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It’s comfortable and chic, without looking like I’m going to a formal Michelin-star dinner. I take a sash from one of the other dresses and improvise a way to tie up my hair.
For the rest of the day, I am left to sit in the window, stare out at the yard, and think.
I think about being spiteful and finding some way to ruin this little game for Salvatore. I think about playing along and seeing what his wicked plan has in store for me, body and mind. I think about my father, and Kaydence, and the cozy apartment missing me in Greenwich Village with so many half-finished canvases waiting to be filled. Those thoughts let me finally lose myself in something else.
Instead of wallowing in frustration, I finally give in and wallow in my misery.
The fact that I am a prisoner has finally settled in.
There’s an ugly sting in it, as if I’ve proven my father right. He always said—You either learn to live by the mafia rules or you die by them.
Even now I can hear his voice, so perfectly clear, as if he were in the room with me: “I told you so.”
Strangers trickle into the estate throughout the day. I watch from my window as they arrive, carrying luggage with them. It’s strange to think that these people are coming here voluntarily, while I’m stuck behind this glass like a pretty little pet, thinking only of getting out.
I daydream about manhunts and missing persons posters. I wonder if my father is storming through Salvatore’s businesses, tearing through New York like a nor'easter. And then, that same old doubt mutters in the back of my thoughts, trying to convince me that he’s shrugging off my disappearance, writing off my kidnapping as someone taking out his trash for him.
The thought stings in my eyes.
He really did sound worried about me on the phone call.
The sun is setting when the door opens again. I’ve made the daring move from the window nook to the bed. I’d gotten tired of looking out at a world I couldn’t reach. The tread of heavy footsteps enters the room, and I glance over my shoulder to check that it’s Salvatore.
When it is, I roll back over and promptly ignore him.
“Get up,” he says. “We’re having dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten.”
“I haven’t done much of anything. Not that you care. I’m not hungry,” I repeat.
I don’t think this is the mood Salvatore expected when he came back here. He probably hoped I would be on my knees for him, face down and ass up, begging for his touch. If he’d timed it a little differently, maybe I would have been. He’s a couple hours too late for all that.
His footsteps march around to my side of the bed, where he blocks the orange glow of the afternoon sun from view. I stare through his highlighted silhouette.
“Is this a hunger strike, or are you pouting because you got punished?”
“Oh, right, because it can’t just be that I want to choose when I eat,” I say flatly.
He hauls me up by the arm, but I shake him off and march across the room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.
“To wherever you’re having dinner, apparently.”
I can tell he expected me to put up more of a fight, to not walk passionlessly to the door and wait for him there. My feet stop at the threshold I am not allowed to cross.
I can feel his stare, even if I can’t see it. I’ve become familiar with the way he looks when he’s trying to read me, like a poker player glancing up over his cards. I keep my eyes forward, into the hallway. He can figure me out too easily, and looking at him seems to make that x-ray affect so much sharper. If I don’t show him my face, maybe he won’t be able to see so many of my weaknesses.
With one arm in his rough grasp, Salvatore hauls me to his bedroom again. Light spills through the house, illuminating all the dark, shadowy spaces I couldn’t see before. Muffled, rowdy voices rise from the floor below, but Salvatore leads us away from the noise, into his shadowy room, where another door is put between me and the rest of the world.
Out of one cage and into another.
Salvatore’s bedroom is spacious enough that the intimate, table-for-two set up doesn’t look out of place, arranged next to the window where the curtains have been drawn back. The light on this side of the house has already turned purple in twilight, throwing the room into a dusky hue.
He sits me before a plate of braised veal, paired with a glass of wine and a glass of water.
