Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
This is different. This is a clean and open blank slate onto which a captive might project her greatest insecurities and hopes.
I can feel I am being watched. Somewhere in this house, Bobby has his eyes on me. It’s intimidating, and it makes me scoot closer to Angelo, even though he is the true monster in this situation.
Our destination is a larger bathroom on the second floor. It’s Angelo’s personal bathroom. I know that the second we walk into it, because it smells like him.
Angelo pulls me in front of him and propels me in front of a very large sink and vanity combo with a very large mirror. I feel very small, both in this room, and in his grasp.
“Riley the federal agent died yesterday,” Angelo reminds me. “Riley the thing I own was born the very same minute of that very same hour. Let’s bring that creature out a little more, shall we?”
I nod, unsure of what to say. He has described me as everything other than what I am, and my mind rebels against it. Words come out, an unbidden statement of existence. He’s trying to cover me up, and take me apart, but he can’t change what’s at the core of me.
“I’m a person. A woman. I’m…”
Angelo’s smile is indulgent. “Of course you’re a person. What else would you be? A sleeping little demon waiting to wake up? Come. Sit.”
It is very wrong that those words make me flush with warmth, as my brain reacts to his words of affirmation with relief and excitement.
If this were a hair salon, I’d be looking at myself in a mirror, but it’s not. It’s a well-appointed bathroom owned by an international master criminal, and I have been positioned away from the big mirror that reflects cool cobalt tile in its gilt-edged glory. I cannot see what he is doing to me.
I am seated on a chair that is padded enough to keep the cane lines from causing fresh agony. I am exhausted. I did not sleep well. The ongoing possibility of being in the last hours of my life kept me alert.
Angelo’s fingers run through my hair. I hear the unmistakeable sound of a pair of scissors, and then the weight I hadn’t even noticed until this very moment suddenly becomes noticeable by its absence. I feel my hair fall to the floor, cut close to my head.
I should be horrified. Hair is a woman’s glory, so my sexist relatives have always told me. But I know there are worse things to lose than hair. And I know Angelo will take more than mere hair. This is a prelude to a much deeper cut.
Angelo works swiftly and what feels like competently, running my hair between his fingers in the same way real, non-murderous hairdressers do. The scissors snip and cut, and I am transformed.
“Up,” he says, his hands on my shoulders as he guides me from the chair all the way to that big mirror.
When I look in the mirror, I see a face I recognize, and yet don’t. Short hair doesn’t make a feminine woman look masculine, but it does make a masculine woman look more masculine. I’ve always had a hard jawline, inherited it from my father. I don’t look like a man. But he has made me look more like a boy.
He reaches around from behind and his hand cups my jaw, his thumb rubbing over my cheek with what might be affection if it came from someone else. In Angelo’s case, it feels more like appraisal. I find my eyes leaving my face and moving to his visage as well. I’m searching his expression for some understanding of what he intends to do with me, what he wants to do to me. Does he want me to cry? Does he want me to be upset? When I look at my hair again, it looks to me like he did a good job. He wants me to look good.
“Cute,” he says, the word sounding alien in his deep, accented timbre. I cannot imagine Angelo Vitali calling anybody cute. The fact that I just heard him say it doesn’t make it any more imaginable.
I am still stricken with fear, still unable to move when he touches me. I chose fight out of fight or flight, but now I am in freeze mode. It’s not a choice. It’s a survival mechanism.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to do precisely what you’re doing, Riley. I want you to obey me. I want you to try very, very hard to do as you are told. And I want you to fail, because I want to punish you. I want to make you scream and cry. I want to find out who you are underneath the Fed. Underneath everything.”
I draw in a deep breath. “Why?”