18. Demi #2
I barely have time to register the click of the door being unlocked before a fist made of metal clamps around my arm and drags me across the room. I stumble, almost landing on my knees, but my captor doesn’t let go.
My arm feels like it’s being wrenched from its socket, and I cry out. “Stop!” half-choking on tears sparked by memories of Enzo.
I don’t have the energy to fight back. I tell myself that perhaps they’ll relent if I’m not eating. They’ll feed me real food not laced with substances that confuse Brian with Enzo.
But then he forces me onto my knees, his hand is on the back of my head, and my face is buried in the food on the plate.
I close my eyes and my mouth, but something wet and soggy slithers up my nose, and I’m choking on it as I inhale. I can’t breathe. It crawls into the back of my mouth, and my gag reflex activates, making me retch, but opening my mouth is a big mistake.
He grinds my face into the food, rocking my head from side to side like the motion will scoop more food down my throat. It’s hard to breathe. Flashes of neon light burst behind my eyes as I choke on the lumpy food, swallowing painfully like I’m trying to digest gravel.
I hear a heaving sound and realize that it’s coming from me. Survival mode has kicked in and I’m trying to suck air into my lungs but getting only food instead.
They’ve won again.
I’ll pass out. They’ll dress me up and feed recordings of Brian’s voice to my subconscious and repeat the pattern until they’ve gotten what they wanted.
Brian.
But I haven’t come this far to give into them now. They want Brian, they’ll have to find another route, because I’m not helping them.
I stop struggling and hold my breath, waiting for the blackness to claim me completely.
I open my eyes to brightness.
This is like an episode of Black Mirror, one where the main character wakes up in the same moment, over and over but with subtle differences, tiny clues to how she might escape and get back to reality.
This time, the clue isn’t in what I’m wearing. I’m in bed with the towel wrapped around me just as it was before they tried to drown me in gravy. There’s a sealed bottle of water on the nightstand and no plate.
There’s a handheld device instead.
I glance around the room, certain it must be a trick. Why would they give me a tablet to use unless it served their purpose?
I pick it up though and touch the screen; it comes to life instantly, no PIN required. Rather than opening onto a menu screen, it takes me straight to a video recording, the arrow in the bottom left-hand corner waiting for me to press play.
I swipe the screen to close the video and locate a search engine or email account and find that the device has no other apps.
It’s completely wiped, apart from the minimalized recording.
My instincts are screaming at me to put the tablet down, take a shower, sing my way through my repertoire of song lyrics, go to sleep, anything but watch the damned video…
But now that I know it’s there, I can’t forget about it.
It might give me a clue to Brian’s whereabouts.
This might be a new game, one in which I solve the riddles and find the way out like a fucked-up escape room and end up in his arms. Not that I want to be in his arms. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m not foolish enough to believe it was anything deeper than it was meant to be.
But I still want to know that he’s safe.
I pick up the tablet again and press play.
The footage is grainy, filmed in the dark outside a residence I don’t recognize.
I can hear the wind buffeting the recording equipment and the operator.
Leaves flutter across the screen suggesting that the photographer is hiding in a bush or behind trees, but the camera remains focused on the entrance to the property in the distance.
There are no lights on behind the windows; the occupants must be sleeping.
I feel like I’m sitting in a cinema auditorium, watching a horror movie, waiting for the moment when everyone in the audience jumps.
The minutes tick by. I stare at the screen until my eyes water.
“Keeping the lights on now, assholes!” I yell at the spotlights around the bed, because I can’t resist, and because I came too close to abandoning the fight earlier.
Then I spot a figure leaving the building on-screen.
I bring the device closer to my face, squinting to bring the figure into focus; this is clearly what the Bratva wanted me to see. As I do, I spot a flicker of light in one of the downstairs windows.
Not light, a flame.
Bile rises in my throat as I realize what I’m watching, but still, my eyes remain fixated on the screen like this is a form of self-punishment, and I won’t stop until I’m broken.
The figure walking away from the huge property is Enzo.
He set a fire in the home of a Bratva pakhan and left the family inside to die.
There were children inside that house. They went to bed that night with full bellies and smiles on their faces, filled with anticipation for the day that would surely follow, and they never woke up.
Enzo’s arson started a war amongst the minor Bratva families resulting in more bloodshed than the city had seen in a long while, and it wasn’t only contained to New York.
It reached Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston too.
But the worst part of it was that when I questioned Enzo, he didn’t deny it.
He claimed he had no idea the children were there; he’d been informed that they were at boarding school in Europe. He said the fire was deliberately contained within a secret den on the lower floor. A warning. Not a massacre.
But he didn’t deny it, and this was the moment that changed everything.
I knew I couldn’t live with a ruthless killer.
I left everything behind and fled to the UK.
For six months, I tried to erase Enzo from my mind by dividing my time between working until I was exhausted and sleeping.
But whenever I allowed my memories of him to seep through the cracks, I found myself replaying the evidence in my head and searching for proof that it wasn’t him.
I didn’t want to believe that he did it.
He was convinced the fire was contained and wouldn’t spread through the property, and I naively thought that I could come back and find out the truth.
But right here is the proof that I was wrong.
Proof that I fell in love with a murderer.
Tears rolling down my face, I place the tablet screen-down on the nightstand, get back into bed and pull the sheets over my head.