7. Marisol
7
MARISOL
I’ve scratched out four tally marks along the baseboard behind my bedroom door.
Four days ago, Salvatore gave me the grand tour and then disappeared. Another man with heavy scarring over his face and neck strolled in directly after and introduced himself as my guard.
Camillo’s barely taller than I am, but he’s nearly twice as wide and looks like he snorts protein powder and mortar mix for breakfast. The puckered burn marks over his once-handsome face seem to give him only the range of motion to scowl and look vaguely constipated.
After telling me his name, I’ve barely been able to get more than a grunt out of him, although he did pass me a cigarette when I asked for one on the balcony. He made me wait as he considered my request for a long moment and then handed it over without a word. His phone buzzed with a text immediately after, and when I asked for another an hour later, he said I wasn’t allowed to smoke and lapsed back into silence despite my attempts to annoy him into saying anything .
Did that boss of yours text you?
Am I a guest or a prisoner?
Where’d you get all those scars?
Camillo responded to it all with stony silence.
No one serves me alcohol either. Most of the books in Salvatore’s library are in Italian and the few that aren’t heavy philosophical texts aren’t something I could escape into, not that I’m much of a reader anyway. I’ve tried the TVs in the guest rooms, but after a few minutes of watching a random reality show, I get too restless, turn it off, and leave the room with a visibly disappointed Camillo.
A couple times a day, a loud, happy conversation will ring out from the kitchen or servant’s dining room but when I turn the corner, the chatter abruptly stops, and everyone drifts away like dandelion seeds.
When I was a kid and Dad hadn’t met his new wife yet, I’d visit him on the weekends. Sometimes I had nothing good to report when I got back, and Mom would give me the cold shoulder for days. It was especially bad during summer vacation when I didn’t have school to break up the silence. But even then, I still had my computer or my phone.
Here, all the fun things are locked away and every time I try to touch something, Camillo snorts at me like an old bulldog.
I’m almost certain the passcode to Camillo’s phone is four-eight-eight-eight, but unless I suddenly develop telekinesis, I’m not going to be able to pull his phone out of his stupidly-deep pockets. And I’m even less keen on swiping the house keys from Giordana, the hawk-eyed woman who frisks me each night.
So, my plans are pretty much shit right now.
In my pacing through the house, I’ve filed away the existence of four closed doors. I know the bottom two are locked—I twisted their handles before Camillo took me by the upper arm and frog-marched me upstairs. The simple cylinder locks on every door practically wolf whistle in my direction when I pass by. Heeey, beautiful, looking for an easy time?
But it’s the two smart locks, each on a single door downstairs and upstairs, that really get me hot under the collar. I’ve never tried my hand at locks like those, but smart anything— fridges, speakers, cars, whatever—are notoriously easy to hack. When you have the right tools, anyway.
I’m dying to see what’s inside. Treasure? Advanced weapons? An embarrassing secret?
I’m going to find out soon. I’ve spent the last three days upstairs with my back propped up against a wall as I cultivate a bald patch in the fibers of an expensive hallway runner. My lookout spot is between one of the keycode doors and what I’m guessing is Salvatore’s bedroom. After the first half hour of rubbing his calves, swinging his arms around, and grumbling in Italian, Camillo brings a chair over to sit and watch a soccer match on his phone.
With nothing else to do, my thoughts wander.
I find myself wondering what Grant might be up to and promptly shake myself by the imaginary shoulders. Nope, not going there!
I force myself to remember our other roommate—my piece-of-shit cat. I wish he were here, scowling at me or plotting ways to get me close enough to bite. If he really is with Salvatore, I hope he’s pissing all over Salvatore’s stuff and rubbing orange cat hair onto all of Salvatore’s black, wannabe-rockstar outfits.
I don’t miss Salvatore, but it’s strange he’s left me to my own devices for so long. Why did he pretend he was so interested in me only to ignore me for days after?
If he’s playing at some kind of hot-and-cold psychological bullshit, this beautiful house of his is going up in flames. He’s got to know I’m dying to get laid. Whatever he used to track me has definitely recorded me masturbating all over the apartment during Grant’s many absences. Maybe he’s trying to push me into such a horny, neglected state that I start rubbing myself on the carpet and yowling loud enough for the whole house to hear.
