Chapter 14 Violet #2
I try to pull away. His other hand grips my waist, holds me still. The heat of his palm searing through thin fabric.
“I’m tired of your games, Violet.” His thumb traces my bottom lip. “Let go.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Look down, tesoro.”
I keep my eyes on his. Defiant.
“Look.”
Something in his voice makes me obey.
I look down.
My nipples are hard. Straining against the thin fabric. Visible. Obvious. Betraying me again.
No, no, no, no—
“Your body doesn’t lie.” His voice wraps around me like smoke. “Even when your mouth does. You want me, Violet. Dream about me. Moan my name in your sleep.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
His thumb pulls my lower lip down slightly. His hand on my waist slides up. Slowly.
“It means you’re ready. Even if you won’t admit it.”
His hand stops just below my breast. A breath away from touching.
“Tell me to stop.”
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. My heart slams against my ribs so hard he must feel it.
“That’s what I thought.”
His hand moves up—
I shove him.
Hard enough that he actually stumbles back. Hard enough to put three feet of blessed distance between us.
“Fuck you.” I’m shaking. Rage or want or both, I can’t tell anymore. “Fuck you and your twisted mind games.”
He doesn’t follow. Just watches me with that infuriating calm.
“It’s not a game.” Absolute certainty in his voice. “It’s inevitability.”
“You think because my body responds to biology, that means I want you?”
“Yes.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.” So calm. So accepting. Like my hatred is just another fact he’s filed away. “But you also want me. And soon you’ll stop fighting it.”
I storm out.
Slam the door so hard it echoes through the corridor.
But his words follow me anyway.
You’ll stop fighting it.
I’m terrified he’s right.
I avoid him for the rest of the afternoon. Stay in my room. Pretend I’m not wondering where he is. Pretend the memory of his hand almost touching my breast doesn’t make my skin burn. When the dinner summons comes, I almost don’t go. Almost.
Everything is different tonight.
Candlelight flickers across the table when I arrive, softening the sharp angles of his face. Making him look almost gentle. Almost safe, I know he’s neither. Wine sits untouched in crystal glasses, expensive and dark. And for the first time since this started—
There’s a second chair.
Elio gestures to it. “Sit.”
Not please. Not a request. Just a command.
I sit.
Confused. Off-balance. Trying to figure out what game he’s playing now, what shift this represents in the careful architecture of my captivity.
The silence stretches.
I won’t look at him. Won’t give him the satisfaction.
“Are you going to sulk all evening?”
“I’m not sulking. I’m ignoring you.”
“What’s the difference?”
My jaw clenches. “You cornered me. Grabbed me. Pointed out—” I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t say my nipples were hard, and you saw out loud.
He leans forward, candlelight catching the sharp angles of his face.
“I told you the truth. That’s what you’re angry about.” His voice is low. Certain. “Not what I did. What I said.”
“You’re insane.”
“No.” His dark eyes hold mine. “I’m paying attention.”
The words land somewhere soft and unprotected. I look away first.
“The Madonna.” I don’t know why I’m asking. Don’t know why it matters. “Why do you have her? Why do you keep staring at her?”
He goes still.
“You want me to stop ignoring you?” I press. “Talk. Tell me something real.”
For a long moment, I don’t think he’ll answer. His jaw works as his hands flatten against the tablecloth.
“My mother loved art.” The words come slowly, reluctantly, like he’s dragging them up from somewhere deep and guarded.
“Madonnas especially. She said they understood something most people don’t—how to hold grief with grace.
” His voice goes distant. Eyes unfocused, staring at something I can’t see.
“She was the only person who ever showed me love.”
My chest aches despite myself.
Don’t humanize him. Don’t do this to yourself.
“But even that wasn’t real.” His voice flattens.
Goes cold in a way that makes me want to reach across the table, which is insane, which is dangerous, which is exactly what he wants.
“Just biology. Evolutionary programming. Mothers protect offspring because it ensures genetic survival. What I thought was love was just mammalian instinct.” He meets my eyes.
Dark. Endless. “There’s no such thing as love, Violet. Just need dressed up in poetry.”
“The saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I stare at him. This man who doesn’t believe in the thing his mother gave him. This cracked, beautiful monster who built walls so high he trapped himself inside them.
“Sad or not,” he says, “it’s true.”
“What happened to her?”
A long pause stretches out, heavy and thick. His hands curl slowly into fists on the tablecloth. I watch the knuckles go white, the fabric bunching under his grip, and I feel my own breath catch somewhere high in my throat. When he speaks, his voice is stripped bare.
“My father.”
I wait.
“He had it done. Made it look like an accident.” Each word costs him something. “I was twelve when I found her body.”
Jesus Christ.
“Why?”
“She tried to leave. Take me with her.” His mouth twists. Something bitter and broken in the curve of it. “Cicero couldn’t allow that. Control is everything. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.”
I should feel triumph. Another crack in the marble. Another weakness to exploit. Instead, I feel sick.
“I made myself a promise that day.”
I shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t care.
“What promise?”
His eyes lock on mine. Dark and endless and dangerous in ways I’m only beginning to understand.
“That I would never let anyone take what’s mine again. Not my father. Not the Syndicate. Not God himself.” A pause that stretches into eternity. “That includes you.”
The words feel like he just slapped me.
“I’m not yours.” My voice shakes. I hate that it shakes.
“Not yet.” He stands. Comes around the table toward me with the slow, certain grace of a predator who knows his prey can’t run. “But you will be.”
He cups my face with both hands. Forces me to look up at him.
“I know you think I’m the monster.” His voice is rough.
Raw. “And I am. But I’m also the only man who will ever want you this completely.
Who will show you the real you.” His thumb strokes my cheekbone.
The same spot where he caught my tear in the library.
“Your body already knows, Violet. Your mind will follow.”
He leans down. His mouth hovers near my ear, breath warm against my skin.
“When you finally stop fighting, tesoro, I’m going to make you feel things you didn’t know were possible.”
Then he releases me and takes a steps back, leaving me trembling.
Later that evening, I pace my room like a caged animal.
“Arrogant, psychotic bastard.” The words feel good leaving my mouth. Justified. Right. “Fucking kidnapper. Monster. Asshole.”
The anger cracks.
Because underneath it is his confession. His mother, murdered by his father when he was twelve. Finding her body. Growing up in the shadow of that violence, shaped by it, broken by it.
No wonder he’s so broken.
What was it like, I wonder despite myself.
Growing up without a mother. Without siblings or love from your family.
I can’t picture it, not really. My own family isn’t perfect—Ma’s constant worry that never quite lets up, Danny’s temper flaring hot and fast, Sean’s tendency to fix everything whether you asked him to or not—but at least I never had to wonder if anyone loved me.
There was always someone. Always noise, always warmth, even when it felt suffocating.
He’s not just possessive.
He’s terrified of loss.
The monster was made by grief and trauma. He cages things because caged things can’t be taken away. He controls everything because the one time he didn’t have control, his mother died and his world collapsed.
Stop. I press my hands against my temples. Stop analyzing him like a project. Stop finding the load-bearing walls of his psychology and mapping them like you map structural damage in old buildings.
But I can’t stop.
This doesn’t excuse cornering me. Proving my body betrays me. It doesn’t excuse the kidnapping, or the cage, or the surveillance, or any of it.
But it explains.
And understanding is worse than hating.
Because I can call him names. Asshole, psycho, kidnapper. And all of them are true. But so is wounded. Grieving. Terrified of losing people.