Chapter 34 #2
I nearly choke on my porridge. “Of course I am,” I shout, angry all over again. “What even made you think I’d want that?”
“It was on your kink list, Toy,” he replies smoothly. “And I always aim to please.”
“That’s not… I didn’t…” Pinching the bridge of my nose, I center myself. Completely ignoring the warmth pooling in my lower stomach. “You violated my consent, Enzo.”
“Did I?” His head tilts slightly. “Your list made it clear it was something you wanted to explore.”
“Not by a stranger. And not without talking about it first.” My voice rises again, but inside, I’m a mess of contradictions. My mind says violation, but my body—my treacherous body—says yes, more, please.
“Tell yourself whatever you need to,” he murmurs, eyes dipping to my silk-covered chest. “But your body tells the truth.”
I yank the edges of my robe closer together, face burning. “Fuck you.”
“Perhaps later.” Standing up, he takes my empty bowl and places it in the sink. “I’m going to shower.”
I say nothing, just sit there simmering, waiting for him to disappear into the bathroom. The moment the door closes, I count to sixty in my head, then make my move. I tiptoe to the hallway, intending to put on a pair of boots, my long coat, and get the fuck out of here.
As soon as I reach the door, I find him there. He’s leaning against it, arms crossed over his bare chest, eyes knowing. Not only did he move without making a sound, he predicted exactly what I would do.
Fuck.
“You have two options,” he states, voice deceptively soft. “Shower with me, or I tie you to the bed while I shower.”
My mouth opens, but no words come out. He’s not joking. There’s not a hint of humor in his eyes, not a trace of uncertainty in his stance.
So I shower with him. The water is hot, steam rising between us like the tension neither of us acknowledges. I try to avoid looking, but that’s damn near impossible. His body is a work of art—all lean muscle and purpose.
Afterwards, we get dressed without speaking; me in leggings and an oversized sweater, him in the tailored black pants and a crisp white shirt that appeared from somewhere while I was sleeping.
The silence has teeth. It gnaws at the spaces between us, forging my questions into weapons I’m not sure I’m ready to wield.
I sit on the edge of the bed, watching him button his cuffs with precise, unhurried movements. My fingers twist in the hem of my sweater, betraying the anxiety I’m trying to hide.
“How did you know?” The words tumble out before I can polish them. I swallow hard, heat crawling up my neck. “About the somnophilia. About my kink list. Nobody but Lena knows about that.”
Enzo doesn’t look up, doesn’t pause in his methodical dressing. “I cloned your phone the day of your interview.”
The simplicity of his confession steals my breath. Not an apology, not an excuse—just a statement of fact delivered with the same inflection someone might use to comment on the weather.
“You what?” My voice rises, thin and sharp. “That’s illegal. That’s… that’s…” I search for a word terrible enough to encompass this violation and come up empty.
“Yes,” he agrees, finally meeting my eyes. His are calm, untroubled by my outrage. “It is.”
And the worst part—the absolute worst part—is that beneath my anger, beneath the righteous indignation, there’s a twisted little flicker of… flattery?
The idea that this man wants me enough to break laws, to burrow into the most private parts of my digital life just to know me better is… no. It’s sick, and it’s wrong. So why is it making me wet?
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the thought. “What about Georgetown? My internship?” I ask, needing to change the subject. Then a thought hits me. “Wait… is the internship even real?”
“Of course it’s real,” he states, his tone making it clear he considers that a stupid question.
“So why can’t I go? Am I just supposed to disappear from my life now that you’ve decided to keep me at home?” I challenge.
His eyebrow lifts slightly, the closest he comes to showing surprise. “You were drugged, Piper. You’re on two weeks’ bedrest. Medical leave has been arranged.”
“You arranged it, you mean.” There’s less heat in it than there should be. Two weeks away from the office suddenly doesn’t sound too terrible. “At least I don’t have to see Ben,” I mutter, more to myself than to Enzo.
The change is instant. Enzo goes completely still, and even the air around him seems to cool by several degrees. When he speaks, his voice is low, controlled, and more frightening than any shouting could ever be.
“You won’t see Ben again,” he says quietly, like a promise.
“What does that mean?”
He moves toward me, each step deliberate, until he’s standing directly in front of where I sit. He doesn’t touch me, but I feel the heat of him, the solid presence of him, like a wall I can’t see through.
“Do you want the truth?” he asks, and there’s something in his tone. It sounds almost like consideration. As if he’s weighing how much reality I can bear.
“Yes.” My voice doesn’t shake, and I’m proud of that small victory.
“I’ll tell you,” he says, “but understand there’s no going back once you know. Are you certain you can handle it?”
I s hould say no; tell him to keep his secrets, to leave me in the blessed dark where I can maintain the fiction that the world operates according to rules and laws and decency. Instead, I nod.
He retrieves his phone, taps the screen a few times, then hands it to me. A video begins to play. The quality is high-definition, unforgiving in its clarity. It shows a room—windowless, concrete, clinically bright.
In the center, chained to a chair, is Ben. His face is a mess of bruises, one eye swollen completely shut, blood crusted at the corner of his mouth. He’s screaming. Not in pain, though there’s plenty of evidence he’s experienced that. No, he’s screaming justifications.
“Why the fuck am I here? Someone tell me.” He scoffs like he’s being inconvenienced. “If this is about the bitch Piper, she fucking asked for it. She was teasing me every fucking day. Fuck. The way she dressed, the way she talked. She wanted it. I know she wanted me.”
My stomach heaves. I clamp a hand over my mouth, bile rising in my throat. Not because of what’s been done to him—that, God help me, doesn’t bother me at all—but because of the vile shit he’s spewing.
The video continues. Ben thrashing against his restraints, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth as he rages, as he calls me names I won’t repeat even in my own head.
“Turn it off,” I whisper, and Enzo takes the phone immediately, slipping it back into his pocket.
My hands are shaking, hell, my entire body is. But not with fear, not with disgust—with a pure, clarifying rage I’ve never felt before.
Enzo might have touched me in my sleep, but I did want that. I had written it down, fantasized about it, made it clear in my private thoughts that the idea aroused me. There was a violation of process, perhaps, but not of desire.
What Ben intended was nothing I ever wanted. Nothing I ever invited. Nothing I deserved. I might be refusing to even acknowledge the thoughts, but just because I like living in denial doesn’t mean I can’t see through the illusions I create in my mind.
Ben was going to rape me.
“What are you going to do with him?” I ask, surprised at how cold my voice has become.
“What would you like me to do with him?” The question hangs between us. He’s giving me a choice.
Insisting he let Ben go or suggest we call the police are the right answers, the morally correct answers, the answers that would let me sleep at night believing I’m a good person.
But Ben tried to steal my choice. He would have used my unconscious body for his pleasure without a moment’s hesitation. And that’s not even the worst part. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure I’m not his first victim.
Obviously, I could be wrong, but I don’t feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt. After hearing what I just heard, I’m not that genero us.
“I want to see him,” I say finally, the words coming from somewhere deep and dark inside me, a place I didn’t know existed until this moment. “Face to face.”