If he thinks I’m going to break that easily, he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. In case he’s got a camera in my room, I’ve sworn off touching myself just so I can deny him the satisfaction of watching—although, if this goes on for much longer, I may have to reconsider my strategy. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, gasping and covered in cold sweat with a slick wetness between my thighs and my pussy clenching around nothing.
The worst part is that I’m in a house surrounded by a dozen fit, well-dressed men. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll have to get naked and throw myself on the dining room table to see who wants to take the bait.
That guy from the train is supposedly after me too, and he was handsome enough, although, even in a fog of lust, he doesn’t feature in any of my daytime or nighttime fantasies. He distinctly gave off the vibe that the only way he’s going to have sex with someone is after he’s given them a homemade frontal lobotomy.
The theory that Junior was some actor of Salvatore’s gains more traction each day. If Junior’s such a scary badass who’ll stop at nothing to hunt me down, why has he been absent since I got here?
Which returns me to Salvatore. If he really wanted me on his cyber team, he could’ve put me in a shipping container with a computer and a couple of surly guards. So what does he really have planned, and why is it taking him so damn long to get there?
“Time for lunch,” Camillo says, jerking me from my thoughts. He eases up from his chair with an old man grunt.
“I’ll wait here. I had a big breakfast,” I say casually.
Technically, it’s true. I had six of these little fried balls filled with creamy rice and cheese and would’ve eaten more if my leggings hadn’t started cutting into my belly. As annoying as everyone else is, I’d run away and elope with Salvatore’s old Italian grandma chef in a heartbeat.
Camillo tucks his phone deep into his back pocket and side-eyes his impressive biceps as he flexes. “Don’t make me carry you, I just did arms today.”
I brush the carpet fibers off my leggings and stand to follow him.
In the kitchen, my frowning, grunting guard transforms into a rakish flirt. He shoots rapid-fire Italian at one of the kitchen staff, a woman who’s a little taller than him with long chestnut hair tied back into a braid and brilliant green eyes. From Camillo, I’ve gathered her name is Nola—that or amore mio bellissimo .
Nola skittered away the first day I tried to approach her, so now I just perch at the end of the kitchen bar and wait for Camillo to bring me food. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by his scars, because her cheeks burn bright red while he whispers into her ear. After several minutes of outrageous flirting where he steals a kiss from her cheek and she snaps him with a kitchen towel, Camillo brings me a plate with a sandwich.
A few of the other guards and house staff drift in and out of the kitchen. Some steal glances at me, others openly stare. I stare right back, doing what I can to memorize their faces. With such a big staff, there has to be someone who’s against kidnapping and imprisonment.
I get halfway through the sandwich in my hands before the taste hits me. It’s delicious . The bread’s so soft and fresh, it had to be baked this morning. It’s stuffed with deli meats and cheeses and pickled red onions inside. I’m going to have to get bigger leggings if I stay here much longer.
The head chef Conchetta enters the kitchen from the pantry area. Salvatore took me past so many people the first day that I wasn’t able to remember them all, but I remember her. She’s the oldest person on his staff and so short that she barely reaches my shoulder, but Salvatore still introduced her with a kind of reverence that stood out.
As I watch her, she smiles at me, reaches into a basket of pastries on the counter, and approaches me with one. She sets it on my plate.
“Cassetelle,” she says.
We’ve been playing this game every day. Conchetta brings me a dessert. She makes me say it in Italian. I take a bite. I fall a little more in love with her.
Camillo and Nola watch from the other side of the kitchen. Camillo whispers something in Nola’s ear, and she giggles. A pang of jealousy shoots through me. I bet Camillo would never cheat.
“Thank you,” I say to Conchetta.
“ Grazie ,” she corrects, and I repeat after her.
The pastry looks like an empanada, but when I bite in, it’s filled with sweet cream and chocolate. Fuck. I groan.
“Grazie,” I repeat.
Conchetta beams and pats my hand. “Turi is a good boy,” she says in a heavy Italian accent. “He just pass too much time on the computer.”
