Abby
“Hi, Misha.”
As shitty as it is for Conor to make Misha think he’s abusing me right now, it’s better than what I expected.
When I boarded the plane to come back, I spent the first half of the flight thinking of every single moment of happiness I felt in Thunder Bay.
With white noise in my noise-canceling headphones, I basked in the love and patience of the man who brought me back to life.
I pledged to myself to never completely forget the warmth and family of Ellie, Nikki, Giulia, and Nonna.
Then I buried it all.
The second half of the flight was spent steeling myself for what was to come. If Conor had taken from me before, he’d likely be feral and punishing now. The days of being so drugged out I didn’t feel or remember my assaults were probably long gone, and pain, sexual or not, was my future.
He took one look at me when I walked in with my red curls long and free, and my green eyes flashing in defiance as if daring him to stick another blue contact in them, and deemed me unfit to fuck.
“For now.”
I’m not going to borrow tomorrow’s problems today, so I watch him finish all over the blonde at his feet, then call in his men to cart her off to be abused.
I wish I could count on him being in a better mood after getting off, but it doesn’t always work.
Sometimes he ends up angrier and crueler after an orgasm.
More proof that something is really fucked up in his head.
Without a word, he gestures for me to follow him into his office. I’ve already been strip-searched and run through every metal detector in this place, his team looking for bugs and threatening that if I’m double-crossing them, I’d be sorry.
I wish I were double-crossing them.
Nikki and I had the bare bones of a plan, but Conor got the upper hand.
When he convinced me that he could hit Misha where it hurt…
I panicked and fled. It’ll probably come back to bite me, but after barging into Thunder Bay and lying to the only real friends I have, I couldn’t be the one responsible for their family getting hurt.
It was only right that I did exactly as Conor asked.
In his office, I sit in one of the uncomfortable chairs opposite the imposing desk, eyeing the space for changes since the last time I was unfortunate enough to cross the threshold.
It’s the same as when I last saw it, although I rarely sat in any chairs.
More often than not, I was gagged and passed around to the laps of various men in the room, either as a reward, an offer to sweeten a deal, or, if the man wasn’t an exhibitionist, punishment.
Conor always loved forcing men he suspected to be gay to attempt to fuck me in front of a crowd.
When they couldn’t get hard, it would damn them to a lesser role in the organization.
Conor pours himself a generous tumbler of liquor, lights a cigar, and sits in his desk chair, staring at me through squinted eyes, as if to see through my motivation for returning without a fight. Finally, when he’s drained one glass and poured another, he breaks the tense silence.
“It’s been wonderful not having you around, Niamh.”
The emphasis as he spits my name in his venomous, hateful voice makes me flinch, and he laughs. Silence is my friend, though, so I don’t respond. There’s nothing I could say that would have any effect except making my life far, far worse. And it’s already a low bar.
“Are you already so unaccustomed to the name I gave you? Well, I suppose technically your parents gave it to you, but I really made Niamh Fitzpatrick, didn’t I?”
Quiet.
“Everyone here thinks you’ve been in rehab, did I tell you?
We leaked a little of this here, a little of that there, until you were the city’s fallen heiress.
Too much coke and booze, and anorexic to boot.
My patience and understanding, plus the fact that you’ve been treated in the best rehab facility in the world, have actually made my polling go up quite a bit if you can believe it. ”
He transforms in a blink from the sleazy, lecherous demon who just sent a woman to a fate worse than death into the perfect society husband and mayor. His smile, charm, and caring gaze are enough to fool the public, my family, investors, voters, me…
It’s more terrifying to see him like this than when he’s showing his true colors. The mask is so persuasive it makes me nauseous, as if I’m trapped in a room with something I know is evil but can’t quite put my finger on why.
“Why did you have to make things harder on yourself, again?” he asks, slowly rounding the desk to lean against it in front of me. It’s impossible not to react to his proximity, and I can’t help the tremble that he immediately notices in my hands.
Quiet.
“You had a very simple task. The oldest task in the world for a woman like you. Open your legs, get some information. But you’re so incompetent that you couldn’t even accomplish that.”
Quiet.
“Instead, you manage to become the seducee, ‘falling in love’ and allowing a goddamn Bratva nobody to fuck you and convince you that you meant something to him!”
His air quotes describing my love for Misha threaten to ruin my resolve, and my trembling continues not only from fear but from anger.
“And you provided me with absolutely no information. Thank God we sent someone else capable of doing their fucking job.”
He finally moves away, and I sink a little more into my chair.
