Chapter 85
The Camorra thug told Niccolo everything.
Everything.
Mei-ling stood by the entire time, staring down at him impassively.
She didn’t bother to take off the strap-on, which unnerved the thug even more.
If there was ever a moment where the thug hesitated, Mei-ling reached out to the table and started to stroke the giant 12-inch dildo with one finger.
The Camorra thug immediately started talking again. Every time.
After it was all over, Massimo unchained the Camorra thug and let him go to the bathroom. Massimo handcuffed him and kept a gun pointed at him at all times, but he needn’t have worried – the gorilla was broken.
The big guy shuffled off to the bathroom, his hands shielding his cock from view, and didn’t put up an ounce of fight.
Afterwards, Massimo handcuffed him in a storeroom. He posted two foot soldiers outside with instructions to kill the guy if he gave them any problems.
By the time Massimo rejoined us in the office, Niccolo and Adriano were back at it again.
“Remind me – why the fuck are we keeping him alive?” Adriano snarled.
“Because he’s a potential bargaining chip,” Niccolo said wearily.
“He’s fuckin’ Camorra. They’re not going to give us shit for him! They don’t care whether he lives or dies!”
“Then he might be a source of information if something else comes up I didn’t think to ask.”
“I say we take him out in the countryside and shoot him.”
“I know that’s your preferred method of dealing with everyone, but we can’t just – ”
Suddenly the door opened, and both men fell silent.
Mei-ling stood there, dressed again in her street clothes. She looked slightly apprehensive.
Roberto walked up to her… smiled… and kissed her.
When he pulled away and we could see her face again, she was smiling, too.
“Okay – what the fuck was that?” Adriano asked in English.
Mei-ling raised one eyebrow. “What?”
Adriano flapped one arm in exasperation towards the area outside the office. “All THAT – what the fuck WAS that?!”
“The most efficient way of getting him to talk.”
“Why’d you dress up like – like – ”
“A dominatrix?” she said coolly.
“YES.”
“It was all part of the psychology of the scene.”
“The psychology of the what?”
“How did you know what to do to get him to talk?” Niccolo asked.
“It was obvious.”
“Wasn’t obvious to me,” Niccolo said humorously.
Mei-ling smiled. “I was a dominatrix for quite a while before I opened my club in Hong Kong. During that time, I dealt with hundreds of male clients. Powerful men – wealthy men. Men who had to project a certain image in society.
“Most of my clients thought they wanted something sexual from me… but it wasn’t sexual. Not really. At its core, their needs were psychological. Emotional. I provided a safe haven for them to experience things they couldn’t admit to others… and sometimes not even to themselves.
“As a result of all those interactions, I’m very well attuned to the male psyche. And rich or poor, powerful or weak, the patterns are all the same.
“The more macho a man acts – especially the more he degrades women, and the more he jokes disparagingly about gay men – the more insecure he is at a deep, primal level. About his sexuality… his gender… his masculinity.
“Subconsciously, almost every ‘tough guy’ is a scared little boy terrified that other males won’t think he’s a ‘real man.’
“To someone like our friend in the Camorra, what’s the opposite of a ‘real man’?
“A woman.
“A gay man.
“People with very little self-awareness tend to violently attack the thing they fear most – especially if they won’t consciously admit to themselves that they fear it.
“Every time he threatened me with sexual violence, or called you homosexuals, it was like flashing a neon sign over his head announcing his deepest fears.
“He thinks that being a ‘real man’ is all about penetrating women, with or without their consent.
“Being penetrated would mean he was gay – or a woman.
“At least, that’s how his subconscious mind interpreted these things. And for someone like him, subconscious fears are what’s driving the bus.
“All I had to do was tell him I would make him live out his greatest fear: being penetrated. Being dominated.
“Even worse, making him like it.
“In reality, having an orgasm doesn’t necessarily mean you ‘liked’ the experience that led to it. But in his mind, it would be proof positive that he really was gay.
“Even worse, once I did it to him and made him like it, I threatened to reveal his shame – that he was no longer a real man – to all the people whose opinions he values.
“He was afraid of his family knowing, especially his father and other males…
“But what truly terrified him was if all the other violent, ‘real men’ in the Camorra knew it. If they saw him being penetrated. If they saw him having an orgasm. If they saw him ‘being gay.’ Or, even worse in his mind – being a woman.
“His sense of self depends on what others think about him. On some level, he believes he is what others think about him.
“And if they thought he was gay, well…
“They would laugh at him. They would scorn him. They would be disgusted by him. Worst of all, they would know he wasn’t a ‘real man.’
“It was the threat of shame – and the overwhelming terror of that shame – that broke him. He would do anything – anything – to avoid it. That’s why he talked.”
Throughout her speech, all of us stayed absolutely silent.
Uncomfortably silent, you might say.
Once she finished her speech, she said, “Shouldn’t we inform Dario about what we learned?”
“Yes,” Niccolo said, the spell finally broken. “Yes, we should get going.”
Before we filed out of the office, Adriano leaned over to Roberto and whispered, “You’ll never have to remind me, bro – I am NEVER fuckin’ crossing your wife.”