The Mafia Boss Who Captivated Me

Hope is a crock of shit!

I lie on the bed with my hands behind my head, teary-eyed. I can't seem to stop crying lately. It's been four days since I was locked in this room. At least I think it has. I have no way of knowing for sure. No TV. No radio. No cell phone, obviously. I think there have been four sunsets since I first spent the night here and it's dark again now, so four days and soon-to-be five nights.

It's been four days since I saw Dante. Four days since anybody uttered a single word to me. A housekeeper brought me some of my clothes and toiletries the first day.

He wouldn't let Sophia in here because he knows she would crack and offer me some kind of comfort. Whoever this new one is brings me three meals a day and two snacks as well as prenatal vitamins too. But she never speaks to me. I speak to her of course. I've tried being nice to her. Begging her. I've tried bombarding her with questions. Shouting.

Threats. Crying. Nothing works. She's impenetrable. Like a robot.

So all I have left to do is cry. And throw up. I throw up a lot. I feel sick all the time. I haven't been able to keep any food down since yesterday morning, so I didn't even bother trying to eat my lunch, afternoon snack or dinner today. They are all still sitting on the tray, untouched. Congealing.

Like me. Or maybe I'm stagnating. I don't know.

Perhaps I'm just going crazy.

The door unlocking doesn't even make me lift my head now. I'm too tired.

The housekeeper shuffles into the room and places another tray of food beside my bed.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

"Mr. Moretti says you need to eat," she says quietly.

So, she has a voice after all.

"Mr. Moretti can go fuck himself."

"It's not good for the baby if you don't eat."

"Pretty sure it's not good for the baby's mother to be driven completely insane either, but no one gives a flying duck fart about that, do they?"

I keep my head turned away from her and hear her collecting the old trays of food, but she doesn't speak again.

I wait at the bottom of the stairs for Maria to come from Kat's room. She carries a tray full of uneaten food with her.

"Is she still refusing to eat?" I snap.

"Yes, sir," she whispers.

"Fuck!" I shake my head in annoyance. "Did you tell her I said she had to eat?"

"Yes."

"And?"

She looks down at the tray of food rather than answer me.

"Maria?"

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"She said you could go fuck yourself, sir," she says, her voice barely even a whisper this time.

I scrub a hand over my jaw. Starving herself so I'll pay her some attention is so fucking reckless. Maria fidgets as she stands in front of me, waiting to be dismissed. "Maria?"

She looks up at me and her eyes are shining with tears.

"Why are you crying?" I snap at her.

"She's so sick, sir," she sniffs. "She keeps throwing up throughout the day. Even when she only drinks a little water, she's sick. I wait outside her room like you asked and she doesn't even sing or shout for you anymore." "She's playing you. You cannot trust her. You hear me?"

She nods.

"Go," I tell her, and she scurries off down the hallway. I rest my head against the wooden banister, wondering what the hell I'm going to do about Kat and her hunger strike.

"You are certainly living up to your reputation as the most ruthless man in Chicago lately, big brother," Joey say as she walks up beside me.

I'm not in the mood for her games either today. I'm still pissed at her for the stunt she pulled. "Leave it, Joey."

"What? I'm paying you a compliment. I mean, there's cruel and then there's Dante level of cruel," she says with a wicked laugh.

"What the hell are you on about?"

"Kat," she says with a roll of her eyes. "You've outdone yourself."

"She's breathing, isn't she?" I snap. "No thanks to you."

"Yeah, but come on. Depriving someone of any human interaction or any kind of mental stimulation at all is probably one of the cruelest things you can do to a person.

Well played, brother." She pats me on the back as she says it, but her voice is dripping with sarcasm.

"Are you suggesting she should be rewarded for trying to escape? For trying to take my child away from me before I even got a chance to know about it? I should let her walk around here like she used to?"

"Everything is so black and white with you. Everything you do is extreme. It doesn't have to be that way. You can still punish her while making sure she doesn't have a full-scale mental breakdown in the process," she says before she starts to walk down the hallway.

"Joey," I call after her.

She spins around, a smile on her face because she knows she just played me.

"She'll be sleeping soon. Take her some magazines or books or something tomorrow morning."

"Whatever you say, big brother."