everything on starvation.
Today the smell hits me before I open my eyes. Coffee and citrus, his cologne threading underneath like a bass note I can’t unhear. My stomach growls before my brain fully wakes, Pavlov’s bitch responding to her captor’s scent.
Disgusting.
He’s already in the chair. Legs crossed at the ankles, dark suit perfectly pressed, morning light catching the sharp angles of his face. The tray sits on the small table between us, steam curling from the coffee cup.
I push myself up against the headboard. Don’t thank him. Don’t acknowledge the food, even as my mouth floods with want.
“The Normans took Sicily in 1091,” he says, like we’re picking up a conversation we never started. “Before that, it was Arab. Before that, the Byzantine, Greek, Phoenician. Everyone wantedthis island.” He lifts his coffee cup, takes a slow sip. “Everyone still does.”
