Confinement

I woke up bound in a room with rings in the walls and two women ready to make me talk. They made one mistake: they left me alone with their own instruments.

I woke up tied up in a basement, naked and at the mercy of the woman I was investigating. I had no idea that in a few hours I’d be the one holding the whip.

When Elena opened the doors, the smell of burned flesh reached her before the sight. Two broken bodies, a filthy job, and a guard determined to stop it.

I woke up cuffed to the ceiling in a room full of whips and rings. Two women meant to break me. No one warned them I learn fast.

Rodrigo crawled behind her heels through the castle halls, naked and with the collar biting his throat. That was the queen’s breakfast.

By the time Sebastián finished describing the process, I already had to invent an excuse to go to the bathroom. I never imagined that the next day I’d be the one asking for it.

I had been locked in the cage for three weeks when Valeria invited her friends to dinner. I was going to be the entertainment.

I left the panic button on the cot pillow. The bars pressed into my back when his tongue went down, and I knew I was no longer his lawyer.

Rodrigo hung from the Pillar on the brink of collapse. Valeria could not defy the Queen, but she would not let a healthy man die through negligence.

I woke with my hands tied in a dark room. I didn’t know how I got there. I did know I was investigating the wrong people.

Rodrigo hung from the Pillar of the Condemned when Catalina crossed the threshold. Guard Nora already had her hand on her dagger. There were rules no one broke in that castle.

They arrested me at four in the morning and I thought everything was lost. I had no idea what my lawyer would do when she came into that cell alone with me.

Hanging on tiptoe with his neck bitten by metal teeth, the captive awaited death when the healer found the gap between the order and mercy.

When he opened his eyes, he was pinned motionless to a cold table. Five women in white aprons surrounded him, and the leader held something that gleamed.

I woke up tied in a room full of chains and cameras. What she didn’t know was that I had learned to fake a faint better than it looked.