Glass Cage

by Francesca Baez

  I’ve barely regained control over my body when Javier dips his hand lower, his fingers finding my swollen clit. The first touch makes me jump, and it only takes a few more deft strokes before I’m cumming again, just as violently as the first time. I feel drained, wrung out, but my husband still makes me orgasm two more times before he gives in to his own release, digging his fingers into my hips and growling as his hot seed jets into me. When he finally releases me I collapse onto my stomach, and he rolls to his side next to me.

  It takes me a moment to recover, as I listen to Javier’s breathing even out beside me. I still feel him inside me, in the gentle throbbing between my legs, in the dampness dripping down my thighs. The aftermath is never pretty. I don’t have time for this. I have to go, and I can’t risk taking the time to work through my complex emotions first.

  I grab a tissue off the bedside table and wipe myself up, then climb back into a fresh pair of panties and jeans. I don’t stop to pack anything like I did the first time I ran. I just leave, padding across the carpet with my shoes in hand. My fingers are on the doorknob, turning it, opening the door.

  Opening the door.

  I can’t open the door.

  It’s not locked. No one is stopping me. I just… can’t.

  I can’t leave Javier. There’s something so heavy inside me it’s nearly physical, holding me here, chaining me to the man in the bed.

  I should go. He could wake up any moment.

  I can’t. Fucking. Go.

  My breath comes fast and heavy as panic overtakes me. I have to leave. Staying here, staying with him, means certain death. Death of spirit, death of will, and probably literal death, if El Sombrerón gets to us before we get to him. Or if Javier changes his mind about me, and decides it’s easier to just get rid of his prisoner. I can never trust a man like him, not with my life, not with my body. Not with my heart.

  I need to leave now.

  It’s okay that I can never go back to Atlanta, never see my childhood home again, never visit my family’s graves again. It’s okay that I’ll be leaving the family company in the hands of a criminal. It’s okay that I’ll be leaving Kate alone in a den of wolves. It’s okay that I’ll never win Miel’s friendship, or hear Brock and H squabble over some dumb video game.

  It’s okay that I’ll never again wake up in Javier’s arms, or feel his lips trail down my throat, or hear him promise that I can’t live without him.

  I can’t live without him.

  I don’t know how to protect myself, or provide for myself, or make decisions for myself. But that’s always been the case, and I got along just fine before he took my life over.

  The truth is, I can’t live without him.

  He’s as destructive as he is tender, as deadly as he is beautiful. For every good thing he’s done for me, he’s committed a dozen unforgivable sins against me. Every kiss ends in a bite. And yet, he’s the safest place I’ve ever known. In the chaos of the past months, he’s been the only solid presence to cling to. And now I fucking need him, even though he’s the harbinger of the chaos. In the span of a few months, I’ve already learned to crave his violence as much as I fear it. Or perhaps I always felt that way.

  I know I should walk away, every cell of my body is screaming at me to run while I can, but I simply cannot. He’s finally broken me, just like he said he would.

  “Are you going to run, or are you just going to stand there all night?”

  A small, choked noise comes out of me. Hand still on the doorknob, I turn to face the bed. Javier is propped up on his elbows, watching me. He’s probably been watching me this whole time, making no move to stop me. He knew he didn’t need to.

  “Why can’t I leave you?” I ask in a near whisper, hand falling back to my side, my feet carrying me back toward the bed. I’m halfway there when my knees give out beneath me, and he’s there, catching me in his arms before my exhausted body hits the ground.

  “Because you’re mine,” he says into my ear, brushing my tender lobe with his soft lips. It’s the same thing he’s told me from the start, in growls and shouts and threats, but this, the tender promise, is the worst of them all. I start crying, not silent tears, but loud, heaving sobs. I’ve never cried in front of him before, though I’ve wanted to a thousand times. I never let him see me fall apart, never let him see what he does to me. But tonight, I scream, I rage, I break, pounding my tiny, useless fists against him. He lets me, making no sound, just brushing my damp hair out of my eyes, kissing the tears off my face. I cry until there are no tears left in my body, until I don’t have the energy to make another sound. I am lifeless in my captor’s arms as he lays us back down in bed, curving his body around me like he does every night, holding me safe and captive in his embrace.

