Gaze locked, our stare is strong enough to bend the partition that separates us. Instead of pushing back, one side of his mouth twitches into a smirk before settling into the hard line of the other side. His eyes both soften and harden, and I know I’ve been heard and understood.
“Because I’m not stupid,” he says. “I knew you’d run back here as soon as you could.”
“And here we are. Save yourself. Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you.” He lowers his arms and backs up. “There’s a place all the good ones go, and there’s a place the bad ones go. Which do you want me to tell you about first?”
I swallow hard. “The good ones.”
“Of course you do.” He gets close to the glass again, fogging it. “The ones with the sweet cunts go to a land with chocolate mountains and cotton candy clouds.”
“Dario, really. Please.”
“The bad ones go someplace so hot, their knees sizzle when they suck cock.”
“I hate you.” I can barely get the lie out.
“I own you. You’re my property. I don’t tell my fucking couch my business. If I own a gun, I shoot it. It doesn’t ask why. That’s not its job, and it’s not yours. Your job is to stay still when I hurt you. It’s to believe me when I tell you I love you, and to give me those big sad eyes when you realize I never did and never will.”
His wit had never been pointed my way. Knowing it’s all an act makes being on the receiving end no less painful. The hum of the lights and ventilation seems to get louder as we stand there without a word between us.
“You look so hurt, Sarah. Not like the first time I punished you. No. You had this defiant fire in your eyes then. Now, you look weak and broken. Like the first time I fucked your ass… right before you started crying. Do you want to know how I felt?”
“No.”
“Disgusted. With your boo-hooing and begging. I almost couldn’t come in your ass, you made me so sick.”
His voice is cold and scornful—arrows shooting through the glass, piercing my heart with his contempt. I need him. I need to be his prima. But in a few sentences, he’s sliced my skin and pulled it aside, leaving me flayed and raw. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t mean it. He may as well, for the damage it’s doing.
My cheeks are wet. That’s when I realize I’m crying. I wipe my nose on my sleeve.
“Jesus Christ. You’re pathetic. Stand up for yourself.”
Maybe he’s playacting at being the worst man to ever speak to a woman. That doesn’t make him wrong. I sniff and stand up straight. I don’t know how much longer I can maintain this.
His jaw juts forward and his hands ball into white-knuckled fists as his chest rises and falls rapidly. This stance isn’t new. This is how he looks when someone hurts me and he wants to kill them.
I clear my throat, then take a deep breath.
That red dot. A single eye makes this anger necessary.
“You…” I tap my finger on the glass. It will look as if I’m pointing at him, but it’s a shape over twelve keys. His number, reversed like a mirror so that he can see it.
“You’re an evil man.” I tap the number again.
He watches it, then me.
“An animal. But you’re my husband, and you showed me the shape of numbers.” Will he get it? “Tell me.” Again, I dial him. I don’t even know if he saw the blood-colored embroidery inside the hem, but he has to get this for when he does. “We’ll find out anyway. But if you tell me, I can petition for mercy.”
His eyes scan what they can see of me in the dim light. The camera’s on the ceiling behind him. They can see my face but not his, so I take my finger from the glass and harden my lips into a line.
“Sit down.” He instructs me calmly—as if it’s a normal day.
“Why?”
“Put your back to the glass. I won’t tell you again.”
When he speaks like this, his skin is clear and his body is powerful with steely bone and rippling muscle. He stands ten feet tall. The missing tops of his ears aren’t a sign of frailty, but a reminder of what he’s survived. This prison would melt away if he’d will it out of existence, but instead he wills my body to turn and sit with my back to the glass.
“Dario.” I sit and start to look over my shoulder, but he stops me.
“Face forward and put your knees up.”
“Why?”
“Because that dress is suffocating your cunt. Pull the skirt up and air it out.” His voice is right behind me, as if he’s sitting too.
He’s blocking the camera with his back.
I pull the skirt over my knees.
“Do what I tell you.” He sounds distracted. “Say you understand.”
“I understand.” I wish I knew what he was doing. The temptation to turn around is overwhelming.
“Your Colonia underwear is little girl cotton. Right?” There’s a humming undercurrent to his words, but it’s not as saturated in every tone and syllable. He’s not paying full attention.
I look around. His shoulders are bare, and his head is bent down.
“Yes. What are you—?” I figure it out before I finish the question and turn back around. He’s looking at the shapes I embroidered inside his pocket hem. “Yes. Basic cotton. Black though, because I’m in mourning for my father… who you killed.”
The arrow stitch starts the sequence. Every line goes to an invisible number, which can be one of three letters on the phone keypad, and picks up a fabric thread where it angles off to another invisible number and three-letter set, where it picks up the thread until the French knot ends the word.
What was I thinking? It’s too complicated.
No wonder he’s distracted. He not only has to figure out all that, but then he also has to choose between three letters to make a word without even pen and paper. What if he picks the wrong letter and it means something completely different?
“When I take you out of here, you’ll burn it and wear what I give you. Something fit for a whore.”
We’re not truly alone. I don’t know how much of what we say can be heard, but anything could be too much. The charade of Colonia loyalty I’ve developed could slip. I can’t let that happen even if Dario believes I’ve turned on him.
“I won’t go with you,” I say for the microphones.
“You’re my wife and you’ll do what I tell you.”
Despite his distraction, I’m suddenly back to how we were in those first days, when my obedience was balanced on the razor-thin edge of marriage vows.
“You’re going to tell me to touch myself.”
“See, you’re still a good girl.”
“Tell me where they are.”
“Get one finger under that shitty cotton.”
I push my shame so deep I can’t feel it and slide one finger under my panties.
“Tell me,” I demand.
“You’re wet.”
It’s too simple a phrase for him and uttered in distraction. He needs me to pick up the slack while he decodes my message.
“I’m very wet. My cunt is very slippery.”
“You sound like you just learned English.”