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I continue trying on the clothes, each piece more revealing than the last. Some of these outfits aren’t even suitable to be worn in public. Does he expect me to throw this on whenever he wants something pretty to look at? He’s so shallow.
I have to push my disappointment to the back of my head. This is exactly the fantasy that I’ve chased for so long, and it’s ruining me. All he wants from me is my body, which is something he could find with any other woman in Italy. Does he get off on how much he knows I like him?
Something I observed about men when I first started dating is that they can never just enter a mutual social contract where two consenting adults have sex. That’s too easy for them. They require a hunt. They need to feel like they’re getting away with something. It’s fucked up and demoralizing, but it’s been my experience from day one.
They don’t want you to knowingly walk into a sexual relationship with them. They want to lure you in with words, gifts, and love as bait. If you have sex with them too soon because you want to have sex, they lose interest very quickly.
Is Marcello baiting me?
For now, that appears to be the case, and all I can do is play along with him in the hopes that he’ll relent to my feminine charms and allow me a weekly phone call with my family. God, I sound like I’ve been kidnapped by a mass murderer.
Maybe that’s what I need to do.
I need to use the same strategies that victims of serial killers use to connect with their captors in order to gain leverage with them. I wish I had paid more attention when my mother was teaching me all of this, and I’d give anything to call her and get advice from her about it.
ChapterTwenty-One
MARCELLO
It’s been a few days since June sucked me off, and I’ve been hesitant to try anything with her. I realize that the clothing I gave her might be a bit too straightforward about my intentions with her, and the last thing I want to do is scare her enough for her to shut down. If she tried to contact emergency services again, she might actually succeed. Therefore, I need to placate her somehow.
I’ve been sleeping in the bedroom again, which is a big step for both of us. It took a little getting used to on both fronts, and it felt a bit awkward for the first few nights. She would turn away from me, sleeping on the edge of the bed, to stay as far away from me as possible. I understand her hesitation – sleeping right next to someone is a huge demonstration of trust that I haven’t earned. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for her to become comfortable enough with me, so all I can do is continue to show her that she’s safe here.
She’s safeonlyhere for now.
She could have attempted to strangle me in my sleep by now, and the fact that she hasn’t is hopeful for me. I realize that she probably wouldn’t be strong enough to pull it off, and I doubt that she has the resolve to follow through on it. Despite this, I’m grateful to her for choosing not to make an attempt on my life. She has every reason to want to, at least from her perspective. I really wish I could show her the bigger picture.
In order for me to truly trust her, I need to leave some space for her to prove that she’s trustworthy, to begin with. Her choice to call the cops was a major detriment to whatever belief I had in her loyalty before, and I’m hesitant to give her the chance to fuck it up again. I’m so close to testing her again. I don’t think I’ll be able to rest properly until she’s proven herself to me.
It’s five AM, and the room is still pitch black as the autumn sunlight hesitates to rise over the horizon. I’ve been waking up at this time every day to make sure that June is still next to me, and so far, she’s been right where I left her the night before. She’s still very stiff when she sleeps, and I wonder what the quality of her sleep must be if she’s unable to relax at all.
I shine my phone in the darkness to see her more clearly. The curves of her body are mesmerizing, even underneath a thin blanket. I’m tempted to initiate sex with her later, but I pull back on my temptation. I need to show that I have self-control. She needs to understand that she doesn’t control me with her appearance, no matter how badly I want to wake her up and fuck her until she screams.
Slipping out of bed into the cold unknown of the morning, I’m careful not to make any noise as I exit the room. I’ve decided to leave the bedroom door unlocked and open, but only enough for her to believe that I’ve made a mistake by forgetting to lock it. If she wakes up and sees me leaving, she’ll be more likely to catch onto my plan.
I want to see what she does when she’s given the smallest modicum of freedom. She won’t get out of the estate without me catching her, and even if she did, the walls are far too high for her to climb. The gate is locked and monitored twenty-four hours a day, and I’ve got cameras installed on all four corners of the exterior of my house. Even if she did try to escape, I could watch her in real-time from an app on my phone.
There’s a twinge of hesitation in my gut as I walk down the hallway. Leaving the door open feels so incomplete, like this feeling in my stomach won’t go away until I’ve closed it again and completed the task. Perhaps that’s some latent obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I don’t have time to assess that. I have to go over the details of crashing the wedding of Di Angelo’s client.
The details of this mission are tricky because every person in attendance is going to be armed to the teeth. As badly as I want to blow his brains all over the bride’s white dress, I know that I’ll immediately be riddled with bullets myself if I choose to be too brazen about it. So, that sucks for me.
I have a meeting with Charlie later to go over the logistics of the mission now that he’s been able to infiltrate the catering company. He sounds confident that we’ll be able to get in with no issues since the event will be huge enough to require a ton of staff. It’ll be much easier to blend in when there are forty people staffing the event instead of fifteen.
The problem is that we still don’t know the best role for me.
As I wait for Charlie, I go through the guest list that he’d stolen from the wedding website hosted by the bride. She really thought she was doing herself a favor by showing off how many high-profile guest she’s going to have, but she’s made a huge mistake assuming that none of these people have enemies who would use this info against them. I’m positive that the website will be down within a day once her father realizes how fucking stupid it is for people like them to draw that kind of attention to themselves.
Just in case she catches on, I screenshot the webpage to make sure I have all of the posted info. It’s enough to get me through to the next phase of planning, especially because it shows me the type of criminals who will be there.
From the looks of it, there are a lot of notorious drug traffickers on the list. Not as many black market arms dealers, which is a relief, but I still need to watch out for the guys who will cut up a man and mail his body parts to his family for shorting them fifty euros. It’s a dangerous game, and I’ll need to make sure that all of my men are prepared for a firefight if so little as a pin drops before I blow Franco’s head off.
Charlie texts me to let me know that he’s right outside, and I buzz him in through the gate. He told me that he’s got news that will change the whole trajectory of the mission, so I’m curious to see what he has to say. I thought I’d figured almost everything out already.
I let him into the front hallway, and I notice that his eyes appear unrested and bloodshot. “Have you not been sleeping?” I ask as I open my office door for him.
“Not really. I’ve been trying to blow through all of this info, so you have more time to prepare. I’m pretty sure this is all we’ll need, so don’t worry about me, alright?” he replies with confidence.
I shrug, taking an unmarked folder he’s handed to me. “Alright, but I need you to be fully rested when we actually do this. I need you on your game, and you don’t need to stay up and be a hero.”
