For the next two weeks, I bide my time. Watching Javi's every move. Seeking out a weak link in the chain.

I don't think there is one. He is regimental in the way he goes about his day. The times that he delivers my meals. The way he locks the door.

Every day is the same routine. He comes to the cage. He humiliates or punishes me with a variety of terror campaigns. Forcing me to spread my legs for him and play with myself. Sucking him off through the holes of the cage. Torturing my feet with his belt.

And then he feeds me through the cage too. Tossing me scraps like a dog before he leaves. He watches me. On camera and off. Of that, I have no doubt. Because there are cameras in here.

I spend my days writing and plotting my escape. It's the only thing I have to hold on to. Art has not come. Nobody has come. It was foolish of me to think that they would.

He checks in with me via text. Javi probably knows my speech patterns well by now. He could easily fool Art with his own replies.

Hope is abandoning me. I envision myself ten years from now, still locked inside this cage. But in this vision, I am nothing more than a skeleton. Because surely, Javi will tire of me by then. He will destroy what’s left of me, as he promised.

Every day, the light inside of me dims.

And when I am finally certain that it has extinguished forever, something happens. Something that changes everything.

Javi comes to retrieve me from the cage. There is no explanation. No apology. No words. He simply leads me back through the house, along the same corridor in which we came. This time, he makes me walk.

My feet are bare, and the floor is cold, and Javi is not dragging me along by the arm. It gives me time to take in my surroundings. It gives me the opportunity to notice things I never have before. That’s when I see them.

The trap doors in the floor.

I count three on the way back to the conservatory.

A renewed sense of determination blooms inside of me like Spring. When Javi turns to me, I wonder if he can see it. If I have given myself away.

“Tonight,” he says.

“What?”

“Tonight, I have something I want from you.”

I swallow and nod, playing the words on repeat in my mind. This is it. My chance.

Javi leads me into the bathroom and points to the tub.

“Wash up,” he demands.

I don’t want to.

I want him to leave so I can look for the door. But he doesn’t. He stands there, and I go about the process of bathing, hardly noticing him at all as my mind considers the possibilities. When my hair is washed, and my skin is clean, he tells me to get out.

I do.

And then he is gone.

Leaving me to my thoughts. To my plan.

I am unnaturally still while I wait for the sound of the lock to engage on the door outside. I know Javi will deliver my lunch soon, which means I only have a short window of time.

The moment the lock slides into place, I dart out of the bathroom and begin searching the floor frantically. My heart beats erratically in my chest, and my fingers prickle with anticipation. But after three complete passes of the conservatory, I still have not found a door.

My eyes burn with unshed tears, and I can’t accept it. I’m not willing to give up. I check every maladjusted tile. Beneath the columns of roses. The bookcases. And then, finally, the chairs.

I move them one by one. They are heavy and awkward, and I’m terrified that I’m making too much noise or that he could check the camera at any moment.

I have gone through them all. All but one.

The solitary chair that rests on a small area rug in the corner. It looks out of place there, and I have never noticed it before. But I notice it now.

My feet slap against the floor as I run towards it and yank the corner of the rug back.

I want to scream out my triumph. There is a trap door beneath.

The latch is secured with a small padlock, but the hinges are old and rusted. I glance up at the cameras, and for a split second, I am paralyzed. I never thought of what would come next. There are so many unknown variables with this plan. Javi could catch me. He could catch me, and this time, he would certainly kill me.

But I realize that it doesn’t matter. I have no choice. I need to take this opportunity while I can.

My fingers scan the bookshelves for a hardcover. The hardest cover I can find. And though it is totally sacrilege, I use this as my tool of choice, striking the blunt edge against the lock.

On the third time, I have success.

I yank open the door and stare into the blackness, uncertain what waits for me below. It is dark and musty and old. I can’t bring myself to move. I can’t breathe. Fear threatens to steal my joy and keep me locked in place.

What if it’s worse? What if I get lost, or…

I stop myself.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing can be worse than what he’s already done. I can only focus on one word right now.

