Her eyes are filled with tears now.When they drip down her cheeks, I want to fuck her.
She brushes them away and hides her face beneath a veil of hair, jabbing the pen into the notepad and scrawling across the paper in quick, angry motions.
When she is finished, she rips the letter away and thrusts it in my direction.
"There. You got what you wanted. Now leave me alone."
I want to punish her for speaking to me this way. I want to tie her up and flip her over and fuck her face down into the wire mesh of the cage.
But I don't.
Because it is better that she hates me.It is better that she understands what I am and never forgets.
Beautiful things were meant to be broken.
Chapter Fourteen
For the next two weeks, I bide my time. Watching Javi's every move. Seeking out a weak link in the chain.
I don't think there is one. He is regimental in the way he goes about his day. The times that he delivers my meals. The way he locks the door.
Every day is the same routine. He comes to the cage. He humiliates or punishes me with a variety of terror campaigns. Forcing me to spread my legs for him and play with myself. Sucking him off through the holes of the cage. Torturing my feet with his belt.
And then he feeds me through the cage too. Tossing me scraps like a dog before he leaves. He watches me. On camera and off. Of that, I have no doubt. Because there are cameras in here.
I spend my days writing and plotting my escape. It's the only thing I have to hold on to. Art has not come. Nobody has come. It was foolish of me to think that they would.
He checks in with me via text. Javi probably knows my speech patterns well by now. He could easily fool Art with his own replies.
Hope is abandoning me. I envision myself ten years from now, still locked inside this cage. But in this vision, I am nothing more than a skeleton. Because surely, Javi will tire of me by then. He will destroy what’s left of me, as he promised.
Every day, the light inside of me dims.
And when I am finally certain that it has extinguished forever, something happens. Something that changes everything.
Javi comes to retrieve me from the cage. There is no explanation. No apology. No words. He simply leads me back through the house, along the same corridor in which we came. This time, he makes me walk.
My feet are bare, and the floor is cold, and Javi is not dragging me along by the arm. It gives me time to take in my surroundings. It gives me the opportunity to notice things I never have before. That’s when I see them.
The trap doors in the floor.
I count three on the way back to the conservatory.
A renewed sense of determination blooms inside of me like Spring. When Javi turns to me, I wonder if he can see it. If I have given myself away.
“Tonight,” he says.
“What?”
“Tonight, I have something I want from you.”
I swallow and nod, playing the words on repeat in my mind. This is it. My chance.
Javi leads me into the bathroom and points to the tub.
“Wash up,” he demands.
I don’t want to.