Chapter 13 Violet #2
“A mother knows.” Her voice softens. “Violet, you have to take care of yourself. I read in Reader’s Digest that Sicily has a thriving organized crime... thing. The Mafia. You need to be careful.”
My eyes find Elio’s across the room.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.
“I’m fine, Ma. Completely safe.” The lie tastes like copper. Like blood. “I promise.”
“Your nieces have been asking about you. Molly drew you a picture—a purple cat, I think? Could be a horse. Hard to tell. And everyone misses you. Danny asks if you’re coming home for Christmas.”
Christmas.
“I miss you too.” My voice cracks on the last word. “I’ll call again soon, okay? I have to go.”
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“Love you too, Ma.” I hang up before I break completely.
Elio takes the phone from my unresisting fingers, then tucks it into his pocket while watching me with an expression I can’t read.
“You’re a good liar,” he says.
“Thanks. Lots of practice.”
He hesitates. “For a mother who hasn’t heard from her daughter in three weeks she didn’t ask many questions.”
I look away. Out the window at the terraced gardens and lemon groves and the Mediterranean glittering in the distance.
“No,” I say quietly. “She never does.”
The notes slow. His breathing changes. Or maybe mine does. Two people who learned to survive by being invisible.
Fuck. Stop finding common ground with your kidnapper.
The library can’t hold me today.
I try. I pull a book from the shelf, something I’d normally devour, and force myself through the same paragraph four times. The words blur., rearrange themselves into nonsense. My fingers find my cheek again, to the spot where his thumb caught my tear.
Stop it.
I slam the book shut and stand.
The solarium. Lunch. Routine. Something to fill the hours until—
Until what?
You’re waiting for him.
The thought lands with a sickening thud of recognition.
I’m waiting for him. Listening for his footsteps. Wanting—
No.
I make my way to the solarium, following the familiar route past armed guards who pretend not to see me. The glass-walled room is flooded with afternoon light, the table already set for two.
But Elio isn’t there.
Relief washes through me first, my body relaxing for just a beat before, another feeling follows, a twist in my chest that feels horrifyingly like disappointment.
I sit. Wait. Pick at bread that tastes like sawdust.
He doesn’t come.
An hour drags by. The food congeals on my plate. I can’t swallow, can’t force down a single bite, and I don’t understand why his absence has carved me hollow.
He’s your kidnapper. You should be celebrating.
Instead I feel… empty.
I abandon the untouched meal and wander the halls. Not looking for anything. Definitely not looking for him.
Liar.
Music stops me cold.
A piano. Somewhere deep in the villa, someone is playing.
The melody drifts through the corridors, haunting, aching, built from notes that reach inside my chest and squeeze. Each phrase rises and falls, layering over itself, building intensity until the sound becomes almost unbearable.
I follow it.
Through halls I’ve memorized and others I haven’t. Past doorways, windows, and guards who watch but don’t stop me. With every step the music grows louder, pulling me forward like a current I can’t fight.
The room I reach is nothing like the rest of my prison. Sparse. Almost empty. Floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, light pouring in from every angle. And in the center—
A grand piano. Black as night.
And Elio.
He sits with his back to me, shoulders bowed over the keys, completely lost in the music. His fingers move across the ivory with precision. Each note placed with restraint, building something beautiful and terrible note by note.
The melody starts careful. Measured. But then it swells, the restraint cracking open, and suddenly the music is pouring out of him like blood from a wound.
Rising and falling and rising again, each phrase more intense than the last, accumulating weight and grief until I can barely breathe through it.
I step closer. Can’t stop myself.
His eyes are closed. His face—
There’s pain there. Real pain. Not the controlled mask he wears every day, but something raw and unguarded and human. As if each stroke of the keys costs him something he can’t afford to give.
I’m right beside him without having any recollection of crossing the room.
The music stops.
His eyes open and land straight on mine.
We stare at each other across the sudden silence. The air between us thick enough to choke on.
“What was that?” My voice comes out rough.
Elio swallows. Looks away, out the window at nothing.
“Experience,” he says. “Ludovico Einaudi.”
“It was beautiful.” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Heartbreaking.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Einaudi said it’s about life moving forward. About accumulation. Intensity without sentimentality.” He stands abruptly, putting distance between us. “It’s called Experience because experience isn’t safe or kind or clean.”
Then he leaves.
Just like that. Gone. Like I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to see.
And maybe I had.
I avoid him for the rest of the afternoon. Stay in my room. Pretend I’m not wondering where he is.
At dinner, I don’t ask where to sit. The fight died somewhere a while back. I don’t know when exactly and I don’t want to look too closely at it.
I go straight to him. His lap. The same as every night now.
I settle against him, and his arm wraps around my waist, hand splaying across my stomach. Warm and secure.
Safe, my traitorous brain whispers.
Which is insane. This is the least safe place I’ve ever been.