Freedom.

I lower myself into the hole and shut the lid over me, obscuring myself in the blackness. The space is too small, too cramped, and it smells damp like the earth... and something more sinister that I can't identify. My hand moves along the passageway, guiding me.

I come to several crossroads throughout the path and use my best guess to find my direction. I don't know exactly which part of the house the conservatory is in. But if my sense of direction is correct, I believe it is in the East Wing which means I need to move west.

I move through the darkness for what feels like an eternity. It's taking too long. Javi will have discovered my empty room by now. He will be furious. And he will be looking for me.

The close confines are getting to me. I'm running now. Breathing too shallow. I trip and land on something hard and sharp. My knees burn, and the threat of tears is real, but when I look up, there is a tiny sliver of light peeking through another doorway.

I have no idea where I am beneath the house. It could be anywhere. It could be Javi's bedroom for all I know. But at this point, I have no choice but to chance it. I will get out of the house much faster than I will this passageway in the dark.

I push up on the door and meet no resistance. There is a small step ladder leaning against the wall, and I use it to climb up into the room. A room that looks like something straight out of a horror movie.

It is all tile. The color of light sea foam. It is cold and sterile, and in the center of the room is a surgical table with straps.

Straps stained with blood.

A wave of dizziness threatens to topple me over. Instinct tells me that this is the room. This is where it happened.

There is a drain in the floor beneath the table. A drain that is also stained with crimson.

I lock my knees, so they don’t give out on me. I count to three and try to push through the nausea roiling around my stomach. My eyes move over the space, taking it all in.

The workbench on the opposite wall is filled with vials of different colored liquids. Morbid curiosity drives me to examine them. They are sedatives. Children's cough syrups. And in the pill bottles, prescriptions for Zara Castillo.

My legs feel like jelly as I continue my investigation. There are surgical tools scattered everywhere. Scalpels, forceps, scissors. Alcohol wipes and bandages.

I need to leave this room. I need to run away and forget whatever horrors happened here. But I am overwhelmed with questions.

Why did Javi kill his mother? Was he bad from the start? I have an insatiable need to know more. To understand him.

I can’t explain it.

And I know that I am risking my only chance at freedom. But I also know I can’t leave here without answers to these questions. I need to know what really happened to Zara. What horrors might await me if I don't escape.

On the wall, there is a projector. And beneath it, reels and reels of old tapes. It is a foolish thing for me to wonder what is on them. It is a foolish thing of me not to run as fast and far as I can.

I try to talk myself into leaving. But my eye is on the reel already in the projector. Just this one. I will see what’s on this one tape, and then I will go.

I reach down and turn it on. It is old, but with a sputter, it comes to life, projecting the video onto the opposite wall. At first, what I see does not look like the horror movie I had imagined.

It is a woman. A woman that I recognize from the media headlines as Zara. And in her arms, a young boy. He must have only been eight or nine here. She is cradling him in her arms, singing to him. Encouraging him to drink the liquid while she hums a soothing melody.

He protests, but in the end, she wins by forcing the cup to his lips. After a time, he grows sleepy. When his body is limp, she moves him to the table and straps him down, kissing his hair and smoothing it away from his face.

"I'm going to remove the implants," she whispers. "I'm going to get them all this time, Javi. I won't let them control us."

On the screen, Zara retrieves a tray of surgical tools, and I swallow.

She sets them beside the table and lifts Javi's shirt. His body is so little here. The body of a child. And already, it is riddled with scars. Old and new. Deep and shallow. It is obvious that whatever this practice is between them, it has been happening already for some time.

As the film goes on, it becomes apparent that Zara was living in another dimension altogether. She proceeds to document her findings in a series of unintelligible words and gestures. Sometimes walking directly to the camera to speak, or alternately scribbling into a notepad.

A notepad already covered in black ink.

