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“N-no, Master.” I can't stop crying.
“Good girl. Did either of us ever physically harm you in any serious way? Any broken bones? Cutting? Amputations? Starvation? And I mean actual starvation, refusing you food with no way for you to rectify that situation. Were you at any point violently raped?”
“No, Master,” I whisper.
“That's what I thought.” He stands back up as Seven re-enters the room with some papers, a pen, and the clothes I was wearing the night I was taken. The little black dress. He takes me by the arm and guides me to the bathroom where the light is better. The latest white roses are wilting in the vase. Some of the petals have fallen onto the counter.
It's jarring, because there were always fresh roses. They never got to this state before being replaced with more, always while I was sleeping.
“Read, sign, and initial in the marked places,” he says.
Seven strokes my back as I read. I hate him more than Declan right now. At least I always knew Declan was the bad guy. Seven's betrayal cuts deeper.
I can barely read through my tears but I get the gist of it. It doesn't even matter what the fuck these papers say. I have no choice but to sign them. I'm not really agreeing to anything, just obeying one more of their whims.
I sign and initial in all the appropriate places.
“Good girl,” Seven says, passing the papers to Declan. “Now get dressed, and I'll take you to your new home.”
My hands shake as I put on the bra, panties, dress, and heels. It feels so uncomfortably strange to have fabric resting against my skin after so much time naked.
He pulls a black scrap of fabric out of his pocket and ties it around my eyes.
When I panic, he says, “It's just until we get away from the house.”
He leads me out of the cell, down a hallway, out a front door. Birds are chirping as he opens a car door and guides me inside.
“Buckle up,” he says before shutting me into the silence of the car.
He joins me a moment later and the engine revs to life. As we drive, I wonder how many women they've done this to.
There’s this sick part of me that still wants to be with Seven because a part of my mind is still in shock and can't accept that he's the bad guy. I'm still not sure he's not just taking me somewhere to kill me. His level of elaborate deceit makes anything now possible.
But I don't ask or beg because if he were planning to kill me, he wouldn't tell me the truth about it anyway. I remember what Declan said back in the cell about how sociopaths could form a few limited bonds. Maybe they know they have to kill me but don't want me to see it coming. Maybe this is their twisted way of showing mercy.
With a blindfold, I wouldn't see it coming. Seven could just park the car somewhere, reach over and snap my neck. If he kills me, I hope he does it like that. Quick, where I don't see it coming.
“I can't believe I believed you. I believed you cared...” I say, needing to talk to get my mind off the dark fears consuming me.
“Shhh,” he says before I can start sobbing again. His hand strokes my knee, and I can't bring myself to pull away, and it isn't the fear. I hate myself right now for still wanting him to touch me.
“Don't feel bad,” he says. “There are women married for decades to serial killers, with children even. They never suspect. Without a real conscience, it's easy to hide, and normal people can't even fathom what goes on inside our minds. And you never really know anyone anyway. Everything you think you know about anyone you've ever met is just the parts they've shown you. You never really know anyone,” he says again. Does he really believe this? I'm not sure. Maybe it's true though.
We always have a skewed perspective of other people, even those closest to us. We make shorthand assumptions about their thoughts and feelings and motivations. We project ourselves onto them. We become disillusioned when we find out we were wrong about people.
My hands are clenched together in my lap. “I felt safe with you.”
“You were safe with me. You're still safe with me. Tell me, Kitten, if you needed surgery, would you prefer to have someone very empathetic or very sociopathic operate on you?”
What kind of question is this? “Someone empathetic, of course.”
He laughs. “No, you wouldn't. Very empathetic people are the type of people who break down into tears when a disaster happens on the other side of the world to random strangers they've never met. They hold candlelight vigils and pray and wring their hands. They see a starving African child on a television commercial and send money they probably could put to better use for their own family because they felt sad seeing a small sad-eyed hungry child. And they need to assuage their guilt at having a full belly. They are altruistic even to the point of neglecting their own needs or their family's needs. They have no strong loyalties because they love everyone with a shallow love that is really just their lack of emotional control.”
I let these words fall over me. I don't know if I should believe them, but they do sound true. I've known people like this. Every news story depresses them or makes them anxious. They get emotionally over-involved in the lives of strangers.
“It's not black or white, Kate. I guarantee you every top surgeon in the world is at least a bit sociopathic. You have to be able to shut your feelings off and just see a body in front of you so you can make clear-headed rational choices. You don't want someone who is too emotional or falls apart at every little thing or feels everybody else's emotions. Most politicians are sociopaths. Most CEOs are sociopaths. And yet the world still spins.”
“You didn't really feel anything for me. I didn't expect Declan to, but I thought you...”
