Chapter 32: Stop
The black SUV’s interior smells of expensive leather. The privacy partition is up, sealing us away from whoever’s driving. Tinted windows turn the bright morning into twilight, casting everything in shadow except for Caterina’s face, which catches what little light filters through.
My zip-tied hands rest uselessly in my lap. The plastic cuts into my skin with every bump in the road, but that pain feels distant compared to the hollow ache spreading through my chest. Candice’s face flashes in my mind, her kind eyes, her warm smile, the way she looked when the bullet hit her, and I have to swallow back bile.
Caterina pulls me against her, arms wrapping around me in an embrace that feels like a straitjacket. Her fingers dig into my shoulder as she presses her cheek against mine. I can feel her trembling slightly, her breathing uneven. Is it rage? Relief? I can’t tell anymore.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you ended your life, baby,” she whispers, her breath hot against my ear. Her voice cracks with what sounds like genuine emotion. “Don’t you understand? You’re everything to me. Everything.”
The words hang between us, heavy with a terrible truth. She really would have broken if I’d pulled that trigger. The knowledge gives me no comfort, only confirms the sickness of what exists between us.
“I’m sorry,” I manage to say.
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her crimson eyes searching my face with desperate intensity. For a moment, she looks almost human, vulnerable, afraid, a woman terrified of losing the one thing she values most. Then something shifts, hardens, and she’s Caterina De Luca again, the woman who executed Candice Harper without hesitation.
Her arms tighten around me until it’s difficult to breathe, her manicured nails digging into my skin through the thin fabric of my borrowed t-shirt.
“Suffice to say, if you ever run away again, I’ll kill that family, okay?” Her voice is gentle, almost conversational like she’s discussing dinner plans instead of murder. “Not just the daughters. I’ll find every aunt, uncle, cousin. Every. Single. One.”
I nod mechanically, my eyes fixed on a point past her shoulder, unable to meet her gaze.
“Use your words, Adam,” she says, one hand moving to grip my chin, forcing me to look at her. Her thumb traces my lower lip with deceptive tenderness.
“I understand,” I say, the words bitter as ash on my tongue.
‘I’m trapped. Forever. My life is over. What do I even do now?’
The SUV glides through the streets of Salem, the familiar landmarks of the town blurring past the tinted windows. With each mile we travel, I feel myself sinking deeper into despair.
She watches me with an unsettling intensity, her crimson eyes never leaving my face as though she’s afraid I might somehow vanish if she looks away.
“Do you remember what I told you before?” Caterina asks suddenly, breaking the heavy silence that has settled between us. Her voice is deceptively soft, almost tender, but there’s an undercurrent of something dark and terrible beneath the surface. “What I said would happen if you ever tried to run away from me?”
My heart stutters in my chest, a frantic rhythm that seems to echo in the confined space of the vehicle.
“I... I don’t remember,” I whisper.
Something shifts in her expression, a subtle hardening that transforms her beauty into something terrible to behold. Her crimson eyes go cold.
“I said I would make you feel pain you didn’t even know was possible,” she says, each word precise and measured, delivered with the careful deliberation of someone selecting instruments for surgery. “Pain beyond your imagination, Adam. Pain that would rewrite your understanding of suffering.”
‘Fuck me, dude.’
Her fingers trace a path along my jaw, the touch so light it might be gentle if not for the threat behind it. I find myself trembling beneath her caress, unable to control the instinctive response of my body to the danger it senses.
“Are you still going to do that?” I ask, hating the way my voice breaks on the question, betraying the fear that courses through me like poison.
A smile curves her perfect lips, not reaching her eyes, which remain as cold and unforgiving as winter. “Do good owners not punish their pets when they act up?” she asks, her head tilting slightly as though genuinely curious about my answer.
Her words settle over me like a shroud, heavy and suffocating. The SUV’s interior seems to shrink around us, the leather seats no longer luxurious but confining, trapping me with this beautiful monster who holds my life between her manicured fingers.
“Please,” I whisper, the word escaping before I can stop it. “I won’t ever try to run again.”
Caterina’s expression softens for a fraction of a second, something almost like pain flickering in those crimson depths before hardening once more.
“I believed you the first time you said that. And yet, here we are.”
“Please, Cat,” I beg, beyond caring how pathetic I sound. “Please don’t hurt me.” A tear spills over, tracking a hot path down my cheek.
