The Giuoco Piano

Chapter 35 - Кот и мышь (Cat and Mouse)

** Trigger warning: for inferences of historic child abuse. ** 

"So, if you know how it feels to lose someone you love, to lose a child, how can you possibly do this to me?" Marlena asks Stefano, the anguish palpable in her voice. even as she tries to ignore the fact that he is hanging over her shoulder, his heavy warmth against her back, his breath hot against her naked shoulder.

She tightens her hand around the wineglass and deliberately turns on her spiked heel, aware that it will put her face to face with her tormenter with barely a centimeter between them. She looks straight into his obsidian eyes, challenging him to answer her. "I lost a child too, you know. A baby. Before Samantha died. Before I met Roman. I had a baby boy... I lost him through crib death," her eyes glisten with tears as she recalls the pain of finding her lifeless baby in his crib. "It is the worst pain I have ever experienced." She lifts her hand, her fingers folded inwards, fingernails digging into her palms again. She thumps the side of her fist into his broad chest, although not hard. Just enough to punctuate her words. To make her point.

"I would never wish that on another human being, let alone one I claimed to love. So how can you?" She holds his gaze, daring him to give her a reason, to make sense of something that makes no sense. "How can you threaten to take away my children, my grandchildren? How could you live with yourself, putting me through that kind of pain if you know what it's like?"

"I do not want to cause you pain, Marlena," Stefano says softly. "I do not intend to hurt your children. Your grandchildren. I find it distasteful to hold their lives, their safety over your head. But you would not do the things I ask if I did not."

"So, this is my fault?" she almost laughs in disbelief. "You're asking me to hurt people. To endanger people's very lives."

"They are not people you know, my Queen," Stefano says casually, as though this should make a difference to her. As though she should not care about people losing their lives because of her actions just because she does not know their faces or their names.

"I know Lidiya. And she will be terribly hurt when she realizes what I did," she says, feeling the pain in her heart at the idea of Lidiya's sense of betrayal when she discovers the truth, and she thinks that their night of passion was simply a ruse, a way in, to get what she wanted.

"If you have done your job as well as I know you can, then she will never know," Stefano raises one eyebrow and smirks. "I think the reality is much to the contrary, my dear. You gave her a night of pleasure such as she has probably never experienced before. You brought a sliver of happiness into her dreary life. You should be pleased with yourself, not reproving of me."

"Pleased with myself?" Her fist is still resting against his chest, and she pushes at him furiously before she spins away and stalks across the room. "Pleased?" She turns back to glare at him, "Are you insane?" And then she gives a hard ironic laugh. "Oh, I forgot who I was speaking to for a moment."

"There is one way to end all of this," he tells her, his expression hardening. "Submit to me. Give yourself to me, body and soul. Agree to be mine. Share my life, share my bed. I will give you everything I have to give. I will allow John and your children to go free. Just stay with me and learn to love me, Marlena."

"You are insane," she stares at him in amazement, her heart pounding in her chest. "Even if I was to agree. If I were to stay with you, I would never love you." She shakes her head, astounded at his delusional belief that he can really make her love him through threat and manipulation.

"How can I say this in a way that you will understand?" She shakes her head, the tendrils of her hair drifting around her face. "If I stay with you, if I share your bed, it will be because you coerced me. Forced me to agree by threatening the safety, and the lives of my husband and my children. You know what that is, don't you? It's rape, Stefano. It's rape." Her final words are little more than an anguished snarl.