I file away the name Turi into a box labeled Possible Salvatore Nuisances and nod solemnly to Conchetta.
“I used to spend a lot of time on the computer too,” I say clearly. “But after Turi kidnapped me, he won’t let me use one.”
“That’s okay,” Conchetta says blithely and piles another cassetelle onto my plate. What’s the word for kidnap in Italian? “The screens are bad for you.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Conchetta’s not going to star in an escape attempt anytime soon.
“Camillo,” Giordana barks as she walks in. “Take our guest out of the kitchen now.”
Camillo whispers a few more words to Nola who blushes furiously in response. Then he approaches me, his surly prison guard mask slipping back into place. I stuff the rest of the cassetelle into my mouth as we leave.
Once we’re out of the kitchen, I dart ahead of Camillo so that I can lead us back upstairs to my post. He groans, but sits down in his chair and pulls out his phone.
After a few more hours, my ass is killing me from sitting on the ground for so long, but I’m finally rewarded when the electronic keypad to the mystery room beeps, and a huge man steps out.
I haven’t seen this guy yet. He looks borderline feral with shaggy brown hair bound into a bun and tattoos covering his arms and peeking out of his shirt collar. His head swivels toward me, and he takes a few long strides to meet us.
Camillo snaps to attention, tucking his phone into his pocket. My muscles tense, and I shift my hand to cover the carpet’s destruction. The man’s eyes track my movement and narrow.
“Don’t let her sit here all day. Make her walk around.” The man gives me a look like I’m dog shit he just found on the bottom of his shoe.
As far as looks of contempt go, I’ve seen worse.
“Yes, sir,” Camillo says and goes to return his chair to its room.
The man seems satisfied and turns to leave, but I speak up quietly, “I’m a guest here.”
When he turns back, he’s showing off all his too-white teeth with a wolfish grin. He squats down to look me in the eye.
“And I’m Mother Teresa. You think you’re being clever sitting here? Trying to figure out how you can escape? Don’t be stupid. Why don’t you be grateful Turi’s protecting you and enjoy your vacation. Watch some TV.”
The door beeps again, and Salvatore sweeps out.
“Domenico,” he orders.
Still grinning, Domenico winks at me and then stands to join Salvatore.
“Let’s go,” Camillo says.
My legs have fallen numb, but I wobble onto my feet with whatever dignity I have left while I hold Salvatore’s gaze. His expression is neutral until Camillo touches my shoulder, and a little frown crosses his face.
Don’t like anyone playing with your toy?
Maybe don’t leave it on the shelf all day, asshole.
He tracks me until Camillo leads me around the corner, and we’re out of sight.
I wake up alone. For several long breaths, I stare at the ceiling, wondering why my body decided to wake me up at the ass-crack of dawn. Since I’ve arrived, I’ve gotten shit sleep, but I refuse to accept being wide awake this early in the morning.
Groaning, I roll over and burrow deeper in the blankets, but I still can’t get comfortable. I smack my dry lips a few times. I need water.
I shuffle to the adjoining bathroom in the darkness. While I’m lapping water out of the faucet, a man’s distant scream shatters the silence.
I jerk my head and cut my lip against the faucet. “Ah, fuck.”
I turn off the water and listen intently, holding my swollen lip.
A scream rings out again—from the first floor underneath me—and is abruptly cut off. This is bad.
I rush out the bedroom door, clutching my throbbing mouth, and nearly stumble over the man waiting outside.
I shriek. The man looks up.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
It’s the driver. The one who took us to my apartment. Davide, Salvatore called him. He’s sitting in a chair and doing a sudoku puzzle of all things, wearing horn-rimmed glasses that, on his baby face, make him look like a toddler dressed as a grandpa.
My brain finishes processing what he just said.
“I heard screaming.”
“Oh. That.” Davide returns to his puzzle. “Don’t worry about it. You can go back to sleep.”
“Who is he?”
Davide wrinkles his face and rubs the pencil eraser against his temple. It leaves a faint streak of pink shavings. “Some hacker, I think? I’m not sure to be honest. Dom just let everyone know they’d be bringing a ‘guest’ into the house around this time.”