Her grip in my hair tightens, the pain sharp enough to make my eyes water. She draws my face closer to hers until I can feel her breath against my lips, warm and sweet despite the venom in her words.
“Don’t beg me,” she says quietly as her free hand comes up to wipe away the tear on my cheek. “It only makes this harder.”
Her arms encircle me, pulling me against her chest where I can hear her heartbeat, steady and strong, while mine races with terror.
“Please stop making me have to hurt you,” she mutters into my hair, her voice thick with what sounds almost like genuine anguish. “Why can’t you just love me the way I need you to? Why must you force my hand this way?”
The twisted logic of her statement leaves me speechless. As if I’m the one inflicting pain as if her actions are somehow my responsibility. It’s the same warped reasoning she’s used since the beginning, slowly eroding my sense of reality until I began to question my own perceptions.
*****
The penthouse elevator doors slide closed behind us, sealing away the outside world with a soft pneumatic hiss. I stare straight ahead, my bound wrists throbbing in time with my racing heart as Caterina guides me down the familiar hallway. The penthouse feels more like a funeral home tonight.
We stop before an unfamiliar door, one I’ve never noticed during my time here. It’s heavy, solid wood with a deadbolt lock that requires a key rather than the electronic keypads that secure the rest of the penthouse. The door swings open with a soft creak that raises the hair on the back of my neck.
My stomach drops as we step inside.
This isn’t a guest room. It’s something else entirely.
The space is clinically bright, illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights that leave no corner in shadow. An old medical table dominates the space, its metal frame stained with rust-colored spatters that no amount of cleaning could fully remove. Thick leather restraints hang from each corner, worn and darkened from frequent use. At the center of the table sits a hammer, plain and ordinary, the kind you’d find in any hardware store. Its everyday normality makes it somehow more terrifying.
And beside the table stands Doctor Ramirez.
The same woman who treated me when I first arrived in this world, who smiled professionally while explaining my “condition” to me. She’s arranging medical supplies on a steel tray with methodical precision, syringes, vials of clear liquid, gauze, and other instruments I don’t recognize and don’t want to understand.
A hospital bed sits against the far wall, pristine white sheets pulled tight across its surface. Monitoring equipment stands ready nearby, powered down but waiting.
A chill runs through me, so violent I nearly lose my balance. My legs threaten to give way beneath me as the full implications of this room crash over me like a wave.
“What’s the hammer for?” The question escapes my lips before I can stop it, my voice hardly more than a whisper.
Caterina’s hand slides up my back to rest at the nape of my neck, her touch deceptively gentle. “Use your imagination, Adam,” she replies, her breath warm against my ear.
Doctor Ramirez looks up from her preparations, her expression clinically detached as she surveys us. Her dark eyes land on me, taking in my disheveled appearance, my bound wrists, the terror I can’t hide.
Doctor Ramirez adjusts her glasses, the fluorescent lights reflecting off the lenses and momentarily obscuring her eyes. She wears her white lab coat, impeccably pressed, not a single wrinkle marring its clinical perfection.
“I’ve prepared everything as requested,” she says, her voice devoid of emotion as she gestures toward the medical table. “Though I should note that without proper anesthesia, the subject will experience extreme distress.”
Caterina’s fingers tighten at the nape of my neck, her nails digging into my skin just enough to let me know she could break the surface if she wanted to. “That’s the point, Doctor.”
My eyes dart around the room, desperate for any sign of mercy, any hint that this is just an elaborate scare tactic. But the clinical efficiency of the space, the ready instruments, the waiting restraints, they all speak to a terrible purpose that’s been planned with meticulous care.
Doctor Ramirez’s gaze drifts to me, studying my face with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a lab specimen. “You’re sure? You really don’t want him to have any anesthetic,” she states, not a question but a confirmation of something she already knows the answer to.
I wince, the word escaping my lips like a wounded animal’s cry. “Fuck.” The tears come slowly at first, then faster, hot tracks down my cheeks that I can’t wipe away with my bound hands. My body begins to tremble, a fine vibration that starts in my core and works its way outward until I’m visibly shaking.
Caterina watches my breakdown with an expression that might almost be mistaken for tenderness if not for the cold calculation in her crimson eyes. She reaches out to brush away a tear with her thumb, the gesture grotesquely gentle.
“He needs to learn his lesson properly,” she says, her voice soft but unyielding. “Pain creates lasting memories, Doctor. I want him to remember this every time he thinks about leaving me.”
“Alright, Boss.”