TWISTED

CHAPTER ONE "Do you promise to be on your best behavior, bella? Because I won’t hesitate to kick you to the timeout corner." The Sicilian accent curls around every syllable, sharp and syrupy at once, like lemon zest soaking in blood orange liqueur. There’s always a warning beneath his endearments, always an undercurrent of violence behind the pet names and precise diction. It’s never just “bella.” It’s “bella, who will do what she’s told or pay.” He’s never once had to repeat himself, not since the first time—the night I learned what the timeout corner was. Tonight, I’m perched on the far edge of the velvet ottoman, wrists raw from the braccia di ferro with his guards at the entrance. Even before I’d crossed the threshold, I knew I would lose. I always lose, but tonight’s loss tastes different. The corners of my lips still hum from where he pinched them between gloved fingers, forcing a smile. Every muscle tenses as he circles, the scent of old cologne and aged leather trailing behind him. He waits for my answer. The room, awash in golden sconce light, feels swollen with expectation. My mouth opens but nothing surfaces except a half-strangled whimper. I force it back, push out the only answer he’ll accept: "Yes, sir." He smiles. The left side of his mouth quirks upward; the right remains stern, calculating. “Good girl. It saves us both a mess.” His hand finds my jaw again, knuckles grazing the spot he bruised last week. There’s a tender hush in the room, like the eye of a storm, and I almost relax into it—almost. He leans in, lips barely brushing my ear. “Out of fear I reluctantly nod my head,” he murmurs, parroting words I’d once written in a letter I never sent. His favorite thing is to read my words back to me, voice dripping with feigned empathy. " I remember. The timeout corner is an actual corner—a wedge of concrete floor between wine racks in his private cellar, frigid and echoing. The first time, I spent three hours shivering, repeating the words “never again” until they lost meaning. By the fifth, I’d stopped counting. "Yes, sir." I say it louder, crisp, rehearsed. His thumb strokes the line of my lower lip. “We both know you’re going to try, bella. But I’m starting to think you want to get caught. Is that what this is?” He tugs my hair, jerks my chin up, searching my face for proof. I don’t answer. I can’t. The truth is too complicated, tangled in need and fear and some sick thrill I can’t scrub out. He studies me until I drop my gaze, lashes fluttering. That’s when he laughs—quiet and cutting. “I knew you’d understand eventually.” He turns away, slips off his jacket and folds it with surgical precision. “Crawling will suit you, bella. You wear submission well.” A memory slips in: two years ago, on the bathroom floor of a rented room in Milano, my pulse thudding in my ears, hands trembling so hard I could barely uncork the bottle. Even then, even in the worst of it, I wanted someone to notice. Someone to wrench the glass away and make the rules for me. He lines up the bottle of bourbon and two glasses. Pours, measures, offers me the glass—held just out of reach. "You think you’ve had it hard? You haven’t begun to suffer, not really." He takes a measured sip. "But you will." He sits on the ottoman, legs spread wide, and pats his thigh. I shuffle forward, the carpet biting at my knees. He gestures with the glass; I wrap both hands around it, knuckles pressed white against the crystal. I don’t drink, not yet. I know the rules. “Now, tell me what you did wrong,” he says. This is the game. The confession. The part where I bare my throat and hope it’s enough. “I tried to run,” I whisper. His smile is patient, indulgent. “And?” “I fought your men at the entrance.” He waits, knowing there’s more. I close my eyes, swallow the rest. “And I called you a bastard. In front of them.” My cheeks burn with the memory. His hand cups my chin, tilts my face up until I can’t look away. “You called me a lot worse than that, bella. But it’s the honesty I appreciate.” His thumb presses, a subtle warning. “And are you sorry?” I force myself to say it. “Yes, sir.” He beams. “Now drink.” The bourbon burns all the way down. I keep my eyes open, keep my gaze locked on his. The heat pools in my stomach, followed by a sharp, lovely ache. He strokes my cheek and lets me rest my head against his thigh, one hand tangled in my hair like a leash. “You always come back, don’t you?” he says, more observation than question. “No matter how many times you break.” He’s right. I come back every time, bleeding and begging, stitched together by the structure only he provides. Maybe I’m weak. Maybe it’s just the only thing that ever made sense. “You belong to me, bella,” he murmurs, thumb rubbing the skin just behind my ear. “Even your breakdowns are mine to manage.” I nod, out of fear and out of something darker. The room is quiet except for his slow, deliberate breathing. I finish the bourbon, let the glass clink against the floor, and wait for whatever comes next. He leans down, his lips brushing the delicate shell of her ear, and for a moment she forgets the bruising grip he held a moment before. His voice is softer now, distilled velvet laced with the barest metallic tang of threat: “Do you promise to be on your best behavior?” The words ripple through her, igniting twin helixes of dread and desire that coil tight in her belly. With him, everything is a trap—even mercy, even gentleness. He doesn’t blink. He simply waits, letting the silence worm its way into her marrow. She wants to pull away, to spit in his face, to prove she’s not afraid of whatever sanction he doles out, but her limbs betray her: knees trembling, breath shivering against his jaw. Half of her is already kneeling in the glass and ice of his private punishment room, the other half is here, desperate to be deemed worthy of even this mock affection. She knows from the set of his jaw, from the faint amusement curling at the edge of his mouth, that he can feel it: her warring impulses, the internal white flag threatening to unfurl at any second. He’s read her letters, her journals, and in them found every secret she tried to hide. He knows about the nights she lies awake, replaying his commands, the strange comfort she finds in his rules, the haunted little thrill that lives at the center of all her rebellions. So when he asks, “Do you promise to be on your best behavior?” it isn’t really a question at all. It’s a script, and she’s learned how to say her lines. This time, I don’t hesitate. I say yes, and mean it. But we both know it’s a lie.