Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
Ginni
This cell is nothing like the basement.
There are no silk sheets here, no projected sunrises painting the ceiling with gentle light.
No warmth, no beauty, no careful attention to comfort and happiness.
Just bare concrete walls that weep moisture in the corners, a floor so cold it burns through the thin fabric of my prison uniform, and darkness so complete it feels like drowning.
They gave me a piece of foam to sleep on.
It’s barely an inch thick, stained with things I don’t want to identify, and it does nothing to cushion the unforgiving hardness of the floor beneath.
One thin blanket that smells of industrial detergent and other people’s despair.
That’s it. That’s everything they think I deserve.
Every part of my body aches from the fight.
My ribs throb with each breath, my split lip tastes of copper and salt, and there’s a constant ringing in my ears from where someone’s fist connected with the side of my head.
The swelling around my left eye has gotten worse, turning my vision into something fractured and uncertain.
But the physical pain is nothing compared to the cold.
It seeps through the concrete, through the pathetic excuse for bedding, straight into my bones.
I’ve been shivering for hours, my teeth chattering so hard I’m afraid they might crack.
The guards took my shoes when they threw me in here, and my bare feet are so numb I can barely feel them anymore.
Worst of all is the darkness.
I’ve always hated the dark. Even as a child, I needed at least a sliver of light to feel safe, to keep the whispers at bay.
In the basement with Carlo, there was never true darkness.
The projector cast its gentle glow and there was always something to push back against the terrible emptiness that lives in absolute black.
Here, there’s nothing. Just an endless void that presses against my eyes like a weight, making shapes that aren’t there, summoning voices that speak in languages I don’t recognize. They’re getting louder as the hours pass, more insistent, more real.
But I need to be brave. I need to hold on to what matters.
Carlo loves me. He left me a note promising to come back for me. He said he loved me, and my wonderful husband would never lie about something so important. He’s probably making plans right now, gathering resources, assembling the kind of operation that will get me out of this nightmare.
Any minute now, he’s going to burst through that door and sweep me away from this place. Back to warmth and light and the kind of love that makes everything else bearable.
I just have to hold on a little longer.
The sound of footsteps in the corridor makes my heart leap with desperate hope. Heavy boots on concrete, getting closer. This is it. This has to be it. Carlo has come for me, just like I knew he would.
The slot in the door slides open with a metallic scrape, and I scramble to my feet despite the protests from my battered body.
“Carlo?” I whisper, my voice hoarse from hours of silence.
But it’s not Carlo’s face that appears in the small opening. It’s a prison guard I don’t recognize, middle-aged, with small eyes and a smile that makes my skin crawl.
“Oh dear,” he says, his voice carrying a tone I don’t like at all. “Look at the state of you.”
The door opens with a grinding of metal on metal, and he steps into my cell. The space immediately feels smaller, more dangerous. He’s not particularly tall, but he fills the room with a presence that makes every instinct I have scream danger.
He looks up at something in the corner near the ceiling, reaches up, and turns it toward the wall with a casual gesture that sends ice through my veins. The security camera. He’s just disabled the only thing that might have protected me.
“Cold in here, isn’t it?” he observes, his gaze traveling over my shivering form with obvious satisfaction. “Solitary’s no fun. Especially for someone like you. Someone soft.”
I wrap my arms around myself, trying to preserve what little warmth I have left. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Are you, though?” He takes a step closer, and I automatically back away until my shoulders hit the wall. “Because you look pretty miserable to me, pretty boy. Hurt and cold and all alone.”
The way he says ‘pretty boy’ makes my stomach turn. It’s not Carlo’s voice wrapping around those words with love and desire. It’s something ugly and predatory and completely wrong.
“I could help you out,” he continues, his voice dropping to what he probably thinks is a seductive purr.
“Make things more comfortable. An extra blanket, maybe. Some real food instead of the slop they usually serve in solitary. Hell, I might even be able to arrange a shower. Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Getting clean again?”
Hope blooms in my chest. Perhaps I misjudged him. Maybe there are still good people in this place. Maybe not everyone sees me as just another criminal to be punished and forgotten.
“That would be wonderful,” I breathe. “Thank you. That’s so kind of you.”
His smile widens, showing teeth stained yellow from years of cigarettes. “Oh, I’m very kind. Very generous. But you know what they say about free lunches.”
The hope dies as quickly as it came, replaced by an understanding so terrible it makes me nauseous. “What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean.” He takes another step forward, and now I’m trapped between him and the wall with nowhere to run. “A pretty thing like you, all alone in here with no one to protect you. You’re going to need friends. Someone to look out for you.”
His hand reaches out toward my face, and I jerk back so violently that my head cracks against the concrete behind me.
“Don’t touch me,” I gasp.
“Now, now,” he chides, his voice taking on a patronizing tone that makes my skin crawl. “That’s no way to treat someone who’s trying to help you. I’m offering to make your stay here much more pleasant. All you have to do is be nice to me.”
