Chapter 9 Violet
VIOLET
I’m awake when the lock clicks.
Day five. Or maybe six… I’ve lost the ability to be sure.
The days have blurred together, one endless loop of his morning visits and my silence.
Day three, he brought another phone. I threw that one at the wall too.
Day four, he talked about Bernini for twenty minutes while I lay on the bed with my eyes closed, willing him to disappear.
He didn’t.
Now I count by the light through the windows, the way it shifts from gray to gold to gray again. My internal clock is fucked, but the sun doesn’t lie.
He walks in like he owns the air I breathe. Same expensive suit. Same pristine white shirt. Same expression of patient interest, like I’m a puzzle he’s enjoying solving.
I sit up too fast. The room tilts sideways and I have to grab the headboard to keep from face-planting into the silk sheets. My vision goes spotty at the edges. Black dots dancing across the angels.
When did I last eat? Feels like months ago.
“The collection in the east gallery includes several Renaissance pieces you might find interesting.” His voice is conversational. Pleasant. Like we’re colleagues discussing museum acquisitions. “A Botticelli sketch. Two Bellini studies. Nothing major, but the provenance is impeccable.”
I don’t respond. Can’t, really. My tongue feels thick and dry, stuck to the roof of my mouth.
“I’d like to show you something.”
He’s already walking. Doesn’t wait for an answer. Doesn’t need one.
I follow because what else is there.
The hallway stretches and contracts as I move through it. My bare feet slap against cold marble. I have to trail my fingers along the wall to keep my balance, leaving smudged prints on the ancient stone. The guard at the end of the corridor watches me stumble past. His expression doesn’t change.
We stop at a set of double doors I haven’t seen before. Dark wood, carved with something elaborate I can’t focus on long enough to identify. He pushes them open.
Oh.
The library is massive. Two stories of floor-to-ceiling books, leather spines aligned in perfect rows, a rolling ladder attached to brass rails.
The room is climate-controlled, I can feel it in the air, that cool dryness that preserves paper and prevents mold.
Glass cases line the center of the room, displaying what look like first editions under museum-quality lighting.
It’s everything. Every bookish girl’s fever dream made real. Centuries of knowledge, bound and preserved and beautiful.
My chest aches with wanting it.
I hate that I want it.
The windows are floor-to-ceiling too, stretching across the far wall. Beyond them terraced gardens dropping away in layers of green, lemon groves, and past that—
The Mediterranean. Blue and endless and unreachable.
I can see Palermo in the distance. A smudge of civilization on the horizon. My cathedral is out there. My apartment. My life.
Miles away. Might as well be another planet.
He’s gesturing at something. A glass case near the window, his voice warm with an enthusiasm of a collector showing off his prizes.
“—acquired at auction in Geneva. The binding is original, which is remarkable given the age. I thought you’d appreciate—”
“I don’t appreciate SHIT from you.”
The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. My voice sounds wrong. Raspy. Weak.
He continues like I didn’t speak.
“This one is particularly rare.” He moves to another case, his fingers hovering reverently over the glass. “An 1820s restoration manual. One of only three surviving copies. The techniques described here predate modern conservation by nearly a century, but the principles are sound.”
I don’t want to look. Don’t want to care.
But my restorer’s eye catches the tooled leather cover, the gilt lettering, the careful preservation of something that should have crumbled to dust a hundred years ago. Part of me, the part that spent years learning to save beautiful things, itches to touch it. To open it. To learn.
I despise that part of me.
“You’re welcome here whenever you’d like.” He turns to face me, and his expression is so fucking sincere it makes me want to vomit. “The collection is extensive. I think you’ll find—”
I walk out.
Don’t speak. Don’t look back. Just put one foot in front of the other until I’m through the doors, down the hallway, past the guard who doesn’t blink.
His voice follows me, soft and patient.
“Dinner is at eight, tesoro. You only need to ask.”
Back in my room, I go to the window.
Really look this time.
The view is stunning. Terraced gardens cascade down the hillside in perfect geometric precision.
Lemon trees heavy with fruit. Bougainvillea spilling over ancient stone walls in riots of purple and pink.
And beyond it all, the sea, stretching to the horizon where Palermo waits like a promise I can’t keep.
I press my palm against the reinforced glass. It’s warm from the afternoon sun, it’s also still solid and immovable.
Below, guards patrol the grounds. Two visible from this angle, maybe more I can’t see. They move in patterns, deliberate circuits that probably make sense. I’m too hungry to track them properly. Too dizzy to count the intervals.
The beauty of the view makes this cage worse.
That’s the point, isn’t it? He’s showing me the world I can’t have. Dangling freedom just beyond the glass, close enough to see, too far to touch.
Bastard.
I make it three steps from the window before the floor rushes up to meet me. The marble is cold against my knees as I catch myself on the edge of the bed, fingers digging into silk, and drag myself onto the mattress.
It’s been five days without real food. The oranges were forever ago, and my stomach has finally stopped growling.
It just cramps now, a constant dull ache that pulses with my heartbeat.
I’m also shaking. Fine tremors running through my hands, my arms, my legs.
When I try to make a fist, my fingers won’t cooperate.
This is the only power I have though. My body against his will. My hunger against his patience.
Can I outlast him?
The question feels different now than it did on day one. Day two. Even day three.
I’m desperate for a shower. For clean clothes. For food.
My hand slides under the pillow. The caliper is still there, cold and sharp against my palm.
I close my eyes. The angels on the ceiling blur into gold smears behind my eyelids.
Sleep takes me in pieces.
The light has changed when I wake.
Evening now. Golden hour bleeding into dusk, the sky outside my window turning shades of coral and violet. I’ve been asleep for hours. Most of the day, probably.
Something catches my eye.
There, on the ceiling, the corner above the wardrobe. There’s a shadow that doesn’t quite match the plaster.
I squint. Blink. Force my eyes to focus through the hunger-fog clouding my brain.
There it is.
A tiny lens. Barely visible, tucked into the decorative molding where the wall meets the ceiling. If I hadn’t been lying here staring at nothing for days, I never would have noticed it.
I knew he was watching. Knew there had to be cameras somewhere. He sees everything. Takes my oranges. Knows when I sleep, when I wake, when I scream at the ceiling like a crazy person.
But seeing it is different.
The violation crashes over me like a wave. Cold and heavy and suffocating. Every moment I’ve spent in this room.
He watched all of it.
I want to destroy the fucking thing. Rip it out of the wall with my bare hands. But there are more. There have to be more. The bathroom. The studio. Everywhere I go in this gilded prison, his eyes follow.
Fuck this. I stand.
The room tilts. I grab the bedpost and wait for the spinning to stop. My legs feel like wet paper, barely holding my weight.
Fuck him.
I look directly into the lens. Plant my feet. Raise both hands.
“Enjoying the show, asshole?”
Middle fingers extended. Both of them. I hold the pose until my arms shake from the effort.
Then I reach under the pillow.
The caliper gleams in the evening light. I hold it up so the camera can see. So he can see.
“I’m going to use this on you.” My voice is steady. Cold. “First chance I get.”
Somewhere, he’s watching. Probably smiling that patient, knowing smile. Probably waiting for me to break.
But I’m still fighting. Still myself.
I lie back on the silk sheets, caliper clutched in one hand, both middle fingers raised at the camera.
Sleep comes for me before I can lower them.
The lens watches.