  I leave the last pieces of myself in Paris that night. When we get back to Atlanta, I’m a new woman, one who can no longer be hurt, because she’s no longer living.

  * * *

  Detective Andrews flips through a tabloid magazine as he waits for the Chief of Police to see him. While not exactly based on hard facts, the article on the Palacios-Vega wedding is certainly enlightening, and not entirely out of line from the information compiled in the report he’s about to present to the Chief. It seems the detective isn’t the only one who finds the union a bit suspicious, although this particular scandal piece blames the whirlwind romance, Selina’s further disappearance from the spotlight, and the change of command at Café Palacios on what they’re calling a new phase of Selina’s highly speculated upon, never proven drug habit. Andrews suspects there might be drugs involved, but he doesn’t think the pretty heiress is taking them. No, this goes a lot deeper. Hell, if Palacios and Vega are responsible for even half of what Andrews’s gut tells him they are, this case could make his career. Forget making sergeant next year, he could be looking at offers from the feds in a few months.

  “Andrews,” Chief Whatley says in that gruff tone of his, the stereotypical policeman voice that Andrews and his fellow recruits used to drunkenly imitate back in the day. “Come on in, son.”

  Andrews abandons the tabloid on the waiting area chair and follows the Chief into his office, accepting Whatley’s outstretched hand in a tight handshake. “How’s it going, sir? How’s Mrs. Whatley? Still trying to convince you to retire and move to Miami?”

  “You know it,” the Chief says, shaking his head with a smile. “But I’ve got a few good years left in me yet. Now tell me, Andrews, what could be so important you had my secretary cancel my golf date with the mayor to tell me about? And on such a nice day, too.”

  “I’m sorry about that, sir,” Andrews says, setting his report down on the Chief’s desk. “But due to the celebrity of some of the names involved, well, I had to come straight to you.”

  Whatley flips the folder open, and his brow furrows as soon as he reads the first few lines. Without even turning to the next page, he closes the folder and pushes it aside. Andrews frowns. He had known that to accuse Selina Palacios of being involved in the crime underworld in any capacity would be daring, but that’s why he waited so long to come forward, why he compiled as much evidence as possible. And the lack of more, especially the disappearing video footage and files, well that’s a kind of evidence in itself.

  “You were right to come directly to me with this,” Whatley says, clearing his throat. “You need to drop this investigation immediately.”

  “But sir—” Andrews begins, reaching for the report, ready to show the Chief some of the more compelling evidence, but the man slaps his hand down on the folder, pulling it farther back out of reach.

  “That’s an order, Andrews,” Whatley says, standing to escort the detective out. “I mean it. If I catch wind of you looking into this issue any further, it could cost you your job.”

  Andrews lets himself be shown out, but sets his jaw with new determination as he walks away from the Chief’s office. So this does go deep, deeper than he’d expected. But Detective Andrews has never been good at taking or
ders, especially ones that stink of dirty cops. Good thing that the report Whatley is surely shredding right now is only one of many copies of Andrews’s case against Selina Palacios and her new husband. If the Chief of Police is compromised and won’t take him seriously, well, he can think of a few three letter agencies that might be interested in what he’s found.

  * * *

  I knew there was a chance my wife would try to run while we were in Paris.

  I knew she might try to run, and part of me, perhaps a last twinge of hope deep in some forgotten crevasse of my soul, knew she wouldn’t be able to.

  Somewhere between taking down mutual enemies and a dozen screaming orgasms, something in her finally clicked. She belongs with me. She belongs to me. And last night forced her to finally admit that to herself.

