Page 19 of Psychotic Faith
His wife filed for divorce two weeks later. He didn't contest it.
That night, I wrote in my journal: "I am not my mother. I am not a victim."
But underneath, in smaller letters, I wrote the truth: "It felt good."
The memory fades, leaving me gasping on my apartment floor. That girl—the one who paralyzed a grown man and threatened him while he couldn't move—she's always been here. Hidden under cardigans and library cards and Sunday school smiles.
And somehow Luca Rosetti saw her. Recognized her in the careful way I dodge questions, in the pharmaceutical galas I attend, in something invisible to everyone else but clear as blood to him.
"Nine bodies," his admission echoes in my mind as I struggle to my feet. Nine men dead because they looked at me wrong.
The sixteen-year-old girl who drugged Simon Putney whispers:Only nine?
Heat swamps me, my thighs clenching at the memory of his body pressing me against that door. The phantom pressure of his thigh between my legs makes me gasp, catching myself against the wall.
I need a shower. Need to wash off this feeling, this wrongness that makes me wet instead of horrified. But I know the truth now—it's not wrongness I'm trying to wash away.
It's recognition.
Because Luca Rosetti isn't corrupting me. He's just the first person to see what was already there.
My hands shake as I turn on the water, cranking it to scalding. But even under the spray, even scrubbing my skin pink, I can't wash away the memory of those icy eyes. Can't stop feeling where his breath touched my neck.
The shower does nothing. I'm still trembling when I step out, still feeling him everywhere. My apartment feels different now, charged with the knowledge that he's watching. That he's always been watching.
I try to dress, but clothes feel wrong against my sensitized skin. The cotton nightgown I reach for reminds me of what I wore for him, knowing he watched. Everything reminds me of him. My skin feels too tight, every nerve ending alive.
I collapse onto my bed wrapped only in my towel, water dripping from my hair onto the sheets. This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong. He's a killer, a Rosetti, everything my father warned me about. The kind of man who destroys people for sport.
But my fingers are already sliding down my stomach, chasing the memory of heat.
"No," I whisper to the empty room. "This isn't who I am."
Except my body doesn't care about shoulds and shouldn'ts. My fingers find the space between my thighs, and a broken sound escapes my throat. I'm so wet it shocks me, have been since he pressed his thigh between my legs and made me grind against him like an animal in heat.
The memory of being trapped against that door floods through me. His voice, rough as broken glass: "Little faith." The way he said it, like he owned every syllable. Like he owned me.
My fingers find that sensitive spot, and I hate myself for my touch. The sheets beneath me are rough against oversensitive skin. I imagine his hands instead of mine, those fingersthat develop photographs with such precision doing terrible, wonderful things to me.
"Luca," I gasp, his name spilling from my lips as I slide two fingers inside myself.
The confession makes everything worse, makes it real. I'm touching myself to thoughts of a man who kills for me. Who watches me sleep. Who knows exactly how aching I am for him right now because he's probably watching through his cameras.
That thought, him watching this, seeing me fall apart with his name on my lips, pushes me over the edge. Everything shatters, pleasure so intense it feels like breaking apart. My back arches off the bed, a cry torn from my throat.
Then the tears come. Hot, angry tears that mix with the water still dripping from my hair. What kind of person comes thinking about a killer? What kind of woman gets aroused remembering being hunted through hallways?
Me, apparently. This is who I am now.
Midnight comes and goes. Sleep is impossible.
At 2 a.m., my laptop screen glows too bright in the darkness, but I can't stop searching. "Luca Rosetti Chicago" yields almost nothing. Some society photos where he's a blur in the background. Mentions in crime reports that never quite name him. Shadows and rumors, nothing solid.
"The Rosetti psycho," one forum calls him. "The middle brother who handles the family's wet work." That phrase again. Wet work. Such a clean term for something so bloody.
The Rosetti name appears in federal cases, always as "persons of interest," never convicted. They own judges, they own cops. They own Chicago.
I dig deeper, following digital breadcrumbs through message boards and news archives. "If Luca Rosetti knows your name, you're already dead," someone posted three years ago. The responses range from skepticism to terror.
