"You should have known better than to be taken in by such a vague promise."
"In hindsight, yes. At the time, it seemed like a sure thing. Willow is the most powerful person I know. She once called down an armed team on a form teacher because the woman wouldn't let us out of class early to go to a concert. We were only thirteen. We went to the concert in a helicopter. I swore then and there, I'd be her best friend forever, and I'd never betray her. "
"You've known her a very long time, then."
"Yes."
Angelo sat down in an armchair and fixed her with a deep, searching look. "Tell me everything."
Tell Me Everything
"Gemma has told me everything," Angelo announced with dark glee in the midst of a sunny morning which she only had very limited enjoyment of due to her incarceration.
"Gemma knows practically nothing." Willow gave Angelo a cutting look. The man was playing games with her. She had already abandoned Gemma mentally. There was no chance someone like her could resist the Vitali machine. Surviving this place was an every woman for herself situation.
"She's far more loyal to you than you are to her."
"Gemma is sweet," Willow said. "And I am not the one keeping her here. You are. You could release her at any time. But that would be the right thing, and you are terminally incapable of that."
"She is not finding her stay here as unpleasant as you are because she is not here with the express intention of bringing me to ruin. You pretend to come for me in order to free your brother or chase Tilly Braybrooke, but the truth is you've come for me. Haven't you, Willow."
"I've made no secret of that, so you needn't make the accusation in such a tone," Willow replied.
"The secret isn't in the what. It is in the why."
"Because you dared cross me, you filthy worm of a man," she hissed, wrapping her hands around the barn cage in which she had been re-confined after dinner the previous evening. "You have denied me my prey, you have defiled my brother, and you have laid hands on me. You will pay…."
"Ah yes. Hands on you. What a good idea. You are an arrogant wench, and I have tolerated your arrogance more than long enough."
He reached into the cage and drew her out.
"What will you do now, Angelo? Will you break me?" Willow made little mocking air quote signs with her fingers as she was hauled between the barn and the house, a brief moment of glorious blue sky and rolling green fields flashing across her vision.
She refused to let Angelo dominate every moment of her existence, even if he was treating her little better than an animal. His goal could not be achieved. Or rather, he seemed unwilling to do what was necessary. He wanted to keep the Braybrooke fortune for himself. He wanted to keep the murdering little bitch Tilly hidden somewhere. To do that, he would have to kill everybody who came looking - and there were many.
It was apparent that he was not trying to stop her so much as turn her from an enemy into one of his broken little pet puppets. He had made a serious judgment in error in that respect. Willow would not be broken. Not by anything. Certainly not by Angelo Vitali.
She was taken to a bedroom. His bedroom, judging by the masculine musk which hung in the air. Yet again, the room boasted a solid cage.
"Cages and bedrooms, bedrooms and cages. You are nothing if not repetitive and predictable," Willow mocked him.
"When you are training an animal, you want to be both repetitive and predictable," Angelo replied. "I cannot condition your responses without those two conditions."
Was this a glimpse behind the curtain? Was Angelo this aware of his own methods? She had thought of him more as an ego automaton, piloting on depraved instinct. Perhaps her was not as stupid as she had taken him for.
He pushed her down on the bed, ensuring she landed with her rump high.
"You will know what to expect when you disobey me," he said, taking his belt around his hand. "You will find pain. You will find humiliation."
He pulled her pants down, baring her rear. This in itself was a threat of sorts. He now had access to all the tender, delicate, and significant parts of her. He could push himself inside her, ravage her, do what brutal power-hungry men had done to women since the dawn of time. Willow was prepared for that - but it was not in store.
Instead, he used the leather of his belt to punish her for sins largely imagined. A hot burst of fire exploded across her aristocratic skin, and she hissed in response before gritting her teeth as his lash landed several more times across her hindquarters. This was not the patriarchal spanking Gemma had earned herself. This was an actual thrashing from one foe to another, a rough punishment designed to break her will and leave her aching.