Page 8 of Until You Break
I left them with the view and the drinks and the mess of their mouths. Their eyes followed, a quiet that clung like smoke, the kind that told you they all wanted to see what I would do next.
The house took me back in a series of familiar thresholds. Glass, shadow, cool hall, the old portrait that refused to age, the long stair that dragged you down if you let it.
The air changed as I descended, warmer at first, then iron. The scent of old water. The tang of rust. The honest press of stone. A drip echoed somewhere unseen, steady as a clock without hands. Heat from the lamps pressed low, mixing with the chill of stone, making the air taste metallic. It smelled like patience, confinement already waiting to be filled.
I didn’t rush. The clipped rhythm of each step kept the tension sharp, not slow.
Anticipation is a tool. Waste it and you walk in smaller.
My steps didn’t echo. They landed.
Steady enough to pace another man’s heartbeat.
He’d be awake by now. Or pretending not to be. Or pacing the length of the cell to learn the edges of his trap. Emilio Valenti, son of Riccardo, had once stood in a room and recognized the shape of power without touching it. He’d do the same in a cage.
Good.
I preferred prey that map the maze.
I passed the corridor where we kept the old tools. The door was shut. The camera light stared. I caught myself wanting to turn the feed on my phone and refused.
Presence was the point.
Mama had given me a man.
It was insane.
And exactly right.
A gift. A weapon. A test. Each possibility tightening the leash around him. I didn’t know which yet. Marcella wantedhim displayed like a relic, a trophy dragged from someone else’s fire. I wanted him hidden, caged, mine before anyone else remembered he had a name. The family would see leverage. I saw the one thing that had ever made me pause. Different currencies. Same war.
Even if I hadn’t said what I wanted, she recognized the violence of my attention. She always has.
A memory scratched at my mind. The casino opening, Riccardo parading his win like a crown. Emilio behind him, sketchbook in hand, drawing while the wheel spun and the crowd roared. He hadn’t seen me. Not really. But I had seen him, steady and unflinching, silence louder than the gamblers. That refusal to flinch had hooked me long before I had the right to touch him.
He’d felt me look back and hadn’t dropped his gaze.
Good.
Don’t, little ghost. Learn me.
The last door waited. The keypad blinked a slow, red pulse. I watched it cycle once, twice, like a heartbeat.
I set my palm to the plate, felt the polite shock of authentication up my skin, and listened to the bolts draw back.
The corridor beyond was clean, bright, honest about what it was. Cameras in the corners. Temperature steady. The low hum of a place that was always listening.
My shoes touched the first step down.
The light thinned. The air grew heavier, as if the stone had been told to keep secrets. I let my fingertips trail the wall. Smooth, cold, measuring the space that would hold him. Somewhere below, a strip lamp buzzed faintly, steady, inescapable. The iron taste thickened at the back of my throat, familiar as ritual.
First, I’d take his choices. Strip them one by one, not with force but with patience, until he understood every path he thought he had already belonged to me.
Then I’d take his voice. Not with shouting or blows, but by making him speak only when I chose, until silence itself reminded him who set the terms.
The rest would follow.
I let the weight of each step carry me deeper.