The word ‘nice’ carries implications that make bile rise in my throat. I think of Carlo, of the way he touches me with reverence and desire and perfect love. The idea of this stranger putting his hands on me, demanding things that belong to my husband...
“You can’t,” I whisper. “My husband... he’s a dangerous man. Important. Connected. If you touch me, he’ll...”
The guard throws back his head and laughs, a sound so cruel and mocking that it echoes off the concrete walls like breaking glass.
“Your husband?” he wheezes. “Oh, that’s rich. What husband, little psycho? The imaginary one who was supposed to rescue you before you ended up in here?”
“He’s not imaginary!” The words tear from my throat with more force than I intended. “His name is Carlo Benedetti, and he’s going to come for me!”
“Carlo Benedetti,” the guard repeats slowly, like he’s savoring each syllable. “Never heard of him. And trust me, if he was as important as you think, I’d know the name.”
“He owns a nightclub,” I insist desperately. “He’s powerful. He’s…” I stutter to a stop. I can’t tell a prison guard that Carlo Benedetti is a capo in the mafia. The trusted right-hand man of the Ajello heir. “He… He’ll be here soon, you’ll see.” I finish lamely.
“I don’t see him anywhere, do you?” The guard looks around the empty cell with exaggerated confusion. “Where is this powerful husband of yours? Why hasn’t he gotten you out of here already if he cares so much?”
The questions hit like physical blows because they’re the same ones I’ve been trying not to ask myself. Why isn’t Carlo here yet? How long have I been in this place? Hours? Days? Time has no meaning in this lightless box, but surely it’s been long enough for him to have done something.
“He’ll be here soon,” I repeat, but my voice sounds hollow even to my own ears.
The guard shakes his head, his expression shifting from cruel amusement to something almost pitying. “Oh, pretty boy. They were right about you. You are fucking mental, aren’t you?”
The casual cruelty of the words, the dismissive way he says them, makes something inside my chest crack and bleed.
“Nobody is coming to save you,” he continues, his voice gentle now in the way people use with the very sick or very stupid.
“And I can do whatever I like to you because nobody believes little psychos. Who’s going to take your word over mine?
A delusional prisoner with a history of violence, against a respected prison guard? ”
He takes another step forward, close enough that I can smell the stale cigarettes on his breath and see the predatory gleam in his small, dark eyes.
“So here’s how this is going to work,” he says softly. “You’re going to be very, very nice to me. And in return, I’m going to make sure your time in solitary isn’t completely miserable. Refuse, and I’ll make sure every day you spend in here is worse than the last.”
I stare at him, my mind struggling to process what’s happening.
This can’t be real. This can’t be how the story goes.
Carlo is supposed to save me. Love is supposed to triumph over everything else.
Beautiful stories are supposed to have beautiful endings.
That’s how it works. That’s how it always works. In movies. In books. In my visions.
But as the guard reaches for me again, his intentions written clearly across his leering face, I finally understand the truth that’s been staring at me all along.
He’s right. I am crazy. I’m wrong about everything.
My vision stutters and flickers. A nauseating dance between truth and delusion. Like a candle burning out, my carefully constructed fantasy dies in one last splutter of light. Leaving only cold, stark, horrifying reality behind.
The real world is a crushing weight on my chest. I’d scream if I could breathe. It’s too much. Too awful. Too real.
Carlo doesn’t love me. If he did, he’d be here by now. He’d have moved heaven and earth to get me out of this place instead of leaving me to rot in a concrete cell where guards can do whatever they want to me.
The note was a lie. A pretty fiction to make me feel better about being abandoned. A cunning trick to stop me from taking more sleeping pills on my own, so Carlo wouldn’t feel bad. The kind of thing you tell a child to stop them from crying, not a promise you actually intend to keep.
Nobody is coming to save me because nobody loves me enough to risk anything for me. Nobody ever has. Not my family, not any friends, and certainly not the man I was stupid enough to think of as my husband.
The man I abducted and chained to my bed. The man I did things to that he didn’t want, at least not at first. The man I nearly killed because I thought it was romantic.
Of course he escaped the first moment he could. He’s probably celebrating his freedom right now. He doesn’t love me. He is just my brother’s best friend. A man whose only crime was to be nice to me. To show an interest in me.
It’s not his fault I latched onto it. Twisted it into something false. Wove a beautiful fantasy out of scraps of off-handed kindness.
Carlo had no idea what I would turn his casual, polite attention into. He didn’t know he was the only person to be nice to me. Or that I would make such a big deal out of something so small.
He didn’t foresee that he would be imprisoned and violated simply because he tolerated his best friend’s crazy little brother.
He’s just nice to everyone. I’m not special. Our love and our marriage exist only in my hallucinations. It’s not real.
The only thing that’s real is this cell. This cold, this darkness, this guard who’s about to take things from me that I wanted to share only with the one man who deserves them.
This is my life now. This is what I actually deserve. I abducted and abused the only person who ever treated me well. So it is only fair that I pay the price.
The beautiful dream is over, and I’m finally awake.