For a man who claimed to want nothing to do with love and rebuked it with every ounce of his being, why was every song he played so hopelessly romantic? It made no sense. Nothing about this situation did. When the fuck would she just stop trying to make sense of it when there was none to be made?

What little hope she had that Victor would answer question number one was dwindling fast. She wanted to believe that he had nothing to do with the attack, but the nagging voice in her brain wouldn’t let it die.

His padded footsteps were heard moving toward the kitchen, then back to her. He loosened the ball-gag and pressed a bottle of water to her lips, relieving her parched throat. She sipped slowly, enjoying the coolness of the liquid as it flowed onto her tongue and down her throat.

With the gag back in place, she leaned her head back when suddenly his fingers found the bare flesh of her pussy.

“I want you wet before I tell you what you want to know…”

His practiced fingers moved quickly, pumping in and out of her and before she knew it, her body had answered to him and she was saturated with her own arousal.

“Good girl,” he sighed as his lips moved over her breasts and up to her drool-soaked mouth. She felt his mouth near to hers but she turned her head sideways, rejecting him.

“There’s no need to be cruel, Elsa. You’ll get what you want,” he spoke in an agonized whisper.

The weight of his body was felt next to her as he sunk down onto the couch.

“Have you ever wondered what makes people tick? Like really tick? What makes them the way they are? What experiences in their lives have formed their personalities?” he chuckled humorlessly under his breath. “I guess that was a stupid question.” A heavy sigh. “I used to wonder what made my mom do the things she did; why she hated me so Goddamn much. I stopped wondering a long time ago. When she got sick. It wasn’t until then that I simply accepted her for what she was – a cruel, fucking, bitch and taskmaster.” His body jerked. “When she was dying, I took care of her because she had no one else, only me. Even in death, she still couldn’t show me one, motherfucking ounce of kindness.”

Elsa willed herself not to cry. The image of this strong, fierce man caring for his dying mother was gut wrenching. After all that she had put him through, he had still taken care of her when most people wouldn’t. Including herself. How could he be so blind as to not see the compassion within himself and the empathy that resided within his heart? Why did he insist on denying that he could be a kind man?

His voice lowered and the change happened in the blink of an eye. “After all the years I cleaned up after her and covered for her, after all the shit she put me through - not one. Single. Fucking. Measure of compassion. I was nothing but a little bitch in her eyes; her own personal slave.” The grinding of teeth and a deep growl. “Cleaning up her filth… Mopping up her vomit…Nothing but a little bitch. And you,” he gripped her chin harshly and shook her face. “You’re no better. You made me feel things for you all the while you were lying to me. You made me trust you while you were snooping around in my shit and judging me,” he poked her in the chest. “And now this bullshit. You make up some ludicrous idea in your head and make me tell you the worst memory of my life just to appease you…” His voice deepened. “Nothing but a little bitch. That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A fucking, weak-ass bitch.”

His hand twisted in her hair at the crown of her head and he pulled hard, dragging her off the couch and making her fall to her knees.

“Now who’s the bitch, Elsa?” His voice was rough, deep, and filled with arrogant demand.

It wasn’t Victor saying those things. She knew that, but her tears came anyway, soaking the blindfold.

“That’s it….” he snarled. “Cry for me, you demanding cunt.”

What had she done? Again… she had asked too much of him. He hadn’t even told her yet and already Mr. Black had clawed his way out to make her pay for doubting Victor’s integrity and honesty.

Silence. Coldness.

Minutes passed before strong hands on her shoulders gently guided her back to the couch and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Victor. He was back. She bit hard into the gag to stifle a cry of joy. He was keeping his promises. All of them.

“My sixteenth birthday was a hot Goddamn mess, to say the least. It started out well enough,” his soft spoken voice lulled her back to a sense of security. “I had friends over. My mom was semi-sober. There were gifts. Girls. Yeah… girls. Jesus, I was such an asshole. I didn’t even know how to talk to them. All I could do was stare at them and stutter.” He cleared his throat and moved behind the couch. “I digress. She ended up drinking too much at the party and getting some of my friends drunk. I found her in my bedroom sucking off one of my classmates. He was drunk, too. What a nightmare. After I kicked everyone out, she went into a rage…”

The lifeless tone his voice had taken on was upsetting.

“She was pissed that I interrupted her fun, I guess. I don’t know. I never knew the reasons for her anger.” He swallowed a couple of times before continuing. “That was the night she told me about who my real father was. She’d always led me to believe my dad was some military hero who had died in an aerial training accident. That old bitch was a good liar. She had me believing that bullshit my whole life.”

The smell of cigarette smoke filled the room following a momentary pause. He was smoking in the house… something he never did. He was anxious. She could hear it in the sound of his breathing, even though his voice sounded robotic and stripped of emotion.

“She met my father at a bar. I mean… of course she met him at a bar. They fucked out back next to a dumpster. Go figure. Both of them pieces of trash…” he sucked hard against the cigarette and exhaled loudly. “She didn’t know his name at the time. It was just a one-time thing. It wasn’t until after he was arrested for all those murders that found out who he was. By then I was a little older so she just kept up the lie.” Inhale. Exhale. “I fucking digress. She rampaged for days after my birthday. I couldn’t do anything right. It was like she had been released from the burden of telling me who my father was, and she was free to take out her anger on me. Her hatred seemed to intensify after that night. She began to beat on me for no Goddamn reason; slap me, hit me, scratch me; like I was just a piece of shit there to take her abuse. And I took it too, because I was fucking stubborn and I wasn't gonna let her know she had broken me.” His mocking laugh oozed disdain. “Rules. She started writing out these ridiculous rules for me to follow. Pages after fucking pages of them…”

His voice finally revealed emotion, but it was the kind of emotion that hooked her in the chest. Rules. He had made himself into his mother.

“You think you got me figured out, right?” A thin thread of mania laced his voice as he laughed. Mr. Black. “She was the original creator of the game. But I honed it. Perfected it. Made it into something better. See, my rules have purpose. I help people.” A note of triumph edged his voice. “My mom just fucked with me.” Inhale. Exhale. Lips being moistened. “The very last rule she ever tried to enforce led to this scar.”

Finally. He had been talking for half an hour, pacing his words slowly, and now he was getting to the point. The air in the room congealed like old blood, and the silence seemed deafening. He had gone completely still; even his breathing seemed to have stopped.

“Pleasure her…” his softly spoken words thickened with anger from across the room.

Elsa shrunk into the couch and tried to make herself small. The storm was coming…