When she is done, she rattles off some information about Javi. His age and gender and a few other clinical details that seem to separate her from the reality of the situation, at least briefly. She sobs over him and then hits herself in the head, yanking on her own hair. Crying out that she doesn't want to do this. That she doesn't understand how they keep implanting him.

She berates herself for failing to protect him yet again. Then she whispers that they are listening. She must get the device out now. Her personality does another one-eighty when she reaches for a scalpel.

With the precision of a surgeon, the barbaric practice begins. She carves into Javi's arm, digging around in the flesh. When she does not find what she's looking for, her search continues on his leg. His abdomen. His chest.

And I can watch it no longer. I lunge for the machine and fumble with the buttons. On the screen, Javi is waking up. Crying. Bloody. Helpless. Pleading with his mother to stop.

I feel like I'm going to vomit.

And finally... finally... I find the power switch. The machine and the horrifying visions on the wall come to an abrupt end.

I'm still shaking when the door swings open, and I am faced with the adult version of the monster she created. His rage is a force of nature this time. Unstoppable.

Before he even comes for me, I know that I have crossed a line. This is a space I was never meant to see.

I am incapable of words when he stalks towards me and backs me into the corner. It is of little use to close my eyes. The monster is still there. He will always be there.

Javi grabs me by the throat and breathes into my face.

“If you wanted some pain, my Bella, all you had to do was say so.”

His words are taken as they are meant to be. They terrify me.

I plead with him as he hoists me up over his shoulder and pins me down onto the same table he was tortured on. I apologize. I cry. I beg him and kick him and scream as he tightens the bloody straps around me and shoves my face down onto the cold steel.

He reaches for one of the tools on the tray beside us.

“Please, Javi. Please.”

“Please what, beauty? Please remind you who you belong to?”

“No,” I beg through my tears.

It doesn’t matter. I know it doesn’t matter. He tears open an alcohol swab and wipes the cold over my forearm.

I am afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. But still, I plead with him.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. Please, Javi. Please just let me go."

My words are swallowed back down my throat when the metal tip of a scalpel digs into my arm. The weight of his massive frame crushes me into the table. I can’t move, but even if I could, I think I might be paralyzed.

The only sound in the room is his ragged breath. The knife slices into me again and I stop breathing altogether.

It burns.

But there isn’t time to focus on the pain because it comes from a different direction each time he carves into my flesh. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how deep the wounds are. But I can feel the blood dripping down onto the table. I can feel his excitement against me. His want and his need.

And my mind blocks it all out somehow.

The pain. The terror.

And when he is done, the only thing left are the endorphins flooding my system.

He dips his fingers into the blood and smears it over my cheek when he grabs my face and forces me to look.

"Mine," he snarls.

And that’s exactly what his bloody artwork on my arm says.

He kisses me again. Brutal and demanding. I'm still trying to fight. Still confused. But the adrenaline surging through me is tainted by something else.

Something feral and toxic.

Javi tastes me like he owns me. Drinking from my lips and rolling his hips into me. He's feverish. Ravenous. And so drunk on me I am completely at his mercy.

He leaves my lips only to bury his face in my hair and inhale me. Whispering his secrets in Spanish. Touching me reverently in one moment and violently in the next. He licks the length of my jaw and bites down on my ear, sending a shock of pain and heat through my body. I buck against him and cry out, and he repeats the sentiment on my throat.

"Mine," he growls.

I don't know who he's trying to convince.

His hands are a hurricane, laying claim to the landscape of my body. My breasts, my back, my hips. He worships them all with his fingertips.

Warmth gathers in my belly and spreads down between my thighs. I can't help thinking of a similar scene. A scene that I wrote in my own journal. A journal he has read thoroughly.

His lips hover at the base of my neck, chest heaving. His fingers drag down my spine, and he follows. My cheeks are hot. Everything is hot. And he is too heavy. I don't know how to feel right now. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore.

The only thing I know is that when he assaults me with his mouth, I cry out for him. I encourage this fucked up need inside of me. Javi likes it. He likes it so much he tears the straps away and spreads my legs apart and shoves his face between them.