  And if I’d been wrong, and she had succeeded in running, well, the covert French bodyguards I’d hired for our trip would’ve stopped her before she got too far. I’m not a stupid man. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

  But she didn’t run. It was difficult, hearing her raucous sobs, seeing her cry herself into a fitful sleep, meeting her pink-rimmed, puffy eyes in the morning. But it was worth it, worth the trip, worth the risk, worth the pain. I had to give her this chance, so that she’d be forced to reckon with the truth once and for all. The hold I have on her is as real as if I handcuffed her wrist to mine. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, maybe it’s the invisible magnetic pull I felt between us the first time we met. Maybe we were simply meant to be together, despite all the fucked up circumstances pulling us apart. Maybe I forced fate. It doesn’t matter anymore. She is mine, just like she’s always been, and now she knows it, too. There will be no more running. She can continue fighting me every step of the way, continue hating me, continue hating herself. But every night, she’ll return to my bed, and every morning, she’ll wake up in my arms.

  Now, with Selina taken care of, it’s time to focus on the rest of my problems. Frankly, my plate is full to overflowing as of late. And with each passing day that El Sombrerón goes without striking us, the harder it is to sleep at night. We took the first shot. Now it’s his turn to retaliate. And retaliate he will, with a punishment as great or greater than the wound we inflicted on his business. So why hasn’t he come for us yet, sent his new hitman? Has it been that hard to find my replacement? It’s not his style, to lay low, to think his next move through rather than lashing out quickly and lethally. The anticipation is almost worse than the attack.

  “How was Paris?” Miel asks, sitting down across from me in the study after pouring herself some whiskey. I can tell that she’s about to begin badgering me about the honeymoon aspect of it all, so I cut her off at the head.

  “Selina won’t be a problem anymore,” I tell her, taking the crystal decanter and grabbing a glass for myself.

  Miel narrows her eyes at me, pausing for a beat before speaking.

  “Selina will always be a problem, Javi.”

  “Well, she won’t be running again, at least.” I lean back and exhale, still feeling like there’s a heavy weight resting on my lungs.

  “What did you do to her?” Miel asks with a cheeky grin, crossing her leather-clad legs. “Get her one of those dog collars that zaps them if they get too close to the property’s edge?”

  I’m not going to tell Miel what happened that night. She wouldn’t understand, even if it were any of her business. No one could ever understand what exists between me and my captive princess. I’m not even sure I do.

  “Just trust me,” I tell her. “It’s taken care of.”

  “Oh, so you want me to trust you, but you won’t even trust me with the truth of what happened?” Miel asks, pouting. “Sounds about right.”

  “That’s how it works, yeah,” I tell her curtly. I’m in no mood for playing games with her ego or tender feelings. I’ve been walking on eggshells around Selina since our return, giving her time to process this on her own, and I don’t have enough patience to extend the same courtesy to my friend.

  “I don’t think you know your ‘wife’ as well as you think you do,” Miel says after a beat, the word wife dripping in sarcasm.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think you know her at all,” I return, making my friend roll her eyes and exit the study in defeat. I don’t know how true that is anymore. With all the preparations for the wedding, those two have been spending more and more time together as of late. But even if that continues now that the wedding is over, Miel will still never truly understand Selina. Selina will never admit the whole truth of what’s happened between us to the other woman, and even so, I know my wife better than she knows herself. I saw the darkness in her long before she knew she possessed such depths. I see her potential every time her eyes flash and her lips flare. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’m so determined to break her myself. If she grows in the darkness alone, unfettered, she could become uncontrollable.

  Like I did.

  I was nine years old when I watched my mother die. She had already taken a heavy beating, but when my father turned to me, still full of too much rage and rum for his body to contain, she called him back, taunted him just enough to redirect his wrath upon herself once more. She saved me, and she broke me, that night. I watched her take the beating meant for me, readily accepting more violence even as her legs shook beneath her, as her body struggled to hold the weight of her trauma. And when he had her on the floor, when he kicked her one time too many and the light left her eyes and her screams died into a gurgle, that’s when the young boy in me died, too.

