Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
“You’ve been a fool and you’re suffering unnecessarily. I’m done tolerating it. Kneel. Now.”
She acquiesced more readily than I’d expected, though fatigue and hunger could do a lot to one’s resolve—I would know.
Her shoulders were slumped and her arms hung limply over her body in a half-hearted attempt to cover herself.
Her fatigue was too pronounced. Something wasn’t right.
“When was the last time you ate?” I asked, beginning to suspect the cause.
She stared blankly at the floor.
“When?” I demanded.
“Last…last night. At dinner. At home,” she replied quietly.
But that wasn’t right—her sense of time would have been distorted, so I had to extrapolate what that really meant. Dinner—at home. The last time she’d been home was the morning before her shift on the day she’d been taken. And dinner at home meant the night before that. And that meant when she’d stubbornly refused to submit when I’d come with food yesterday evening, she’d already gone forty-eight hours without food. And now, twelve hours later, the fool had gone somewhere around sixty hours without food.
I was very particular in the taking of any new girl. She was to be surveilled, and every aspect of the day leading up to the event recorded for me. Vito had reported that she’d eaten at the store where she worked just prior to her leaving work. If the girl was telling the truth though—which by her physical state, it suggested she was—it meant Vito had lied to me. No doubt, he’d lied to punish the girl for biting him. But I didn’t give a fuck what his god damned reason was. The son of a bitch had lied. To me. And I’d make sure he didn’t make that mistake twice.
For now, though, I had the problem in front of me to rectify. I turned off the shower and retrieved the cart from the other room, actually wheeling it right into the bathroom. The girl needed food, and I wasn’t going to risk her defying me further and having to withhold it.
With an air of nonchalance, I removed the lid from the tray and proceeded to cut up the food. I shoved a forkful in front of her lips, half-expecting to have to force it into her mouth. But her lips parted and she snatched the food off, chewing greedily. And too fast.
“Slowly,” I cautioned, and filled the fork again, though with half as much food this time.
She devoured the entire plate, though it took quite a bit of time since I started to insist she wait in between bits, in part to make her wait, and partly because a stomach that empty could turn quickly—another fact I knew all too well.
I left when she was done, fully expecting her next feeding to go smoothly after getting past this first battle.
But I’d expected too much. With her body no longer weak from starvation, the fire in her reignited. She was in her corner in the bathroom with the shower running again when I returned, but the moment I walked in, the stubborn light shined bright in her eyes.
I didn’t relish the idea of leaving her with no food—she really did need it after so much time without. But when she glared back at me when I told her to kneel, she left me with no choice. So, I held off on dinner as long as I could and wheeled the cart right into the bathroom—where I knew she would be.
“Kneel,” I said, letting my fingers hover over the belt around my waist.
She glared at me, but she also did what she was told—a fucking miracle, given the same stubborn light had flashed in her eyes. It seemed then, with the way she’d moved quickly after the threat of the belt, that she feared physical discipline more than starvation. And that meant a firm hand would be what this one needed.
And I was more than happy to accommodate that need.
4
Scarlett
I had no idea how many days passed.
There was no way for me to keep track—no clock, no window to see outside. Nothing. But what I did know with increasing certainty was I had winded up straight in hell.
The man who kept bringing me food, making me kneel like an animal at his feet and spanking my backside with a hard slap whenever I hesitated—he was the devil himself. He was cruel, and worst of all, the thing I hated most was that he left me alone in my prison with nothing but the god damned silence.
I couldn’t stand it. No sounds of cars in the distance or birds chirping outside. Not even footsteps or the low murmur of voices to suggest I was anything other than completely alone.
I’d debated provoking him over and over again, just to give him a reason to stay, a reason to talk. Hell, the sound of his breathing was better than the utter nothingness that surrounded me when he left.