11 years ago
The Ritz-Carlton, Chicago.

Walking the halls of a place like this feels like floating.

The open space is both decadent and cavernous. Self important somehow. It feels like I could get lost around a corner and never find my way back again. The glossy marble floors give the impression that I'm walking on clouds; and I may as well be stuck up there where the air is thin, where it feels like I'm breathing through a straw and nothing is quite real.

It makes me think of Hope Valley, of something so much bigger than myself.

But this, I keep reminding myself, is different. Because she's here.

I categorize the things that have happened in my life differently than most people. I remember events, not feelings, which is preferable to me.

I remember when my father died. I remember being there when Nico was born, killing my mother, gathering my brothers and leaving that cursed house. I remember my first kill, real kill—the way it's supposed to be done in business, when it's the last possible option. I remember last week when Nico wouldn't wake up, and we spent fifteen minutes thinking he was dead before he finally cracked open his eyes, his pulse a weak flutter, and I realized he was just dehydrated and starving. 

I remember just this morning, leaving my brothers and getting in a car with a man Cora sent, so he could bring me here and I could get all dressed up, and I could work for Cora so my brothers could keep living.

But the one memory I have that is marked by feeling is the last time I saw her. The night I met her at Devil's Dice and she helped me get through the evening before burning my father's life work into the ground. I felt warm before she even said a word to me. Safe and seen. 

That seems important. She seems important.

And so I called her. When it was clear my brothers wouldn't survive one more night, I knew I had to call her. Because years passed, and she never came to collect the debt I owed in return for her help that night.

People are quick to go after what they feel they're owed. But she didn't. And I've had years to wonder why.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I also want to chase that intrigue. I want to travel down a path where, for once, I get a peek at what it's like to be normal. I don't typically feel inferior for the things I lack that make me different, but I'm still curious. And telling her I needed help released something in me, flooded me with relief.

I know she will deliver, no matter what I ask of her.

It all feels quite vulnerable and human.

As we walk, her presence before me is reassuring. Even if she were to be out of sight, but I knew for certain she remained in the building, that feeling would remain. She won't let anything bad happen; she never has. When we pass strangers I still tense up, but my mind doesn't go blank with flight or fight. 

Finally, someone else is going to take care of it. Of me.

So this is what it's like. How quaint.

"You still with me, darling? We're almost there." 

I nod before remembering she can't see me, but she must know somehow. She tosses me a look over one slender shoulder and gives a quiet laugh. People are too... human for me to find them attractive, but I can tell that Cora is because everyone she talks to gives her what she wants.

And now, I'm supposed to give her what she wants.

"So, you and your clients will stick to this floor and the one above," she says, heels muted on the thick carpet. "Nobody else should bother you. But if anybody tries talking to you, you don't tell them anything. Leave and inform me immediately. Understand? Use words."

The sudden strict tone of her voice makes my spine straighten. "Yes, I understand."

"Good."

We stop by the elevator and she presses the button, bending so I can see into her eyes. "This is where I leave you. Remember our deal?"

I nod, letting her straighten the collar of my shirt. "Do what they say and my brothers will be safe."

She smiles, brushing a hand through my hair. I let her, even though the touch bleeds coldness into my bones.

"And?"

"And you'll always protect me from the people who are trying to hurt us," I finish, breathing deep. "Eden will protect us."

Eden, Cora's club, makes people feel good. It's dedicated to pleasure, which seems like the opposite of everything my father ever did.

"It's all about those dark, hidden pleasures," Cora has explained to me many times. She gets so passionate she forgets she's already given me the spiel, but I don't mind. The way she gets when she talks is unlike anything I've seen. "Those pleasures we don't want to see the light. But if something is dark and wild, darling, if it hurts and scares us, that doesn't mean it's bad. Oftentimes, it's just what we need to break through the barriers of our deepest pain, to reach paradise—to finally find Eden. Because beauty is both terror and pain. Beauty is the loss of control, but only if you always, always return to yourself after you work out your destructive passions. How glorious—how vulgar—to release those passions in one single rupture, then to return to yourself! If we're strong enough... darling, we can stare at that terrible beauty right in the eye, let it heal us, and emerge reborn. Deviance... it's not abnormal or shameful. It's really the most normal part of our beautifully flawed human experience. It's the key to everything we need."