  I still remember the sound of my father cursing when he realized what he’d done, of his wracking sobs as he held the body he’d just broken to his chest, staining her bloody face with his tears as even then he whispered that he loved her. He loved her, and he killed her, and then he ran. He ran, leaving me to sit alone with my dead mother as her body grew cold, and her blood seeped into my light-up Iron Man sneakers.

  Four days later, I saw him again. I was waiting for him in the shadows outside of his favorite liquor store, with the jackknife he’d gifted me years before clutched tight in my little hand. When he came out, the handle of rum wrapped in a paper bag already open and pressed to his lips, I flew at him. I went straight for the gut, the knife going into his soft flesh easily, and ripping out in a spray of blood, warm and sticky when it hit my face. I was surprised the first time. I’d never stabbed anyone before. The second time, I was ready. And the third time, I enjoyed it. It didn’t matter that he was my father. He’d never done much to deserve that title, anyway. He had killed the only person I loved, and the only person who loved me, and he deserved to die in the most painful way possible for such a crime.

  Even in death he managed to fuck me over, though. One of El Sombrerón’s men saw me that night, and reported back to the kingpin. It was a few more years until they found me again, and when they did, they were eager to keep me. I came to them already broken, already tried and proven. And though I told Selina I had no choice in the matter, the truth is that at first, I was eager to join the ranks. It felt like a place to belong, not a family, but as close to one as a killer like me would ever find. I didn’t know then what they would do to me. I didn’t know what they would do to Miel.

  And I didn’t know until the night I was sent to kill Selina Palacios that somehow, someday, even a man like me could find a safe place to belong, a home that didn’t demand blood for blood. Whether she likes it or not, Selina is my family now, and I’m never going to let her go.

  * * *

  I thought things were as bad as they could get. I thought that time and time again. Not just when my parents died, or when Max died. When Javier took me, when my escape attempts failed, when I found out about El Sombrerón and the truth of Café Palacios.

  When Javier forced me to marry him.

  I was wrong every time. This, this has to be as bad as it gets. If it gets worse than this, I’m not sure I can survive it.

  The memory of trying and fa
iling to flee in Paris keeps me up late at night. My husband’s embrace no longer comforts me, and I find myself jolting awake in a sweat even on the coldest nights of a Georgia winter. This time, though, it’s not nightmares of blood and death that haunt me. No, now it’s memories, real and imagined, of torrid nights spent tangled up in my captor’s limbs, that flood my unconscious mind every time I fall asleep. I wake up panting and sweaty, a distinct dampness between my legs, fighting back tears of heartbreak and self-loathing. When I’m finally alone in the shower, I cry for the woman I once was, the woman I can never be again. I’ll keep fighting for survival, because that’s what I do, but any hope of eventual freedom is now gone. I’m going to spend the rest of my life belonging to this criminal, to a man I have no business feeling anything but hatred for. And make no mistake, I still hate Javier Vega’s guts. But there’s something new in the mix, something more complex and a whole lot darker. We’re bound together, he and I. I used to think this dark, twisted connection was something he forced on me recently, but sometimes I wonder if it’s been there since the first moment I laid eyes on him, maybe even before that. Sometimes, the way he looks at me with those dark eyes, it tugs at something so deep inside me I must have been born with it.

  But that’s stupid. Javier Vega has no hold over my heart and soul. My mind and body are the weak links, prey to the claws of Stockholm Syndrome and white-hot ecstasy.

  It’s that same weakness that leads me down the halls toward the study, where I know my husband is today. I’m just going to talk to him, I tell myself. I just want to ask him… what he wants for lunch. I can’t even convince myself of that, my legs quavering with need as I march down the hall. I want that infinite moment in the Paris hotel room, before the messy aftermath. I want the soul-shattering pleasure that made me forget everything, if only for a minute. I want the peaceful bliss of being so out of my mind with desire that there’s no room for any other thought, no room for regrets and self-hatred and what-ifs. I want him. Sex with him—dirty, filthy, rough, fantastic sex—is the only thing that takes my mind off my circumstances anymore.