Page 81 of His Captive

“I don’t care for stories. If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with,” I bluff, staring back at him defiantly.

He shakes his head back at me.

“Now, where would the fun in that be?” There’s enough chill in his voice, to choke me with panic.

“Make yourself comfortable. Pretty thing.” He touches his hand to my face, and strokes my cheek gently, while the knife in his other hand skims over my throat.

“There was once a boy who had it all,” he starts. “His parents were rich. They owned the biggest house in a town that his father kept in his pocket. The boy’s whole life was planned out perfectly for him. The money, the power, even the beautiful girl he would marry and share it all with.” Sorrento wears a narrator’s smile.

“The girl’s parents were rich too. Her father planned on becoming senator and the families joined together would be an unstoppable force. It had been planned out since kindergarten that she would be his.”

“The boy wanted to make the girl happy, and when the time came he was prepared to love her as a husband loved a wife.

But, it wasn’t enough…” Sorrento shakes his head. “Because the girl was in love with someone else.” He leans in and whispers, his fist shaking as he clenches it. The handle of the steel blade still in his hand, and pressing tighter into my skin.

“All because a worthless, penniless, scroat showed up one day out of the fucking gutter and stole the girl’s heart.”

“The boy saw the way she would look at the imposter, like he held the whole world inside his grubby little palm, and they became inseparable. The boy endured years of watching her sneak away from parties so she could meet her friend in the woods. He was turned down by her constantly so she could go fishing with her best friend. The scroat took and took and took, and the boy always accepted it, because he knew the girl would be his in the end.”

I can feel his anger building, I don’t have to think very hard to figure out that the imposter he speaks about is Ethan.

“On the girl’s eighteenth birthday the boy asked her to marry him. And she accepted. He saw the lack of love in her eyes. How the happiness and excitement a girl who’d just been gifted the perfect life should have shown was missing from her smile.”

“Six months later they were married. In front of the whole town, and right under the nose of the nobody who was stupid enough to think that he could take her from the person she belonged to. Finally, the girl was his,” Sorrento finishes, his eyes focusing on the blade in his hand.

“Sounds like a happy ending to me,” I point out with a quiver in my voice.

“The story’s not over.” He whips his head up, and his eyes are so frenzied that I see my own, worried, reflection inside them.

“That night, he took his bride home. His parents had given them the perfect wedding gift. The family home. The biggest most beautiful house in town. Somewhere they could begin to raise a family of their own. A man now, he was ready to give the girl everything she had ever dreamed of, but that night while he made love to her. She refused to look him in the eye. He watched her tears fall on to the pillow, and the hate in his heart began to drown out the love.

He knew why she was sad. Who she was pining for, and that it was him who she wept for every fucking night after.”

Sorrento’s story is sad. A girl forced to marry a man she didn’t love. And a man who so desperately wanted to be the man she did. There is no winner.

“He’d tried, but she refused to play along. Her behavior was what forced him to mistreat her, to inflict the misery on her that she caused him every time she thought about someone else.

He learned to live with it. Found a way to channel his anger. But, the scroat came back, and when he did he ruined her. Then, as if that wasn't enough, he took away my father’s legacy. He took my fucking town, and he made a fool of me.”

Sorrento seems to weaken towards the end of his story, and I hope it can be worked to my advantage in some way.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say as genuinely as I can manage. The likelihood that he will kill me as soon as his emotions get back in check hang in the silver blade pressed against my throat.

“Ethan took from me, and I’ve been plotting to take from him ever since. But, what can you take from a man who feels nothing?” he asks.

“The butterfly... It was hers, wasn’t it?” I whisper, trying to piece everything together in my head. Sorrento places his finger over my mouth to hush me.

“I had to make Ethan desire something before I could take it away again, and you played your part spectacularly, Lysetta.”

I feel myself gag. What part? What could all this possibly have to do with me?

“Why would you do this to me? What did I ever do to you?” I ask him.

At first, Sorrento looks confused, then his mouth sets into a smile that could only have been conjured by the devil himself.

“My God. You don’t know.” He shakes his head in disbelief, a laugh spewing out of his lips.

“No, I don’t know anything,” I shout, starting to get really pissed off at being the one that never knows what’s going on.

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