But I’m aware of every point of contact anyway. His thighs solid beneath mine. His chest firm against my back. The heat of him seeping through fabric, sinking into skin, into bone.
He feeds me like always. Slow, careful bites. Wine. Bread. Something rich and savory I don’t taste because all I can feel is him.
Exhaustion crashes over me like a wave. Not just physical, though that’s there too, but something deeper, bone-weary from fighting myself all day.
Without thinking, I let my head fall back against his shoulder.
His hand tightens on my waist as his breathing stops.
Neither of us moves.
The moment stretches, infinite and terrifying, and I realize what I’ve done. Leaned into him, sought his warmth, his comfort, like he’s something I need instead of something I should fear.
I jerk upright.
“I’m tired.” The words tumble out too fast. “I want to go back to my room.”
“Violet—”
“Please.”
A pause. Then he nods.
He walks me back in silence, his hand a brand on the small of my back. At my door, he stops.
“Sleep well, tesoro.”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer.
I just close the door and lean against it until my legs stop shaking.
The silk camisole feels like sin against my skin.
I don’t know why I chose it. One of the night lingerie sets he selected. Deep burgundy, trimmed with lace, nothing I would ever buy for myself. But I pull it on anyway, along with the matching shorts, and try not to think about my reasoning behind it.
You’re insane, I tell myself, climbing into bed. He kidnapped you. Drugged you. Almost let you starve. He’s clearly a criminal. He took your caliper.
The litany should help. Should remind me who he is and who I am and why this, whatever this is, has to stop.
It doesn’t.
Sleep pulls me under mid-justification, and when I surface his hands are in my hair. Gentle this time. Wanting this time.
“There you are, tesoro.” His voice is low and warm, wrapping around me like smoke. “I’ve been waiting so long.”
His mouth hovers above mine, close enough that I can taste his breath. The library all over again, except this time he closes the distance.
Jesus.
Heat explodes everywhere as his lips claim mine, soft and demanding all at once, burning me from the inside out. His hands pull the camisole over my head and I help him, desperate to feel skin against skin.
“So fucking beautiful.” His mouth trails down my throat, across my collarbone, lower. “I’ve thought about this every night. Watching you sleep and imagining you coming apart under my hands.”
His lips close around my nipple and I gasp, arching into him, fingers digging into his shoulders. His teeth graze the sensitive peak, causing pleasure to spark through me like lightning.
“Elio—”
I’m pushing at his shirt, his pants, everything between us. He tears at his own clothes, yanks them off, and then he’s bare. Warm skin and hard muscle and the length of him pressing against my thigh.
“Please.” The word falls from my mouth without permission. “Elio, please—”
“Tell me what you want, Violet.” His voice sounds filthy and possessive. “Say it.”
“I want you inside me.” No shame. No hesitation. Just need, raw and overwhelming. “I want to feel you. All of you.”
His hand slides between my legs.
“Christ, you’re so wet for me. Soaked.” His fingers stroke, explore, claim. “Is this all for me, tesoro?”
I—
I gasp awake. For real this time.
Heart slamming. Thighs clenched. Nipples hard against silk. And between my legs—
Wet. Soaked through the silk shorts. My body aching, throbbing, desperate for something that isn’t there.
“No.” I sit up, pressing my hands over my eyes. “No no no.”
But my pulse won’t slow. The dream clings to me, his hands, his mouth, his voice saying my name like a prayer, and my body doesn’t care that none of it was real.
My body wants him anyway.
I stumble into the shower and crank the handle as far as it will go. The spray hits like needles and I sob, pressing my forehead against the tile, letting the cold punish what the heat of that dream created.
Not washing away memories this time. Something else.
I’m mourning. Standing in an ice-cold shower in the middle of the night, and I’m mourning the woman I was before.
Before I started noticing his hands. Before his almost-smiles made my stomach flip. Before the way he says my name became something I like.
Before some part of me stopped wanting to escape.
The tears come hot against my frozen skin.
The worst prison isn’t the locked door.
I’ve been so focused on the cage, the locked rooms, the armed guards, the surveillance cameras recording my every breath, that I missed what was really happening.
It’s wanting to stay.
I’m waiting for him now. Listening for his footsteps every morning. Wanting him to sit closer at lunch. Thinking about him when he’s gone.
And it’s not just physical. Not just my body betraying me in dreams and stolen touches. It’s the conversations. The silences. His presence, filling up spaces I didn’t know were empty.
Stop. I press my palms against the cold tile. You have to stop.
Because if I don’t I’ll lose more than my freedom.
I’ll lose myself.
The water runs cold until I’m numb, until my lips turn blue and my fingers won’t work properly. But when I finally step out, wrapping myself in a towel and staring at my reflection in the polished metal—
I make myself a promise.
I’m not going to stop fighting.
Not yet. Not ever.
Even if the enemy I’m fighting is myself.