While I can't ever understand what exactly she's talking about, her excitement and fire is addicting.

What I know about Eden, aside from it being a sex club for the elite and deviant, is that Cora runs it by herself. I know little of the how, but I've seen other people who look like me, young and quiet, slipping into rooms in these halls. We don't ever talk to each other, although some understanding passes between us. We only talk to our clients.

It seems like such a small thing—spend a few minutes alone with clients so my brothers can have shelter, so they can eat and sleep and not worry about anything. She arranged everything for us the second I called, told me to enjoy my new life of safety and comfort for a while before she'd ask me to deliver on my side of the deal. So I'd be able to trust it's real.

But honestly, despite our glamorous accommodations and the fact that nobody has bothered us, I've barely managed to relax so far. The feeling of being safe, of finally being safe, is so foreign that I just lay awake, shaking. Not in panic, I think. It feels like euphoria. White hot adrenaline that has nowhere to be spent.

The elevator finally dings and opens. Cora stands, clearing her throat. "Go on. Room 337 is waiting for you."

Once she's gone, I insert the key in the correct door. It clicks open. There's a man sitting in the chair by the window with a glass of dark liquid. He puts it down when he sees me.

"Look at you," he says. "You look like a little prince."

I catch a glimpse of myself in the opulent mirror above the vanity, rimmed in thick gold. My suit fits me perfectly. I don't look like what I am, a half-starved street rat, save for the emphasized hollows of my cheeks. But Cora said it makes me look good, handsome. She got my hair trimmed and styled. I look perfect just like her.

"Come here," he tilts his head, and I realize I'm still standing at the door, not letting it close. "I won't hurt you."

I let the door slip shut, and I obey.

♛ 

I obey.

That's what I do.

They start calling me the Prince, maybe because that's what Cora always calls me, maybe because it's what my first client saw when he looked at me. People expect princes to be royalty. To have authority and call the shots, but that's not what I do.

I hate obeying, but some part of me must like it. My head and my body have never known how to operate in sync, but especially not now. A crawling rot festers somewhere inside me, contained and quiet. Nobody else sees it. I figure it's because nothing in Eden matters. Unlike the rest of the world, where everything—one inch or an off-putting look from a stranger—can be the difference between life and death.

And so only here, only in Eden, where everything is nothing, do I submit. 

And with submission, I feel more human that I ever have before.

Anger. 

Shame. 

Fear.

Violence.

Helplessness. 

It all rushes in. The emotion. I've never felt so much. But then, I've never come face to face with my own deviance before either.

Cora has helped me with that. And when my head starts slipping sideways, she knows what to do. She can make a blackout recede in seconds.

I see so much darkness and I don't know if it's wrong, or if wrong really exists, but it just never ends, and I've gotten used to it all. Gotten used to relinquishing control, the predictable rush and the answering razor blade of pain.

It doesn't take me long to realize that what I'm doing isn't normal.

I have less trouble than the others. The other boys, they don't like Eden. They don't like Cora. And they don't like me, because I get the most clients. Cora tells me they're having a hard time adjusting, but that I'm special. I'm good at what I do, everything I do, and Cora is proud. I can even get Nico presents when his birthday comes around—he's five now, and the smile on his little face in the glow of his birthday candles has been replaying in my head for days.

The warmth and life in my brothers' faces, the meat on their bones, their easy smiles and laughter. All of it has come from my deal with Cora. It just doesn't make sense next to the darkness that enters me in those hotel rooms, that I bring with me wherever I go after that.