It doesn’t escape me that I’m also supposed to be a “guest”. And that this one’s also a hacker. That’s way too coincidental to be an accident. Is it the man I caught?
I watch Davide for a full minute, weaving my sleepy thoughts into something coherent. At this hour, they’re mostly focused on the thought of a midnight snack. I could ask for a sandwich. But the possibility of finding a screaming man with some limb hacked off has me pausing.
“That’s supposed to be a six,” I say, pointing at one of Davide’s cubes.
He squints at the paper. “Huh. Yeah.”
“Can I sit out here for a little bit?”
He considers me. “Are you going to try to escape?”
“No.”
“You cut your lip?”
I probe the tenderness with my tongue and nod. “Yeah, but I’m okay. I just cut it against the faucet while I was getting a drink.”
He makes a sound of disgust. “Just come ask me for a bottled water next time.” He waits, and when I don’t go back to bed, he exhales. “Okay. You can sit here. But keep your eyes off my sudoku.”
I lower myself to the ground, cross my legs, and settle against the doorframe. My eyelids drift shut while I strain my ears for any sound other than Davide’s pencil skritching across his paper.
Something muffled and far-off catches my attention. More screaming? The image of a man being burned alive expands in my mind.
The terror gets the best of me, and I blurt out, “I want a sandwich.”
The seven Davide’s writing grows an errant tail. “Yeah, don’t we all? And a root beer float.”
A root beer float? Where did they find this guy?
I swallow and clench my hands. “No, I mean… Could we go downstairs? I just want to make a bite to eat. I’m starving. I… I could make you one too?”
He arches an eyebrow. “No fucking way, dude. If Dom or Sal see you down there, it’s not gonna be pretty for any of us.”
I inhale, ready to argue more, but my retort dies on my tongue when I hear heavy steps thud up the stairs.
I glance back to Davide. He’s already standing. “Get back to bed,” he says, without looking at me.
I can’t go to my room without seeing whoever’s coming upstairs. Moving slowly and deliberately, I push myself up to standing while Davide hovers over me.
The steps get closer, and at first, I don’t recognize the man who appears at the end of the hallway—because he’s covered in blood.
I stifle a scream and jump up. Davide snatches my arm to shove me toward my room.
It’s Salvatore. He looks over at us. Even from here, I can see his black button-up shirt is soaked with dark stains. Tracks of blood run down his arms, neck, and face. How is he still standing with all those injuries?
“She had a nightmare, sir. She’s going back to bed now,” Davide calls out.
“Wait.”
Salvatore approaches us with measured steps. Davide’s hand falls from my arm, and he stands at attention next to me. My breath quickens.
Salvatore stops in front of us. His gaze ticks over me before he captures my jaw in his hand.
“Your lip’s cut.”
Any residual sleepiness zips out of me at his nearness. I inhale. He reeks of blood.
“It’s fine,” I say, but my voice comes out in a squeak.
“Get her an ice pack,” Salvatore says, without looking away from my mouth.
“Yes, sir.” Davide dashes down the hallway.
“Come with me,” Salvatore says and turns.
For a moment, I consider disobeying him, just to remind him I’m not on his payroll, but the blood all over his body and face make anything other than speedy compliance suicidal, so I fall into step behind him. Some of my terror transforms into anticipation when I realize he’s taking me to the mystery room next to mine.
With the lights off, only shadowy impressions are visible. A massive bed with dark sheets and two nightstands. A looming chandelier. We pass a big mirror leaning against the wall, and I make eye contact with a surprised-looking woman with blood on her mouth.
Despite the pain he must be in, his gait is as steady as ever as he leads us to the connected bathroom.
He flicks on a dim bathroom light, and I stop short. The bathroom door isn’t made of the typical painted wood—it’s a thick, heavy steel paired with a similarly reinforced doorframe. It’s not just a bathroom—it’s a panic room. I hesitate at the doorway, and I’m not sure if it’s fear of being locked inside with Salvatore or being locked inside alone that roots me to the spot.
Salvatore doesn’t notice—or pretends not to—as he crouches down to reach into the cabinet under his sink.
“Sit. On the bathtub.”
