Chapter 9 Você Sente…
VOCê SENTE…
INEZ
This time, all is confusing and disorienting. I don’t remember falling asleep. I don't remember where I am. I'm hot. I'm not in my bed at the club.
Where am I?
I open my eyes—hotel room. Hotel?
My eyes are gritty with sleep. The blinds are open, revealing the glow of Las Vegas at night. Horns honk. Lights flash and strobe and coruscate on the ceiling.
The bed beneath me moves.
It's not a bed—it's a male body. I'm not just laying in bed with him, I'm fully on top of him, draped on him like I'm his blanket.
My head is on his chest, my hands tucked over his big, hard shoulders.
His hands are splayed possessively on my ass.
I feel his cock wedged against my hip. My breasts are flattened against his chest.
Panic rifles through me—I'm hazy with sleep, disoriented, confused. I don't know where I am or who this is beneath me. I can't breathe, and I’m frozen in terror. A keening whine seeps out of my tight, hot throat.
"Mmmmm?" The man beneath me stirs, grunts a wordless query. "Soph?"
His voice is instantly soothing, but I'm caught in the grip of a panic attack. Tears squeeze out of my eyes, and I want nothing more than to crawl away, to get away, to hide in the corner.
I can't. I'm frozen.
The man senses it. "Hey, hey, hey—" his voice is soft and soothing and deep and reassuring and calm. “You're okay, Soph. You're safe."
Safe. Safe?
I'm not safe. I'm never safe. He's out there and Lorenzo—
"L-Lor—" I can't manage the rest past the teeth-clenched panic.
"It's me, sweetheart." His hands skate upward and roam my back in calming circles. "It's me. You're with me. We’re at the Bellagio, in the penthouse."
"C-c-can't—br-bree—bree—breathe."
He does a sit-up with me in his arms, and suddenly I'm curled against his chest, sitting on his lap with my knees beneath me and his heart beating under my ear and his hands roaming, soothing.
His lips touch my ear. "You're okay. You were deep asleep. You just woke up confused. You're okay. You're safe. I've got you." He lifts my hand, puts his palm to mine. "Look at our hands. This is real."
Flashes: the cell. Dirty, sweaty, evil, leering, drooling faces. Grunts. Violation. Rafael—locked in his room. Drugged. Used. Rewarded for cooperation—made his whore.
Things I've still never spoken of.
"R-Rafael," I chatter.
"We're gonna catch him and you're gonna put a bullet in his fucking skull. But for right now, he's nowhere near us. We're safe. No one but Jakob knows where we are."
I shake my head—but that knowledge does ease the panic. "When I…when I told you what happened. After the wedding."
He goes still, hands tensing on me and then immediately gentling. "Yes, my love."
"I wasn't…entirely truthful."
"Okay. You can tell me anything."
"I made it sound like I got pregnant with Little Ren soon after. I didn't."
He doesn't answer right away. "I know, Soph. The timeline you gave never added up."
"I couldn't conceive. Not for…a long time.
Years—I don't know how long—I was allowed to recover from what was done to me.
Rafael allowed that. For his own selfish reasons, not out of care for me.
" I swallow hard. "Once I got my strength back, physically, it took a long, long time for me to…
" I shake my head. "I was all but catatonic for a time.
Could barely eat. I weighed less than a hundred pounds at one point. "
"Fuck," he hisses. "Soph."
Telling eases the panic, somehow. It's been locked inside me for so long, eating away at me like battery acid corroding a terminal.
"Rafael didn't so much as enter the room with me for over a year.
I heard gunfire at one point soon after the wedding—a lot of it.
Rafael murdered my father and took over in a violent coup.
He sent a doctor in, a psychologist. A therapist. The doctor tried to touch me so he could examine me, and I snapped his neck.
" I shake my head. "I forgot about that until now. He didn't deserve it."
"No need to add to that list, Soph."
I shrug at this; perhaps, perhaps not.
"I came out of it on my own, very, very slowly. And as I came out of the catatonia, the…horror, the trauma, it sort of…crystallized. Hardened. Into…hate. Rage."
"Understandable."
"I got my health back. That took a while, too. It was…oh, nearly two years after the wedding before I left the room I was in. Before I even saw Rafael again. I had blocked out the wedding. Forgot. Or chose to forget. But then he…he visited me."
Lorenzo sighs. "Ah deus, meu amor."