He licks me until I am raw. Until I feel like I'm going to explode. Until I hate him for doing this to me. I can't find the words to tell him so. Because he's possessed me. And I fear the only way to get him out now is to find an exorcist.

He unzips himself.

I plead with him to stop. To keep going. To put me out of my misery. It goes unanswered.

That's when I feel him against me. Scorching hot and rock solid. He rests his cock between the cheeks of my ass and grinds against me. Squeezing my flesh around him as he rocks back and forth.

I whimper, and he leans forward to suck the space behind my ear. His palm comes around the flesh of my throat, a reminder of his control. With a simple squeeze, he could end me.

I should be terrified. I think I might be. But there is another part of me- the part of me that wrote this scenario in my journal- that is unable to separate the reality from the fantasy.

He isn't supposed to know these things about me. These thoughts were private, and they were never meant to be real. He is violating me in the worst possible way. Infiltrating my mind and creating a reality of the depravities that live there. He is punishing me for exposing his own vulnerabilities. For seeing things that I was never meant to see.

"Javi," I plead.

He growls and unties my hand. The hand that is coated in my own blood. It is this hand he chooses to wrap my fingers around his cock. He is so large I can barely grasp him. So hot, it feels like he is branding my palm.

"Please," I murmur.

All the while my hand continues to stroke him. I'm tattered and torn. He is groaning above me. So deep. So masculine. So wild and untamed and desperate for my touch.

It's too much for him to handle. It's too much for me to handle. I'm ashamed and confused and turned on when I shouldn't be.

"Javi."

I keep saying his name. Over and over.

He yanks my hand away and forces both of them behind my back, pinning them beneath his wrist. His other hand comes up to capture a handful of my hair, wrenching my head back.

He is captive to his depravity now. Fucking the soft flesh of my ass without ever pushing inside of me. I can't see his face. I can only hear his sounds. Feel him against me. And still, it is the most intimate thing I've ever experienced.

"Javi."

He's moving harder. Faster. Rougher. I can barely breathe. My wrists are bruised already. Every part of my body is sore. But needy too.

I need something from him. Something I am afraid to admit.

Right now, he is only taking. Using my body to get himself off. And he is close. So close. I can feel it in the way his muscles tense.

When the tension finally snaps, he releases himself over my back with a long, tormented sigh. And then he rubs the come into my skin, spreading it over me in another show of ownership.

"Javi."

I'm pleading again. I want to tell him to leave. I want to beg him to stay. I want to see his face. I want to hide. His come soaked fingers move down between my thighs and over my sensitive flesh. My breath halts.

He smears my arousal with the blood on his fingers. And then he slips them inside of me. Feeling me from the inside.

He moves in and out of me slowly. Stroking the cheek of my ass and squeezing with his other palm. His breathing has calmed, and mine has not.

I'm squirming beneath him, my face buried against the steel table to muffle the sounds that escape me. My hedonistic desires are reflected in the noises that rip from my lungs.

I don't want him to hear.

I contract around him, and he grunts in satisfaction. I want to fight it. I want to prove a point. That he can't do this. He can't just take from me and do whatever he wants.

I also want to give in. I want to be completely at his mercy. Like my stories. Like my darkest fantasies.

In the end, it doesn't matter what I want. My body is a slave to its own cravings. And eventually, I come around him, just as he had intended.

It's embarrassingly wet.

Javi does not apologize. I don’t expect him to. But I am not prepared for more of his cruelty either. He jerks me to my feet without warning and opens the trap door again.

“You want to play games, little Bella?”

“No.”

My eyes are blurry, and my legs are still weak from the orgasm that just ripped through me. I can barely stand. I can barely breathe. But beneath Javi’s release, his war still rages on. There is no escape for me.

He hoists me up again and drops me back into the hole that I came in from. And then he kneels down and pats me on the head.

“Run, run as fast as you can, beauty,” he says. “Don’t let me catch you.”