The Dangerous Man Beneath My Bed

chapter7

NAOMI

The air in the apartment had become thick, heavy with the unspoken rules of my new existence. Three days. Three days of being watched, ordered, and existing solely at the whim of the man who had claimed my home as his outpost.

Dominic was pacing the living room, a caged tiger energy radiating off him that made the hairs on my arms stand up. He’d been on his phone for ten minutes, his voice a low murmur of Italian interjected with sharp, guttural English commands.

He hung up, and the silence that fell was worse than the talking. He stopped pacing and looked at me. I was sitting on the sofa, my knees pulled to my chest, wearing the oversized t-shirt and leggings he’d allotted me for the day. I looked away, focusing on a scuff mark on the hardwood floor.

"I have to go out," he said.

My head snapped up. Hope, treacherous and agonizing, flared in my chest.

He saw it. A cold, humorless smile touched his lips. "Don't get ideas, Naomi. The building is watched. The doors are reinforced. If you so much as touch the handle of the front door, my men downstairs will know before your hand makes contact."

He walked over to where he’d draped his suit jacket over a chair. As he shrugged into it, the expensive fabric concealing the shoulder holster, he transformed. The domestic terrifier became something else—a professional instrument of violence.

He leaned over the back of the sofa, his face inches from mine. The scent of his cologne, now forever linked with terror in my mind, filled my nostrils.

"You stay in this room or the bedroom. Nowhere else. You don't go near the windows. You don't answer the intercom. You exist only for me until I walk back through that door. Do you understand?"

I nodded, throat tight. "Yes."

He stared at me for a beat longer, ensuring his command had taken root in my fear, then turned and left. The sound of the deadbolts sliding home was final as a coffin lid.

The silence he left behind was deafening. For the first twenty minutes, I didn't move. I sat frozen on the couch, convinced he was waiting just outside the door, testing me.

But as the minutes stretched into an hour, the paralysis began to crack, replaced by a desperate, frantic energy. I knew I couldn't get out the front door. I knew the windows were too high up. But I couldn't just sit here and wait for the monster to return.

I scrambled off the couch, my heart hammering against my ribs. The kitchen. Under the sink.

Years ago, a paranoid ex-boyfriend had insisted I keep an emergency burner phone taped behind the u-bend pipe. I had laughed at him then, called him dramatic, and forgotten about it entirely until this moment.

I dropped to my knees on the cold tile, wrenching open the cabinet doors. I pushed past cleaning supplies, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. I reached back, my fingers scrabbling against the cool metal of the pipe.

Nothing.

I shoved my head further under the sink, ignoring the smell of bleach and mildew, feeling desperately. My fingernail scraped against duct tape.

Yes.

With trembling hands, I peeled the dusty Nokia brick free. I backed out of the cabinet, clutching the phone like a lifeline. I pressed the power button, my thumb slipping on the rubber.

The screen remained black.

I pressed it again, harder, holding it down. Nothing.

A sob tore out of my throat. Dead. The battery had drained years ago. It was useless plastic in my hand.

I stared at it, the symbol of my catastrophic failure. I had risked his wrath for absolutely nothing. Panic, colder and sharper than before, flooded me. I had to put it back. He would know. He smelled fear; he would smell disobedience.

I scrambled back under the sink, trying to re-tape the phone with hands that were shaking uncontrollably. The old tape wouldn't stick. I was making too much noise, clattering bottles.

Then, I heard it. The distinct, heavy click of the front door unlocking.

He wasn't supposed to be back yet. It had only been ninety minutes.

I shoved the phone behind a bottle of drain cleaner, slammed the cabinet doors shut, and stood up just as he walked into the living area.

I froze. The apology, the lie I had prepared, died on my tongue.

Dominic was drenched in blood.

It wasn't a smear or a splatter. It looked like he had waded through a river of it. His pristine grey suit was ruined, soaked dark and stiff with gore across the chest and sleeves. His white shirt underneath was a glistening crimson bib. Droplets of it were dried on his high cheekbones, caught in the dark stubble of his jaw.

The metallic stench of fresh copper hit me like a physical blow, overpowering even his cologne.

He didn't look at me right away. He walked into the kitchen, shedding his jacket and dropping it onto the floor with a wet heavy sound. He rolled up his sodden shirt sleeves, revealing forearms that were slick with red.

He turned on the faucet, pumping soap onto his hands, scrubbing them with a terrifying, methodical calm. The water swirling down the drain turned pink, then deep red.

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I was staring at a butcher who had just finished his shift.

"A complication," he said, his voice devoid of inflection, as if he were discussing traffic. "It required... enthusiasm."

He dried his hands on a dish towel, staining the cotton, then finally turned his attention to me.

His eyes were different. The cold, calculating void was gone, replaced by a high-contrast glitter—adrenaline, violence, the aftermath of slaughter. He looked feral.

He took one step toward me, and then he stopped. He tilted his head, sniffing the air.

His gaze snapped past me, to the sink cabinet.

My heart stopped.

He didn't ask. He crossed the kitchen in two long strides, crowding my space, forcing me to step back until my spine hit the refrigerator. He yanked open the cabinet doors. He didn't need to search. He reached directly behind the drain cleaner and pulled out the dusty black phone.

He held it up. His expression didn't change, which was infinitely worse than shouting. The violence coming off him in waves was no longer cold; it was blistering hot.

"I gave you one rule, Naomi." His voice was very soft, almost gentle. "Stay put. Be mine."

"It's dead," I whispered, my voice shaking so badly the words were barely coherent. "It didn't work. Please."

"The intent is what matters," he said. He crushed the phone in his blood-stained hand. Plastic cracked loudly in the silence. He dropped the pieces onto the floor.

"I have to teach you that your world outside of this apartment doesn't exist anymore. You keep trying to reach back to it. I need to sever the tie."

He walked past me, out of the kitchen. I followed him, propelled by terrified confusion.

He walked straight to the corner of the living room. To my cello case.

"No," I breathed. The word was a ghost of sound.

He unlatched the case. My beautiful, antique instrument, the extension of my soul, lay inside in its velvet bed.

"Please, Dominic," I begged, moving toward him, my hands outstretched. "Please, not that. Do anything else to me. Please."

He ignored me. He reached down and lifted the cello by its neck. His bloody fingerprints smeared against the polished aged wood.

He didn't smash it in a fit of rage. That would have been easier to process.

He looked me dead in the eyes. He held the body of the cello steady with one hand, gripped the elegant scroll of the neck with the other, and with a sickening, deliberate crack of leverage, he snapped the neck clean off the body.

The sound was worse than a gunshot. It was the sound of my life breaking.

I screamed. A raw, guttural sound of pure agony. I fell to my knees, covering my face with my hands, sobbing hysterically.

He dropped the ruined pieces of wood onto the rug next to me. The strings groaned and pinged as they snapped free.

He stood over me, a bloody monument to destruction, looking down at my shattered form.

"Cry for it," he said, his voice rough, thick with the aftereffects of violence. "Grieve for the life you had. Because it’s gone. I’m all you have left."