Page 103 of The Wrong Man

Safe. What a joke. What a pathetic, delusional joke.

I’m not safe. I’m not healed. I’m a mess of trauma and terror held together by denial and desperate hope. One cold shower and the whole fragile construction comes crashing down.

A soft knock at the door makes me flinch.

I hold my breath, waiting. The door does not open. Dante does not come in. Instead, I hear the quiet clink of ceramic being set down, and then footsteps retreating down the hallway.

I wait until the footsteps fade completely before I move.

The door creaks when I open it, just a crack, just enough to see. The hallway is empty. On the floor outside the door sits a mug of tea, steam still rising from the surface. Next to it is a packet of biscuits. McVities dark chocolate digestives. The exact kind I mentioned liking once, forever ago, in a rambling tangent about comfort food.

He remembered. Of course he remembered. He always remembers.

I grab the tea and the biscuits and retreat back into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. My hands are still trembling as I wrap them around the warm mug.

The tea is perfect. Strong, with just a splash of milk, exactly how I like it. I take a sip and feel some of the tension in my chest begin to ease.

He is not coming in. He is giving me space. Part of me is relieved by that. The part that is still shaking, still caught in the echoes of the flashback, still seeing his face from the torture chamber instead of the man who bought me cookbooks and watched me bake.

But another part of me is sad. Desperately, pathetically sad. Because I want him here. I want his arms around me. I want to bury my face in his chest and let him tell me that everything is going to be alright, even if we both know it’s a lie.

I want comfort from the man who caused my trauma, and I don’t know what that says about me.

Nothing good, probably.

Especially since I did the whole, last-night-was-a-mistake and it’s not-me-it’s-you, routine at breakfast. I told him I had no regrets but it wasn’t happening again.

So why do I want him to come in here and hold me?

I sip my tea and try to sort through the tangled mess of my thoughts.

Last night. Last night was supposed to be part of the plan. The seduction plan. The escape plan. The cold, calculated strategy to make Dante fall for me so completely that he would let his guard down, make a mistake, give me an opening to run. Or even better, declare his undying love for me and let me go by choice.

It was supposed to be callous. Heartless. A means to an end.

But it didn’t feel like that. Not even close.

It felt like the most honest thing I have ever done. Like every touch and kiss came from somewhere real, somewhere deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed. When he looked at me, when he said my name, when he held me like I was something precious, I forgot all about plans and strategies and escape.

The truth is, I just wanted him. Pure and simple and terrifying.

I should be ashamed of myself. I should be disgusted by my willingness to sell myself, as well as my inability to keep my emotions separate from my survival tactics. I should be horrified that I have developed genuine feelings for the man who tortured me.

But I’m not. And I don’t know if that’s strength or madness or just another symptom of how fundamentally broken I have become.

Maybe it’s all three.

The tea is half gone now. I set it on the nightstand and pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders.

What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?

I’m sleeping with my kidnapper. I’m having breakfast in his kitchen and panic attacks in his bathroom. I’m falling for someone who makes people scream for a living, and I cannot even tell anymore if my feelings are real or just some twisted survival mechanism.

Stockholm syndrome. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? When captives develop emotional attachments to their captors. When fear and dependence get all tangled up with affection and desire until you cannot tell the difference anymore.

Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe my brain has simply decided that loving Dante is safer than fearing him, and has constructed an elaborate delusion to make that possible.

But it doesn’t feel like a delusion. It feels real. Realer than anything I have experienced in years. Realer than the bakery, realer than my old life, realer than the identity I built to hide from my family’s shadow.