The Politician

"This is delicious," I stuffed my face with more bolognese and grabbed another piece of garlic bread. "Thanks for feeding me!" I chirped happily at the cook.

"She's supposed to be feeding me," Marco scowled at me from his place in the kitchen. "Honestly, the way you consistently make me get out of bed rest makes me think you don't care about me."

"I don't," I grinned at him and shoved another forkful of food into my mouth, closing my eyes to savour the moment. "This sauce is godly."

Marco looked grossed out and snatched the fork from my hand as well as my plate. Ever since he'd gotten injured, he acted like he had a right to boss me around and do whatever he wanted. It was getting old very quickly. Like, I know he caught a bullet for me or whatever, but he was really abusing his power.

"Wow this really is delicious," he gave me an irritating smile and went towards the stove to get more. "Are you done with them already?"

Them, of course, being reference to the people he had so kindly brought to the dungeon for me to have my way with. It was maybe because we were birds of a feather, but I was glad Marco understood and gave me this chance. It's not that I considered it a favor by any means, but he was still under no obligation to kidnap people for me, considering I was a kidnappee myself. "No, I just came up here to get something to eat. What are you doing out of bed?"

"I was hungry and you weren't answering the bell so I came down here myself," he shrugged like it was just normal to get out of bed with a bullet wound in your side and came to sit next to me. "You should really be more attentive to other people's needs."

"I'm always attentive to others needs, just not yours," I grabbed another fork and took a bite out of the bolognaise in his plate.

"Well you should start sometime soon."

"Is that a threat?" I raised my eyebrows at him. If he thought I'd hesitate to shove my pointer finger into his wound, he was sorely mistaken. Katarina Montenegro was not one to be trifled with, he should've known that by now.

"It is not a threat, I'm just saying. You think everything is a threat coming from me," he gave me a weird look and continued eating his food. "It's getting weird."

"Gee I wonder why? It's not like you've threatened to kill me more than once or anything," Marco rolled his eyes at me. During interactions like these I couldn't help but think that if it wasn't for the blood feud between our families, we could have been friends. Well, that and also if he wasn't such a psychopath.

"I never threatened to kill your dramatic ass."

"So holding a gun to my head or having your hand wrapped around my throat isn't a threat? Damn, I should do that to the Brazilian President," my sarcastically thoughtful expression was beginning to get under his skin, which was good because that was the entire point.

"Not in my book," he took another bite of his pasta while staring at me. The arrogant ass was shoving it in my face. He had a plate and I didn't. How dare he?

"That's because you're psycho. I liked the choking thing though, you should do that to me again," I twirled my hair around my fingers absentmindedly. My brain was once again playing over his grip round my neck. What a fabulous day, that was!

"What? Why?"

��Oh, I thought you'd know, considering you're what I suspect to be a dominant male, but anyway," my hands animated the choking motion. "There's this thing called erotic asphyxiation where you get your air supply cut off when you're close to org—"

"I know what erotic asphyxiation is!" If I didn't know any better, I would've thought he was blushing. "You're such a freak!"

"The freakiest," I threw a wink at him and giggled. Messing with him was the best part of being stuck in this house, and I'd take any and every opportunity to do so.

"What is wrong with you?"

"Anything and everything, my friend. Well!" Standing up from the stool, I waved at him giddily. "I'm off to finish what I started. Bye!"

The walk down to the dungeon was nice and quiet, the way it should've been, and I used the pin code that Marco gave me to open the doors. The pin code would reset every twenty-four hours to ensure guests wouldn't misuse it, and obviously I wasn't planning to misuse it.

I skipped right past the cell Lina had been held in and went right next door to the cell where the politician was. My knuckles rapped on the door twice and it slid open, revealing the fat man strapped from all four limbs to a wheel. It honestly amazed me how many medieval looking devices Marco's family had buried away beneath their house. They had something for everything, and when I'd told Marco that I wanted this man to suffer more than the rest, he immediately suggested the wheel like I even knew what that was.

I did know what it was but that's not the point. He'd even been so kind as to make someone spin the disgusting man around a few times. He was disoriented and complaining about a headache in no time, so I spun him upside down and left him like that while I went back upstairs to eat something.

These were my first experiences with torture, and it had just corroborated that I did not have a bloodlust, I just wanted to make him suffer.

"Hello!" My voice came out more chirpy than I'd intended, but rather than surprise him, he barely nodded at me. "Yikes, guess you must be passed out, huh?" I put my hand on the edge of the wheel and gave it a single spin, watching quietly as he groaned in pain. The feeling of blood rushing down from being pooled in ones head was very painful, that much I knew. "Wake up!"

He barely reacted from my smack, so I slapped his temple repeatedly until he groaned again and began to squirm around. That was more like it. I took a seat on the steel chair in front of him and patiently waited until he was fully conscious. We looked at each other quietly until he broke the silence with a muttered prayer. The whole ordeal was so ridiculous that I had to roll my eyes.

"The Lord's Prayer isn't going to help you here, buddy. Try a Hail Mary, maybe the big J-man won't be completely fed up with hearing that one," he looked at me with terrified eyes, but I simply made a shoo motion with my hands. "Go on! Maybe that'll save you from this."

I grabbed hold of a torchlight and clicked it on, watching with silent delight as the flame turned blue. His eyes immediately widened and he began to struggle, sending me into a fit of laughter. A big man—in every sense of the word— now rendered useless like a squealing pig. What was even funnier, he started yelling out the Hail Mary, just as I'd suggested. This was going to be fun. Mental terror was my specialty.

"Do you want to know why he isn't hearing you?" I held the torch up and began motioning around with my hands, pretending to ignore the way his eyes frantically followed the flame. "Because they're holy, unlike you and I. See, me? I'm a gangster's daughter, so I was born neck deep in sin and blood. Everywhere I go, people drop dead like blood cells. This is my kingdom, and when I take over, it'll be the only thing I'm known for. You? You weren't. You were born an innocent sinner, and then you grew up and suddenly you weren't so innocent anymore. And then, a child was born, and they were innocent too, until you laid your eyes on them, and you did everything in your power to have the upper hand. Suddenly, they weren't innocent anymore, but unlike you, they didn't get to grow up first, did they?"

He stared at me, eyes wide and fear embedded deep in them. It seemed that Marco's habits were seriously rubbing off on me because I felt abnormally happy and an urge to hurt him was consuming me. "Now tell me," I began pacing around, turning off the torch while I was at it, "which one of us do you think is more fucked up? Is it me?" He didn't answer me, but he was shaking. "Let's evaluate the equation, shall we? See, I kill people. That's a given. The Italians kill people too, and they might traffic them here and there, but those people usually end up in good places. I don't traffic people, though. I move drugs back and forth, though. But anyway..."

"I kill people, but once their dead, it's over. They don't have to suffer anymore, unless they go to hell, that is. In that case they probably deserved it. But when I kill people, everything they hated goes away, and they're left in peace," I stopped pacing and turned to point at him with the blowtorch again. "You're a public servant. You're supposed to defend and protect the people, especially children because they're the future."

He was shaking in place, and I could see that the lump in his throat was preventing him from swallowing well. I waited for the begging to start, but it never did. He just looked at me, so I sighed, already fed up. "Do you want me to spare you?" He nodded frantically. "Then I'm going to need you to do something for me."