Page 7 of Ruined

I look at the room I am in with new eyes. Nothing new leaps out at me. It is too sparsely appointed. It may as well be a sensory deprivation chamber.

Angelo places the tray on the bed next to me and pulls at one end of the rope that my shackles are attached to. The entire binding falls immediately and harmlessly away. I’ve seen knots like that before, usually used to tie up horses, so if they pull back or get into trouble, they can be released quickly.

He chuckles softly as he sees the look on my face as I realize I laid here all night without trying to escape.

“Interesting, isn’t it,” he purrs in that Sicilian accent that makes me melt and shiver at the same time, alluring and terrifying all at once. “Fascinating what actually binds us to places and people.”

His philosophical interpretation of my fucking stupidity does not take the edge off the swell of regret inside me. Why didn’t I try to get out of my ties? Why did I just assume he had bound me so effectively I couldn’t get out if I’d wanted to?

“Don’t look so sad, if you had escaped, and by escaped, I mean, pulled off the ropes and walked out the unlocked door, you would have found Bobby waiting for you. I do believe the dear boy is jealous.”

“And what would he be jealous of?”

“I can only imagine. But I am sure he would avenge them quite thoroughly,” Angelo says, artfully refusing to fill in the blank, leaving it to my imagination to create horrors he doesn’t deign to describe.

“Eat,” he says. “And drink. And use the bathroom, through that door.” He gestures to a door across the hall. “I will be back for you soon.”

I do what he tells me. I eat. I drink. I relieve myself. And I wonder who the hell I am, and even more, what the hell I am becoming.

* * *

Angelo comes for me, just as he said he would, not twenty minutes later. I am no more ready for him now than I was before, but at least I am hydrated and my stomach is not growling. Small mercies.

“Come with me,” he says, leading me through the interior of his home. Angelo is known to establish very luxurious bases. Like most filthy rich people with multiple streams of untraceable income, he likes to be comfortable.

He takes me upstairs through a domicile that is spared the usual accoutrements of the rich and powerful. I’ve busted a lot of criminal rich guys. Usually you can’t move for weird fucking statues that all feel slightly haunted, art that isn’t really that good and yet is worth millions anyway. There’s something about wealth that really ruins houses, turns them from cozy little retreats into big, echoing warehouses of depravity and bad taste.

This is different. This is a clean and open blank slate onto which a captive might project her greatest insecurities and hopes.

I can feel I am being watched. Somewhere in this house, Bobby has his eyes on me. It’s intimidating, and it makes me scoot closer to Angelo, even though he is the true monster in this situation.

Our destination is a larger bathroom on the second floor. It’s Angelo’s personal bathroom. I know that the second we walk into it, because it smells like him.

Angelo pulls me in front of him and propels me in front of a very large sink and vanity combo with a very large mirror. I feel very small, both in this room, and in his grasp.

“Riley the federal agent died yesterday,” Angelo reminds me. “Riley the thing I own was born the very same minute of that very same hour. Let’s bring that creature out a little more, shall we?”

I nod, unsure of what to say. He has described me as everything other than what I am, and my mind rebels against it. Words come out, an unbidden statement of existence. He’s trying to cover me up, and take me apart, but he can’t change what’s at the core of me.

“I’m a person. A woman. I’m…”

Angelo’s smile is indulgent. “Of course you’re a person. What else would you be? A sleeping little demon waiting to wake up? Come. Sit.”

It is very wrong that those words make me flush with warmth, as my brain reacts to his words of affirmation with relief and excitement.

If this were a hair salon, I’d be looking at myself in a mirror, but it’s not. It’s a well-appointed bathroom owned by an international master criminal, and I have been positioned away from the big mirror that reflects cool cobalt tile in its gilt-edged glory. I cannot see what he is doing to me.

I am seated on a chair that is padded enough to keep the cane lines from causing fresh agony. I am exhausted. I did not sleep well. The ongoing possibility of being in the last hours of my life kept me alert.

Angelo’s fingers run through my hair. I hear the unmistakeable sound of a pair of scissors, and then the weight I hadn’t even noticed until this very moment suddenly becomes noticeable by its absence. I feel my hair fall to the floor, cut close to my head.

I should be horrified. Hair is a woman’s glory, so my sexist relatives have always told me. But I know there are worse things to lose than hair. And I know Angelo will take more than mere hair. This is a prelude to a much deeper cut.

Angelo works swiftly and what feels like competently, running my hair between his fingers in the same way real, non-murderous hairdressers do. The scissors snip and cut, and I am transformed.

“Up,” he says, his hands on my shoulders as he guides me from the chair all the way to that big mirror.

When I look in the mirror, I see a face I recognize, and yet don’t. Short hair doesn’t make a feminine woman look masculine, but it does make a masculine woman look more masculine. I’ve always had a hard jawline, inherited it from my father. I don’t look like a man. But he has made me look more like a boy.

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