People say family is everything, that you're supposed to do anything for those you love, but they don't really mean that. They don't mean anything.

The path I'm on, it's leading me into something I won't be able to come out of. Somehow, I know this. People typically believe that the end justifies the means. So my brothers' survival will mean something to someone, at least, if not me.

I don't spend a lot of time with Cora or clients. Maybe once every two weeks she sends a car for me. Sometimes more than a month will pass. And when I have a client, I'm never gone for more than a couple hours.

Months of this have passed, and now is the very first time I'm seeing the inside of Cora's home.

"Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?"

In her sprawling office, Cora looks as clean and regal as her surroundings. The driver she sent for me didn't say a word, so I thought I was going to meet a client until we walked through the front door and I immediately knew. It just looked exactly like a home she would live in.

"No, thank you."

She hands me a phone, brimming with something so intense that I find myself matching her energy. Something stirs in my chest. Whatever this meeting is for, it's important. Exciting, even.

"This is the Paradise Room," she says, red nail tapping against the screen. "My true life's work, an expansion of Eden. It's time I show you. With how advanced you are, darling, I decided you'd be the only one to know."

I cock my head, unsure what I'm looking at. It appears to be some kind of chat with a lot of people. Replies stream in so quickly that I can't tell what they're saying, aside from random words here and there. 

"I don't get it." In all my curiosity, I forget to keep silent unless asked a question, but she seems to forget her rule, too.

Her eyes sparkle. "It's a chat room, silly."

She pulls the phone back, typing away for a minute before turning it back to me. She's sent a photo in the chat, along with a small caption. The photo is of a boy I see frequently. He's skinnier than me, and the kind of pale that makes him look sick. His hands always seem to have a tremble to them.

Boy, Russian, 75 lbs. Scared of loud noises and likes to cry when performing. Double payment is required for live broadcast.

"They don't get to see the videos before committing to purchasing, so we give them a taste," Cora explains. "We describe them in the chatroom, and anybody can participate. As many as are interested! Once all the offers come in," she tosses the phone down and leans back with a grin, "well, we're quite rich, for one."

"But... what? What videos?"

"Imagine, darling, everything you get to experience with Eden, but multiplied. The Paradise Room is so much more. Eden lets you taste deviance, the Paradise Room makes you choke on it."

She passes me the phone, and my fingers go numb as I scroll to previous messages. There are short videos, she calls them teasers. And it's not just more, it's... torture. I put down the phone before it makes me sick.

"Will he die?" I don't even know his name, the small Russian boy. I also never particularly cared about him, but that doesn't mean I'd like him to experience the things I saw in those videos.

Cora stares at me for a moment, her face hardening into ice. I swallow, my heart suddenly echoing hollowly, loudly, in my chest. Hands sweating. Lump in my throat. Just like that. Fear. 

The fascinating feeling escalates as she turns to her computer, the screen hidden from me. She clicks a few things before turning the monitor so I can see. 

A full body sweat breaks out as I look at my brothers. Cameras. In every room of the house we're staying in, and they're all accessible to Cora with just a few clicks. I can see them now, right where I left them, crammed into the couch all shouting at the TV as they play a game, pushing and shoving each other. Laughing.

I don't like her looking at them. Only me. The deal is between her and me. She doesn't get to look at them.

But her meaning is clear. 

I control them too. So do what I say.

She takes my picture. Right there, sitting in front of her. The full body sweats have turned into shakes, and my vision is blurry. I wonder what caption she puts for me. We give them a taste, she said. But I don't ask.

"Is there anything I can help you with before you go, little Prince?" She's smiling distantly, finished with me.

I feel... afloat. Lost. Desperate to get back into her good graces.

"There's a client," I force out. "She keeps..."

Cora's demeanor immediately sharpens and she's focused entirely on me. "She keeps what?"

