Page 77 of Born in Depravity

A sacrificial lamb.

Slowly, I nodded my head.

Physically, I could speak. I knew he heard that first night he brought me into this room, even if it was one word said in a whisper. I hadn’t spoken a single word in thirteen years.

I waited for him to demand that I speak, the way Father had done many times, and for him to lose his temper and hit me when I couldn’t make the words form.

I closed my eyes, bracing myself.

I flinched when I felt his touch on my cheek.

“Catalina, look at me,” he demanded. The fact that he called me by my name surprised me into obedience. I opened my eyes and looked at him.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

I shrugged.

I wouldn’t be able to explain it to him even if I had been able to speak.

He let out a sigh. He reached over me for something on the other side of the bed. Again, I flinched from the sudden movement. His shrewd eyes watched me, and I looked down at my lap.

“I have something for you,” he said, placing a glittery pink notebook on my lap. I ran my finger over the cover. It wasn’t very big. About as big as a paperback book.

And it was pretty.

I didn’t hate this color pink.

He gave me a pen. A simple black pen that I could possibly use as a weapon. I looked up and met his eyes before moving my gaze back down to the pen.

His lips twitched. “You really think I can’t handle a small thing like you? Whatever it is you’re planning on doing in that pretty little head of yours, pet, I wouldn’t do it.”

I paused.

What gave me away?

He laughed at the disgruntled look on my face. Not the way Mikhail had laughed yesterday morning in amusement, or how Nikolay had laughed with dark humor most of the time, but somewhere in between, and I didn’t—

I didn’t hate this side of him all that much.

“You can use this to communicate. Why don’t you write something?”

Write something?

This was how I’d communicated back home, mostly with Roberto. It was how I had always communicated, but this time felt different. I didn’t know why that was. I opened the notebook to the first page and I stared down at the blank paper.

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