The Great Below

The Training Session - Part 1

Alex wasn't sure he'd done anything right. The shopping bag he carried crinkled while he dug in his wallet for his key-card. Raul manned the security desk with its bank of CCTV monitors; he glanced up from a fresh copy of Cinquenta Sombres de Grey.

"Shopping?" Raul ventured.

"Why are you reading that?"

Raul tilted his head this way and that, embarrassed. "I miss my esposa. The women, they read this now, no?"

Alex shook his head and kept walking. He'd found mostly workout clothes for Octavia. He had to guess at the sizes and bought a few from each; he didn't need any grief over buying her something that didn't fit. He didn't fare so well in the undergarment section. The girl working there had tried to show him every bra that had ever been invented. Instead, he made polite excuses and bee-lined for the plainest, whitest sports bra in a size that didn't include numbers.

"Alex!"

He should have known he wouldn't make it past Dominic's open office door without another confrontation. Alex slid the bag behind his back and leaned inside. "Yes, Sir?"

"You'll be glad to know the cops ID'd the man who took you by surprise at the Elegana the other night."

He remembered the slim young man in his towel, lunging for the hotel's courtesy phone. Why couldn't Dominic have said 'the man who shouldn't have been there?'

"Richard Brandkamp." He was reading it off of his laptop. "Your target's administrative assistant – they were having an affair." His nose crinkled. "Brave new world we're living in. At any rate, I thought you'd like to know."

Alex wasn't sure if he was supposed to be comforted by the fact that a man he'd shot was only slightly less innocent than he'd thought. When he factored in the being murdered in cold blood, he imagined that Brandkamp's spouse would have been forgiving. "Thank you, Sir," he replied.

"Did you buy the girl anything I'm going to like?" Dominic asked. An exposed corner of the bag had caught his eye.

There was a tightening in Alex's chest and he had to act fast to stop his scowl from fully forming. There was no right answer to a question like that and, even if there was, Alex wasn't about to acknowledge a light-hearted ribbing about the woman they'd kidnapped. So what if he'd offered Octavia a job? Many a slave owner might have said, 'Yes, I own the half dozen people you see here, but I also pay them to pick cotton.'

#

It had started small – Victor's big, too-rough hand on her arm when she tried to sleep in. A surprise squeeze of the thigh when they watched television. Just a little pain. Just a little bruise. She didn't see it for what it was at first. Sometimes she mistook it for not knowing his own strength, other times, for sexual frustration. If she could go back and tell herself, she would describe it as 'marking.' If she could go back, she would tell herself a lot of things.

"I don't want to live here anymore."

There. She had said it, and with all the grace of forcing down the plunger on dynamite. At least she'd gone for it with both hands. Victor's face hadn't changed, but a vein in his forehead sprung to life and pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He'd just gotten in the door. His gym bag dangled from his fingers before forming a heap on the linoleum.

"It sounds like you had a bad day," he said.

"No, Victor, I've been thinking about this for a while. I need some space." It was one thing when he insisted she move in with him after only a few weeks, another when he forbade her to work. She was suffocating, and she couldn't attribute it solely to the size of his one-bedroom apartment.