I've seen this client several times now and the third time, I accidentally jammed my finger in the door on the way in. The nail cracked and I started bleeding. There was a lot of blood, and it was so unexpected, it sent me into a frenzy. I lost my cool. It was a miracle I hadn't killed her; she'd had to knock the back of my head into the corner of the dresser to bring me out of it. 

And ever since then, that client keeps trying to cut me. She didn't seem to like me all that much before; I think I bored her. She wanted a reaction, wanted to play, and she's figured out how to get that now.

"She doesn't understand the limits of our time together," I settle on. I don't want Cora to kill her, I just want the woman to stop.

"She'll be dealt with," Cora says. "Just give me her name."

I do, and she dismisses me. The second I get home—see my brothers now fighting over the game, but safe and happy nonetheless—the fear dissipates.

I glance around, wondering where the cameras are, wondering if she's watching us now. After a few seconds, I notice a glint in the corner, high up by the ceiling. A tiny black lens.

I tilt a wide smile up at the camera just for her.

The end justifies the means.

Suddenly the fear from before feels silly. She's not going to even breathe near my brothers, not ever. I protected them before and I'll do it again.

And I'll do better than anyone else would because I can let go of my head, and it's easy and natural, and nobody else could do this. Nobody else could do what I do. Certainly not any of my brothers. I am a body. The things that happen to this body are only in my mind. Turn off the mind—or be someone who has a broken one—and the body can do anything.

♛ 

Present day.

That man, the first client I had at Eden all those years ago, has been following me all day. 

He was at the engagement party. He even talked to Santo, although Santo acted like it was nothing when I asked him about it.

But I know he told Santo something. 

I know he told him about what we used to do.

I'll get Santo to admit he knows.

The man got in the car with me when I left the villa. He was waiting for me, waiting for us to be alone. He sat right next to me. Thigh pressed to mine, one arm stretching across the backseat. Holding a drink in his other hand, the ice clinking as we drove silently through the streets.

Neither of us spoke. It was like that back then, too. 

He even looked the same. The exact same. Same unbuttoned shirt and loose tie. Tired lines on his face, hair a little messy. Like he just finished a long day of work and wanted to relax.

He doesn't follow me in to see Cora, though. 

Halfway to her front door I double back, suddenly wanting to get my hands on the man. Demand to know why he's back and what exactly he said to Santo. How dare he try to humiliate me in front of my brothers.

When I open the door, he's gone. But I didn't see or hear anybody get out behind me.

I'm leaning halfway in the back, running my hands desperately over the seats, about to search the trunk, when I hear a voice behind me.

"So this is what you've come to. If you'd listened to me earlier, darling, we could have fixed you. Haven't I always said that the loss of control is only sweet when it's contained to one moment? You seem to have decided you'd like to embody that. For the foreseeable future."

Cora is one of those people who refuses to age. Her hair is just as blonde as it used to be, her skin just as smooth. Some women look puffy and desperate to live forever, but she manages to make it look natural instead of painful.

She tilts her disgusted face away from me, and I follow her inside. That home office still looks mostly the same, except I'm bigger now so I can see the skyline from my sitting position. I used to always drift to the window to stare at it. I could stay there for hours, desperately wishing it would all be mine.

Now it is.

"Won't that obsession of yours be mad you're coming to see me?"

I continue to stare out the window. The man, my client, is sitting next to me. He was waiting for me here in her office. I don't know how he managed to get in before us, but he's sitting sideways so his knees brush my leg. I refuse to look at him, that vacant gaze dripping with hunger.

Would Vivienne be mad I'm here?

"If she understood, I don't think she would be mad."

Cora cocks a brow, clearly not believing me. "What would she feel, then?"

For some inexplicable reason, I think Vivienne would be sad. But I can't explain why, or how I know that. Thinking about it right now—about Vivienne, actually—makes my head hurt.

"I didn't come here to talk about her. You know why I came."

Cora leans forward, crossing her legs. Her eyes gleam and she tries to hide it. "Say it."

