Page 34 of Broken Hearts

14

Alex

With a frown,I reclined on my study chair, watching Celeste on the camera feed on my computer screen. She’d barely touched her breakfast since I left her room, and she was sitting on her bed, staring into space.

Something had happened in her internal world, and whatever it was, I knew it was all my fault. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where I went wrong, but something had made her snap. She was acting completely submissive to me, but this wasn’t like all the other times she’d submitted. She seemed dead behind the eyes now, just going through the motions. I hated it. Hated that I’d made her into this with all my fucked up shit.

Had I misjudged her that badly? Misread who she was and tried to force her into being someone she wasn’t? Perhaps. At this point I had no fucking idea. All I knew for sure was that I hated seeing her this broken, and I hated myself for whatever I’d done to cause it.

I actually missed her trying to fight me. I missed that spark of personality I saw in her every time she told me to fuck off or that she didn’t belong here. I didn’t see it anymore. It was gone, along with the light in her eyes.

My fault.

I did this to her. I wanted her to submit, but not like this. Not to this extent where she was dull, colorless, weak.

Somewhere along the line, I’d seriously fucked up. I thought I’d done the right thing in bringing her here and setting all the rules to keep her safe, and it seemed to work for a while, but apparently all I’d succeeded in doing in the end was turning her into an empty shell. I made her too afraid to fight back, and she was right to be afraid, because she would be punished if she ever argued or tried to leave. Those were the rules I gave her, after all.

At the time, I told myself it was all for her benefit; that I needed to do something drastic to ensure her loyalty, even if it meant doing the unthinkable and imprisoning her under a harsh set of rules. But it was obviously too much. She hated being here now, and I was sure she also hated me, despite her words to the contrary.

I couldn’t fucking stand it. I wanted her to want to be here. I wanted her to care for me the way I cared for her, but now… now I feared she never would. I’d spent the last week leaving her to her own devices in the hope that she’d come around and realize the mistake she made when she tried to leave, but she’d only withdrawn further and further into her shell. At this rate, she’d never come out.

We were going backwards, and it was all my fucking fault.

I already knew that the only way to truly own her body and her soul was if I made her fall in love with me. But after what I’d done, how I’d hurt her, how could she ever love me? I was a fucking monster. I killed people, and I felt nothing but joy when I did it. I wasn’t going to apologize for that, because I wasn’t sorry. But it wasn’t something most people could deal with in the end, even someone as sweet and understanding as Celeste.

Even if she did accept all the killings, she still couldn’t accept all of me, considering the way I’d gone about things with her, despite the fact that I genuinely believed I was doing the right thing at the time. I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. If I never brought her here, she’d be in terrible pain. And if I brought her here and told her everything from the beginning, I risked breaking her mind irreparably. No, there was no other way to go about things… and yet, I still felt as if I’d done something wrong. I felt like I’d failed.

I sighed and leaned back, my mind momentarily flashing back to a pleasant memory. I’d never been happier than the day Celeste chose to stay, just like I knew she would at the time. But that was all down the drain now. The wind had changed, and she wanted out all over again.

Being a ruthless killer all these years had obviously warped my mind, made me too detached to properly observe things from anyone else’s point of view, including hers. It also made it nigh impossible to see when I was wrong, so I still couldn’t see exactly where I’d fucked everything up. Couldn’t see the exact moment when she’d suddenly decided that I could no longer be trusted.

I wished I could simply set her free to make her happy again, but it wasn’t in my nature to do so. It was too dangerous. She needed to learn that once and for all.

I still needed to do something, though. Needed to try and help her be happy again, help her accept her place here with me.

I mulled it over in the back of my mind while I finished stacks of paperwork from the hospital for the next few hours. When I was done, I went into the kitchen and prepared an early dinner. I set the table for two along with some candles and flowers, and then I went and fetched Celeste from her room.

She seemed surprised that I was letting her out, but she didn’t say anything. She simply kept her head bowed, avoiding eye contact with me as she followed my order to sit down.

Her face was pale, and her cheeks were beginning to look hollow. She’d been refusing to finish her food lately, but I was sure she wouldn’t say no to this. I gestured at the bowl in front of her. “Risotto with parmesan and truffle oil. One of your favorites, right?”

She nodded. “Thank you, sir,” she mumbled.

Even though I knew she loved this particular meal, she barely touched it, aimlessly moving her fork around the bowl instead. I sighed, then cleared my throat. “I wanted to say a few things, Celeste.”

She didn’t look up, her fork still stirring cheesy globs of rice around her bowl, over and over. “Yes, sir?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I know I’m not an easy man. There are certain things I don’t talk about much, because I find it difficult. I don’t open up easily, so to speak.” I half expected her to make a face at that, something like ‘well, duh!’ but her expression remained vacant and unreadable. I sighed and went on. “When I brought you here, I honestly thought I was doing the right thing with everything I did and the way I held off from telling you the truth at first. I thought I was helping you.”

“I know, sir,” she murmured.

“I was wrong.”

She finally looked up at me, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. For the first time in days, she was displaying some semblance of emotion again.

I held up one palm. “I made a mistake. No, I made a lot of mistakes. The way I treated you, the things I did….” I hesitated for a second. “Like I said, I believed I was doing the right thing. But I hurt you. I regret that, and I’m sorry. I want to start making things right. So from now on, there are no more punishments, not unless you want it, like that day when you specifically asked me to take you into the playroom.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You… you won’t hurt me? Ever?”

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