"It didn't start right away. He…he knew better than to just come at me, after what I went through.
But I knew. I knew what he wanted. What he expected.
And he knew I was dangerous. He drugged my food.
I knew it after the first time, but I had to eat.
My hate and anger were too great to allow me to hunger strike.
So I ate. It was a sedative, mild enough that I remained conscious but powerful enough that I was helpless.
"And he…he would visit me, after it took hold. At first, he would just…touch me. Innocently. My arm, my leg. I couldn't stop it. He really was trying to restrain his…more violent and disgusting urges. Credit where credit is due, I suppose."
He opens his mouth to speak, but I touch his lips. "Let me get it all out."
He nods, swallowing hard. "I’m listening."
"For months, it was just that. As long as I ate the food so he could visit me and do as he wished, I was otherwise left alone.
I had a TV, books, puzzles, workout equipment, and a balcony where I could get fresh air.
The room was locked and guarded." I close my eyes, but I see him again, and open them.
"Then he stopped drugging my food. He visited me.
Touched me. I was…confused, so I allowed it.
He tried to grope my chest, and I hit him.
Broke his nose. He sent six men in to beat me.
When they were done, he sat beside me once more, and cleaned away the blood and told me that if I cooperated with him, I would not be hurt.
And if I cooperated well enough, I could go outside.
I could take walks under guard. I had not been outside other than the balcony for more than two years, remember. "
"Jesus Cristo."
"He left. I was not fed again for nearly three days. He came back. Told me to take my clothes off." I dig my nails into Lorenzo's chest. "And I did. I…I was weak. I didn't want to be beaten again. I wanted to be able to eat. So I took my clothes off."
"That's not weakness—"
"I—was—WEAK!" I scream, sudden and piercing.
"I was weak! I gave him what he wanted. And…and I kept giving it to him. Whatever he wanted, I did it. All of it, no matter awful or disgusting or depraved.” I shudder, choking back bile.
"I refused one day, about six months after that first beating.
I'd had enough. I hated myself. I hated him.
I hated the things he liked. So I refused.
I was beaten unconscious, electrocuted. Beaten again. Starved for almost a week."
"Fucking hell, Fucking fuck me," Lorenzo snarls, his voice shaky and wet. "Sophia…my Sophia."
“He came back once I was somewhat recovered.
He demanded, and I let him. He rewarded me with a week of freedom—from him.
I was allowed to go outside whenever I wanted.
A woman came and did my nails." I look at my hands.
"I haven't had a manicure since, actually.
I was given food. Wine. Cannabis. A massage. Rewards for behaving."
"He broke your spirit." Lorenzo's voice is just that—broken.
"No!" I hiss. "Not broken. Not entirely.
Only…almost." I pause, thinking. "He was very busy running his empire.
Things settled into something like normal.
I stopped fighting him, stopped refusing.
He was gone quite frequently and for long periods, so it…
it wasn't so bad. For the most part, I was the mistress of the estate.
I could ride wherever I wanted on his fine Arabians.
With guards, of course. The men—his men he left there to guard me and his estate, they came to fear me.
I was…cruel. Any man who crossed me in the slightest way, I killed him.
If they stood too close, or spoke in a way I didn't like.
Rafael knew this, of course. He allowed it.
He liked it, I think. He thought I'd become what he wanted: a wife.
Someone like him. But I was…" I shake my head.
"The hate was festering. Growing. Everyone I saw around me, I hated.
They looked at me, and I could tell they knew.
They knew what had been done to me by my father.
They knew what Rafael did to me. Sometimes, he would…
he would lose control and hurt me. That's what he likes.
He's a sadist. The sickest, most twisted, vilest, most perverted and disgusting sadist imaginable, and I truly hope you cannot imagine the things he enjoys. "
I lapse into silence, and Lorenzo remains quiet, just holding me.
"That's how I became the kind of…of creature who could do what I did.
But it wasn't a year or two or three or whatever you may have thought.
It was almost ten years that I was his…belonging.
His pet. For ten years, I was Senhora Sousa.
La Víbora, the Spanish-speaking workers called me—Rafael liked to hire Spanish-speaking laborers so they couldn't understand him when he spoke of business around them. La Víbora—The Viper. La Reina de Hielo—the Ice Queen. I earned those titles. I am not proud of who I was in those years. As bad as my father, as bad as Rafael. I was cruel and vicious and wicked and violent.”
She lapses into silence for a while.