"I need your help."

Her lips stretch into a smile. "Never gets old. Alright, we'll do this. I know it's been hard recently, that for whatever reason you've been slipping again. It's actually quite hurtful that you've become this, Massimo. After everything I did for you, everything I taught you about how to control yourself." She sighs, shaking her head. "But I'll help you, just like I always have. Only if you promise to stop messing around with that woman. She's not good for your head."

I cover my mouth. For some reason, I feel the bizarre urge to laugh. 

That's a first.

Seeing my struggle, the man next to me starts chuckling.

I shake my head, pressing my hand harder before removing it. "No. No, no, that's not what I mean."

"Yes, well, if you're going to get better you need to get rid of all distrac—"

"I want back in. The Paradise Room."

It's silent for a while, and nothing happens. When I finally look, Cora is wearing an expression I have never seen on her. She looks horrified and a little sick to her stomach.

"Massimo," she breathes, "what the hell are you doing?"

"The thing is, even before you got me involved in all that, you always knew how to get my head on straight. Remember how you could snap me out of a blackout? But..." I rub my palms on my thighs, leaning forward, "there was nothing like Paradise. Sometimes I miss it, you know. I've never felt so much."

The man next to me is making loud noises. Long, hoarse peals of laughter. 

"No, no no no," Cora murmurs, standing so quickly her chair shoots back. "Fucking stand up and look at me. Fuck, Massimo. Tell me this is all a sick joke." When I don't move, she rounds the desk and tears at my shoulders, trying to make me stand. When it doesn't work, she lowers to my level. Her eyes are bloodshot. "You hated Paradise. Hated it. We both agreed... we agreed you wouldn't have to do anything with anyone else. You wouldn't touch them and they wouldn't touch you. I took you out of it! I stopped all those people form wanting you! What has happened to you? How... how have you given into this chaos? After everything you learned... everything you became!"

Her voice is frantic, splitting at the edges. She suddenly looks like a madwoman to me.

I tilt my head to the wall behind her, at the discs she keeps lined up on the top shelf. Forever holding onto the past.

"Do you ever watch them? Do you want to watch one now?" My face hurts so I touch it and realize I'm smiling. Cora's gone white. "Do you know that sometimes I hear them still? Their commands. Grab this, kneel here." That means you like it. It's good that you like it too. Sick little thing, aren't you? "Not too much, though. You're so good at this. How does anybody take one look at you and not want to have you all for themselves?"

Cora stares at me, breathing hard. I keep going.

"I can't ever escape them. I've never wanted to, because I understood how it was for me. The body does what it wants and the brain suffers, right?" And so you let the body be the sick vessel it wants to be, and nothing it does means anything.

But then it started to feel like it meant something.

With Vivienne. Only ever with Vivienne, of course—everything she touches turns to gold, and that apparently includes me, because being with her is like a brilliant beam of warmth on the deepest, coldest parts of me. Being with her is a precious, heavenly thing, a resplendent unity of the body and mind, a terrifying, fatal, gentle monster.

That night in her apartment, the night I'd come all over her hand like a teenager, it had shaken me deeply. The intense attachment I felt towards her afterwards, everything of before but magnified, felt so juvenile. Like a dog that receives one scrap from the table and spends the rest of its miserable life begging for one more.

All because... I had experienced it correctly, hadn't I? Somehow, even in all the mess of the way I grew up, something in me still yearned for things to be lovely and simple. That moment of release, with her, is nothing but the desperate sound of her name on my lips, Vivienne, Vivienne being all that exists and all that ever will. 

It can't be, though, because of the voices.

Because of the man next to me, and all the other ones. They'd find me eventually, ruin everything.

At her mother's house, my first private moment with Vivienne in almost two weeks... even that couldn't be sacred. She'd said something to me in the hallway as we were kissing, she brought on the voices. Fuck, you need to relax, she had said. I can't even focus when you do all that. And all my desire went away in a second. I was too much. She hadn't meant it that way but it didn't matter, the sickness was still in me.