“Your posture has always been terrible,” he chides, pulling a thick leather binder from his desk drawer that I recognize immediately.
It’s his twisted version of our wedding album, beginning with perfectly normal photos of us on dates and enjoying dinner with my parents and continuing through blackmail material of me being used.
“Why do you keep that?”
My quiet voice surprises us both, and I brace for impact, but he only laughs.
“I keep it because it’s hilarious. I keep it because it shows your progression from thinking you were special to learning your place in the world as holes for me to use as I see fit. And I keep it because I looked really fucking good in my suit on our wedding day.”
He flips through a few pages, cigar forgotten in its ashtray, and laughs intermittently before turning it to show me a picture of us with my parents, just before he had them cut out of my life permanently.
“Do you remember this day? Your pa was still so mad at me for marrying you, and your ma thought I could do no wrong.”
“Why?” I croak, unable to stay quiet as tears begin to streak down my cheeks. “Why were you so intent on marrying me of all people? If you hated me and wanted to tear me away from my family so badly, couldn’t you have found someone easier?”
“Ah, Niamh. Finally asking the real questions, aren’t you? Maybe you did learn something in Thunder Bay after all.”
Leaning forward, he places a capsule, no bigger than a multivitamin, on the edge of his desk nearest me.
“Keep an eye on that. You might want it later.”
As he rustles through his desk drawer, I eye his offering warily. The lime-green capsule doesn’t look fit for human consumption. Finally, he slides a laminated piece of paper across the desk.
It’s impossible to stop the bile from rising in my throat, and I barely choke it down as Conor laughs.
“You’re a monster. They told me…but it was hard to believe, even after everything—”
“Hard to believe I lead the most fearsome Mafia outfit in Canada? I’m almost offended, Niamh.”
He gestures again to the awful picture in front of me, a dead body so mangled you can barely tell it was a man.
“You don’t know who that man was, and you can’t see his face since it’s been blown off with over twenty bullets, but that’s my father. And I can’t take credit for the gore. No, that belongs to one man alone. Your pa.”
I finally vomit, unable to withstand another second of looking at the mangled corpse. Conor’s laughter rings throughout the office, seemingly unbothered by me ruining his carpet.
“You’re a liar,” I spit with the last of the vomit in my mouth. “My dad is the sweetest man in the world, and he’s a carpenter—”
“He’s a goddamn mobster!” Conor screams, voice echoing off the wood paneling on the walls. “He was the leader of our biggest rivals. He killed my father, so I did the one thing worse than killing him in retaliation. I took you.”
He paces back and forth frantically, less tethered to reality by the second, and I think for the first time that the Conor who seemed uninterested in me might have just been another act.
He might have been calm because he plans to kill me…
I can see the headline now. One bad relapse, a bad batch of coke, and she overdosed… What a tragic rich girl…
“I thought about killing him. It would have been easier, after all the shit you’ve put me through over the years.
But I gave him a choice. I told him I was taking one of his women to use, degrade, and defile.
It was either you or your ma. And since we’re coming up on our tenth anniversary, you know who he chose. ”
“I still don’t believe you.”
The next binder is full of documents. Records of my father’s Mafia history, details of his murder of Conor’s dad, texts discussing my dad’s choice of my mother over me, Conor detailing exactly what he planned to use me for while negotiating my dowry…
“Your ma always thought your dad proved you can do what we do and still be a good man at heart. She was so easy to charm although you know it’s no challenge for me. I’m sure it broke her heart when I told her that you wanted nothing to do with them—”
“Misha’s a good man. And the Santoris are, too. You’re wrong.”
Conor makes a show of dramatically looking around the room, checking behind a plant in the corner and peeking under his desk.
“Where are they, then? You thought you could spread your legs for him, and he’d love you, but he’s nowhere to be found.
I guarantee you that he knows exactly where you are.
So where are they? Nowhere. Just like your pa let me take you all those years ago.
Nobody is coming for you, Niamh. Nobody loves you. ”
Lies.
Conor can say anything he’d like. He can do anything he wants to me, and history tells me that he absolutely fucking will. But the one thing in this world he can’t take away from me is Misha’s love.
Staring my demon straight in the face, defiantly refusing to bow before his pathetic game, I show him my raw hatred and refuse to believe his lies. He snaps, grabbing the pill and prying my mouth open to force it down my throat.
“You can’t make anything easy, bitch. But you’ll do what the fuck I want, just like always.”
With my last few moments of consciousness, I imagine the cozy couch in Misha’s condo, and being curled up against his warm chest. His heat and his scent soothe me as he scratches my scalp, and I slowly fall asleep.