Chapter 2: Under the Tape
The laughter died in the room like a spent echo.Gabriella lay still, her chest rising and falling in deep, weary draws. The pink silk ropes were slack now, untied from the bedposts but still coiled loosely around her wrists and ankles, a faint, rosy reminder etched into her skin. Amalia had freed her with the same surgical precision she’d used to bind her. Raena was curled on her side, watching with uncharacteristic quiet.
“So,” Amalia said, gathering the lengths of silk into a neat bundle. “Dinner.”
“Just dinner,” Gabriella murmured, her voice raspy from shrieking.She pulled her wrists free of the loose coils, rubbing the feeling back into them. The sensation was a strange blend of relief and lingering vulnerability.
“Place and time?” Amalia pressed, because of course she would.“He’s going to text me the details. Sometime next week. Somewhere without foam art, he said.”
Raena propped herself up on an elbow.“He remembered the foam art thing. That’s… actually kind of sweet.”
“He listens,” Gabriella admitted, the words slipping out before she could cloak them in nonchalance. She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The blue linen dress was wrinkled beyond saving. “He listens like you two do, but without the immediate threat of bondage and torture.”
“Our methods are sound,” Amalia stated, placing the coiled ropes back in the nightstand drawer.She closed it with a soft click, a period on the afternoon’s sentence. “You talked for three and a half hours. You would have given us a one-word summary and hidden in your room for a week.”
Gabriella couldn’t argue. She stood, her legs a little unsteady, and walked to the window. The sun was a molten drop on the horizon, bleeding orange and purple across the sky. The ocean air carried a sharp, clean scent of salt and evening.It cooled her flushed skin. Behind her, she heard the rustle of the others moving, Raena hopping off the bed, Amalia smoothing the duvet.
“I’m hungry,” Raena announced.“Interrogation burns calories. Nonna made lasagna.”
They filed out of the room, the dynamic shifting once more.From captors and captive back to sisters. The house was warm and noisy, filled with the rich, garlicky smell of Nonna’s cooking and the low thrum of a baseball game from the living room where their dad was planted. Dinner was a chaotic, overlapping symphony of questions about their day, passed bowls, and debates over whose turn it was to load the dishwasher. Gabriella offered the bare minimum—“went for coffee, it was fine”—and her parents, occupied with their own rhythms, accepted it.Amalia gave nothing away. Raena almost exploded twice with pent-up commentary but was silenced by a well-placed kick under the table from Amalia.
Later, showered and in soft sleep shorts and a faded band t-shirt, Gabriella lay in the dark of her room.The phone screen glowed like a captured moon in her hand. The text thread with Leo was still new, a short, bright column on the screen.
You survive the debrief?he’d sent an hour ago.
Barely, she’d typed back.I may have permanent rope marks.They’re very thorough.
I’ll consider that a warning.For the record, I bruise like a peach.
A laugh had snorted out of her, too loud in the quiet house. She’d had to smother it with her pillow.Good to know, she replied.
Now, his last message sat there: Thinking about that Thai place on Marine Drive.Next Friday?A real dinner. A weekend night.A place you went to on dates.The weight of it was both terrifying and exhilarating. She typed Yes, sent it before she could overthink, and immediately dropped the phone onto her chest as if it had grown hot.This was different. The coffee had been an extension of their existing dynamic, customer-and-barista tipping into something else. This was a clean slate, a declared intention.He was asking her out. Gabriella Brignoni, not the girl who came in for a latte with otter art.The door to her bedroom creaked open without a knock. A slice of hall light stretched across the floor, framing two silhouettes.
“Can’t sleep?” Raena whispered, though whispering for her was just talking in a slightly strangled tone.
“I was sleeping until you broke the door down.”
Amalia padded in, serene as a ghost. She perched at the foot of the bed. Raena flopped onto her stomach beside Gabriella, propping her chin in her hands.They didn’t turn on the light. The room was a landscape of deep blues and grays.“You said yes, didn’t you?” Amalia said.
Gabriella didn’t bother asking how she knew.“Thai. Next Friday.”
“He has good taste.That place is fantastic,” Raena said.“You should get the drunken noodles. But not actually drunken.You need to be articulate.But also, not too articulate. You don’t want to seem like a know-it-all.”
“Your advice is a labyrinth of contradiction,” Gabriella muttered.
“What are you going to wear?” Amalia asked, cutting through Raena’s noise.Always the planner.“I don’t know. It’s a week away.”
“It’s never too early to strategize.The blue dress is coffee.