Sex for me was never supposed to be an act involving the body. If it was, it was self-mutilation. Torture—that's all it was. Perhaps if I had found a different way to keep my brothers alive... but no. The damage has been done, it's too late, I have already become someone who can't handle his own desires. But they were never normal in the first place, so it doesn't matter.

And the horror of it all—Vivienne and I haven't even had sex.

The little we'd done was enough to change everything.

"So I need you to put me back into the room," I finish, since Cora still doesn't seem to be getting it. "They all wanted me. Remember how well I did? I bet you watch it all the time on those discs because you miss it too." Tears slip silently down her cheeks and with each one, I feel more invigorated. More certain this will work. "I need to feel it the way it's supposed to be felt! Because this feeling, Cora, it's the feeling of wanting to rip myself apart, and if she touches me I'll rip her apart too."

Finally, Cora leans back. Perching herself on the edge of her desk, she stares down at me. Stricken.

"Why me, Massimo? Why come to me for help, for this?"

The man next to me is gone again, he's disappeared. He's probably going to go talk to my family. Vivienne. That's right—she's going to know. He'll tell her because he knows she's the last person I'd ever want to find out. She'll be disgusted. 

I stand suddenly, hands itching. Pacing. Pulling—sweating—tugging on my hair.

"Because you know me like this. You like me like this." I laugh. It's not true, she only likes me when I'm crazy enough to let her control me. Too crazy and nothing can. "Another institution will split the rest of my brain apart. And quite honestly, Cora, I have been so dedicated to not stooping to the pathetic act of taking myself out of this world. Living inside one of those places again would be the same thing."

Adamo would just push for institutionalization. He would think I'm sick, and he'd be right, so she's my only option. 

Things were fine before. She'll just make me go back to how I was when I first met Vivienne. Well... after I stopped acting like I was actually going to kill her for not moving out of the apartment complex. There was a sweet spot afterwards... then I lost my head again, and I started thinking about hurting her.

I don't want to, though. I don't.

Please.

"You were right, this does make me sad."

Vivienne—she's sitting in the chair. She's here. 

"I just wish you'd talked to me instead of going to her," she gestures to Cora, who's just staring at me. "You weren't going to hurt me, Massimo."

"But I need to go to her before I can come to you." Stricken that she would feel this way, I approach her, kneeling in front of her chair. "Please understand. I'm not going to hurt you. Okay? Please. It will be better after this but you don't understand, what it's like in my head."

"Massimo," Cora interjects her voice into our little bubble and it feels all wrong, "stop this right now. She's not there. No one is. You're sick, you're fucking sick—"

"Ignore that," I tell Vivienne. "Just trust me. I'm going to get better for you."

"And it's all your fault," Cora's voice rises, and she's screaming now, "because you didn't listen to me!"

Something sharp hits the back of my head and bounces off. Cora's breathless and red with anger, chest heaving. I look around for what she threw at me and realize Vivienne's gone. 

For some reason, it feels like someone reaching into my chest and squeezing.

I'm on the floor, on my knees, and Cora's hand is on my head, carefully tilting it so I'm looking up at her. Her fingers are like icicles as she gently rubs circles into the wetness on my cheeks.

She says something but I can't hear her, I don't want to. I'm wishing I could see Vivienne again but like a creature bred for a singular purpose, I come crawling back to my master.

"Get out of my fucking sight," she's saying, her grip punishing. She must've been repeating it for a while. "Get out. I can't help you."

♛ 

UMM This book hit 100k reads yesterday and I'm ?????? Quite honestly I'm fucking flabbergasted. You ALL, silent and vocal readers alike, make me so happy. There are so many amazing books out there, so many talented writers, and I'm always going to be in awe that people want to give my book their time. You all inspire me every day. Thank you.

- G