Page 35 of Ruined

“Yeah?”

“Has Angelo ever fucked with your head?”

“All the time.”

“Like, he gives you drugs and makes you think stuff?”

“What?” Bobby’s eyes narrow. “No. He doesn’t give me drugs. Angelo loathes drugs.”

That makes me go silent, because my memory is hazy, and now I am wondering if it was even a memory at all. Maybe it was just a dream. It does seem outlandish, even for Angelo. Besides, he’s not exactly a subtle manipulator.

“Maybe I… imagined it,” I mumble.

“You were pretty fucked up when we found you. Maybe he had to give you something to calm you down.”

“Maybe,” I agree. That would make sense. After all, Angelo wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true. Except I didn’t have the scar yet.

I didn’t have the scar yet.

* * *

I wonder if I’m just trying to sabotage the best thing that ever happened to me, becoming a murderous gun-hand for a notorious criminal.

I’m starting to look at Angelo in a different way. I’m starting to wonder if he didn’t somehow manipulate all the events that have taken place since he captured me. I even wonder if my capture was somehow planned.

I have seen how Angelo operates, carefully, skillfully, leaving nothing to chance. Even when punishing Bobby and me for our lustful murder session, I had the feeling nothing had truly happened out of his control. He was punishing us for acting precisely as he had intended us to. We may as well have strings on our limbs for the way he controls us.

The real question I am struggling with is not whether I am being manipulated by Angelo. It is whether I enjoy it. He stole my life. I run my hand down my belly and feel the scar that will never leave. What else did he steal from me?

“You’ve been quiet lately, Riley.” Angelo notes one afternoon. I have been brooding for several days, trying to understand if my memories are memories or twisted dreams. Trying to understand why I want to blame him, and if it could possibly have ever been his fault.

Angelo’s comment makes me feel suddenly seen, as if a spotlight had been turned on me. I feel very seen, and very uncomfortable having been seen. Guilt suffuses me as I start to worry if he somehow knows what I am thinking.

“I’ve never been a loud person,” I reply.

His dark gaze sweeps over me and through me. “Come to my office,” he says.

I have that excited and nervous feeling I only get when I’m in trouble, but not the kind of trouble that’s going to get me killed. I think I’ve done something wrong. Actually, I know I have. I have been doubting Angelo.

I follow him to his office, where, without a word, Angelo wraps his hand around the back of my neck, bends me over the desk and fucks me firmly. It’s sex, but it’s not for sex. It’s a hard cock in my cunt because he thinks I need it. Most men fuck because they want to sate their own lusts. Angelo fucks for control. He fucks like a master, stilling my mind and overwhelming my senses with the rough intensity of his lovemaking.

He leaves me dripping his seed and in a happy little well-fucked haze. I feel that dreamy feeling, a very similar one to the one I felt in my memory. The one where I didn’t have the scar.

I am fighting my own memory, which tries to close around my probing mind and envelop it in sensual mush. Angelo and my mind are in league to stop me from thinking certain things and feeling certain ways.

“What is it, Riley?” He grips me by the chin and angles my eyes up to his. He knows something is going on in my mind and he is going to insist on dragging it out of me.

“What… why… why me? Of all the people you could have taken.”

He smiles. “You intrigued me. There was something in your gaze. Something that called to me. Some people get into law enforcement to catch the bad guys. Others get into law enforcement because they want to be closer to evil.”

That statement hits me right in the gut. My fascination with Angelo and his lover was always just as personal as it was professional. I was obsessed with him. Them. I laid in bed at night and I thought about them, reviewed old cases, listened to interviews with witnesses and previous captives who had survived them. I had become so immersed in all things Vitali that when he took me, it was barely a hardship to sink into his world.

“I didn’t capture you, Riley,” he purrs. “I brought you home.”

I feel tears pricking at my eyes as a sense of belonging and yes, love, washes over me. Angelo chose me because he saw me. He recognized me as one of his. For a very long time, I thought I was a lone wolf. But I was never a lone wolf. I was just a bitch without a pack.

“I don’t know what you’re fighting now,” he says. “But whatever it is, we will be standing at the end of it. I have no intention of letting you go, because I know exactly where you belong. Here.”

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