I take a breath and cross over the threshold. Two more steps, and I’m lowering onto the bone-colored granite surrounding an impressive soaking tub. Somehow, it’s hard to imagine Salvatore using this to take bubble baths, but when I glance behind me at his bath products, I spot an out-of-place pink bottle of bubble solution. It looks just like the bottle I use at home, but there’s no way it’s the exact same scent. I squint to read the label, but a sudden weight between my knees has me whipping my head forward.
Salvatore—hands and arms scrubbed clean of blood—holds out a white washcloth. He brings it to my mouth, and I rear back.
A faint crease appears between his eyebrows. “Hold still.”
“It’s really—I’m fine . Are you okay? Do… you… do you have a doctor you can call?”
Instead of answering, he slides one hand along my shoulder to grip the back of my head like he’s steadying me for a kiss and lifts the washcloth to my mouth.
Warmth and moisture press up against my lips, and I instinctively squeeze my thighs together in an effort to suppress the echoing call of heat and wetness between them. My hands have nowhere to go, so I’m forced to fold them on my lap. I can’t look at his face this close without doing something stupid, so I stare forward into the mirror behind him— nope —the image of a dark, bloody man bending between my knees gets filed away into a box labeled Do Not Touch, and I snap my eyes shut.
He’s gentle as he wipes the smear of blood off my mouth, but I wish he wasn’t, because I can’t hold the concepts of “hated captor” and “kind of sweet” in my head at once.
Just when biting his hand seems like the only escape from my traitorous thoughts, he’s done.
“It’s not my blood.”
“What?” I open my eyes. The washcloth has disappeared, but he has a small tube in his hand now.
“This isn’t my blood. I’m not hurt.”
“Oh.” It’s the other man’s. What did Salvatore do to him?
Salvatore squeezes a dab of what looks like an antiseptic onto one clean finger, and I try to lean back again as he draws near, but his hand is still threaded into my hair—I’m trapped. I swear we can both hear my heartbeat pounding as he smears the substance onto my bottom lip. It’s too late to close my eyes now. I’m locked in, forced to memorize his high cheekbones and dark lashes and bright eyes and the streak of dried blood up his temple that pushes his hair into a peak.
Please don’t kiss me , I think, and then my stomach plummets with disappointment when he finishes his task and turns to wash his hands.
“How did you hurt yourself?” he asks over his shoulder.
“It was an accident. I bumped my mouth against the faucet while I was getting water.”
He pauses in his ministrations. “Ask Davide for a water bottle next time.”
I roll my eyes behind his back. For cripes sake, these guys are bossy.
“Where’s the other man?” I ask when the silence stretches too long. “The one who was screaming?”
Salvatore finishes washing his hands and turns to me, leaning against the bathroom counter. Just like on the train and in the hotel, his air of quiet composure is a thin lie. His body’s wound tight, like he’s anticipating a bomb to go off at any moment. Maybe he is. The serene man I saw in the hotel bed, with his mouth parted open and hands loose, feels like a half-forgotten daydream. This predatory creature before me with blood smeared across his face in a visceral warning is the real Salvatore.
“He’s in my basement,” he says.
The problem is that I’ve never been so great at following warnings.
“Dead?”
He gives the slightest tilt of his head. I wait to feel a sense of horror or wrongness, but my moral compass isn’t working. I don’t feel anything other than the pull of more curiosity.
Would Kristin be upset in this situation? Probably, I realize with a delayed twinge of guilt.
“What did he do?”
“It’s a long list.”
I frown. “Start with a few things then.”
Salvatore has deep circles under his eyes and for a moment, I think he’s going to push me away so he can go to bed, but he still answers, “He failed at his job. And he was informing on you to Junior.”
“So you killed him?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
Davide knocks at the doorway to the bedroom. “I have the ice pack, boss.”
Salvatore starts to unbutton his shirt like I’m not here, and I sit there, transfixed by my private peep show. More tattoos swirl over his chest.
“Run along, passerotta.”
His nimble fingers continue down his shirt, and when he reaches his stomach, I feel an answering pull deep behind my own navel.
It’s too much.
I dart out of the bathroom and let Davide lead me back to bed.