Page 33 of Brutal
And he plunges my head down, under the stream of water.
It catches me off guard, and I stupidly open my mouth to scream. Water rushes in, and I have just enough sense to close my mouth again and swallow the water while I try to hold my breath. I have to squeeze my eyes shut too.
Brutal is saying something, but I can’t hear what it is through the water. His hand on my head holds strong, and I have no idea when he’s going to let me up.
If he’s going to let me up at all.
I don’t want to die.
Despite everything I’ve gone through, I’ve never wanted to die.
So I start struggling, slamming my arm against his, wasting my energy and air to somehow dislodge him so I can fucking breathe again.
None of it has any effect on him. His grip is strong, and he holds me under the running water for another agonizing moment before forcing me up by my hair. I don’t care, though. The pain is hardly even noticeable against the blissful feeling of catching a breath again.
I open my eyes to look at him as I gasp in the air, and I see just how crazed he looks.
He’s out of control. Because of the drugs? Or maybe this is just how he always is.
“Did you like that?” Brutal asks darkly.
“No,” I answer honestly. I grab for the edge of the tub, gripping the edge hard like that will somehow prevent me from drowning.
“Look at you, half-drowned and filthy. You’re not better than me. You’re at the very fucking bottom, Mimi.”
If I wasn’t still out of breath, if I wasn’t so painfully aware of how precarious my situation was, I would burst out laughing. His fucking issues, all on display for me. A psych student’s dream come true.
“I’m at the bottom,” I agree, still panting hard. “What… What do you want me to do?”
“Stay there,” he says, and his laughter is wild, manic. “Instead of pretending you can get one up on me, instead of pretending like you still have some dignity or anything. Just fucking stay under my foot and remember your fucking place.”
He pushes me back under the gushing water.
I’m more prepared this time, and I manage to properly hold my breath. I make my body go slack, too. While I don’t trust him, I know I won’t manage to fight him off, but maybe I can prolong the chance of my survival.
Death by drowning.
A therapist once asked me if I had trouble with the idea of swimming. I’d been confused, until he brought up my parents.
They’d drowned. Their car had slid over the edge of a road, all the way down into the bay. One of them had tried to get a window open, but it was too late.
Maybe I’d been too young to really associate their deaths with water, back then.
Now, it feels almost fitting that I might die in the exact same way as they did.
Okay, maybe not quite the same. I don’t think anybody forced them under in some show of impotent power.
Sorry, Irene, I think bitterly. Looks like you got your sister killed. Shouldn’t have pissed off the mob if you wanted your last remaining family member to stay alive.
Brutal lets me up again, and I gasp in a few breaths while I can.
“So let’s talk,” he says, and it takes me a moment to even parse what he’s saying. “I wanna know more about you, Mimi. Let’s start with something simple. What did you do to piss off Giulio Pavone and end up in that shithole?”
“Piss off…?” I ask, confused. The water is hitting my chest, and I realize it’s going to overflow if nobody does anything.
I could let it happen. But I’m tired of this whole game, and I’m sure the water spilling over would only piss him off more, so I reach for the tap to turn it off.
He grabs my hand, preventing me from doing it. “You said you ended up in this situation because you pissed off Pavone,” he says.