The moon was a cold, sharp sliver of bone, casting a weak, pewter light over the restless sea. In the villa, the silence was absolute, a heavy blanket smothering the echoes of the day. The cheerful sounds of the gulls were gone, replaced by the low, mournful sigh of the wind around the cliff face and the distant, rhythmic boom of waves against the rocks—a sound that was both a lullaby and a funeral dirge for the girl in the south guest room.
Mirna lay in the center of the vast bed, but she did not sleep. The thin cotton of her nightdress felt like a flimsy defense against the memory of the day, a day that had been both a blessing and a curse. The hours spent by the pool, then walking the cliff path with Ante, had been the first truly human moments she could remember. His voice, talking of the sea's secret roads and its luminous, deep-water creatures, had felt like a key turning in a lock deep inside her, opening a door to a part of herself that was not defined by fear. For a few precious hours, she had not been Mirna, the terrified amnesiac. She had been a person, listening, learning, feeling. The ghost of a smile still tingled on her lips, a fragile, alien sensation.
But as the sun had set, the shadow of the villa had stretched over her, long and possessive. The memory of Jure's face at dinner, the cold fury in his eyes when he had watched her with Ante, had seeped back into her bones, colder than the evening air. The fragile peace she had found was a sandcastle, and she knew the tide of his obsession was coming in.
She heard it before she saw him. Not a footstep, but the absence of one. The profound silence of the night was broken by the subtle, metallic snick of her door handle turning. There was no knock. No warning. The door opened on well-oiled hinges, a sliver of darker shadow in the dark room.
Mirna's body went from a state of anxious wakefulness to a petrified, heart-hammering rigidity. She squeezed her eyes shut, feigning sleep, a child's futile hope that a monster would be fooled. She held her breath, every muscle tensed, listening.
She could feel him in the room. His presence was a physical pressure, a change in the atmosphere. He carried the scent of rakija and expensive cologne, a combination that now smelled only of dread. The soft, shuff sound of his bare feet on the marble floor was like the approach of a predator in a cave.
He stood by the bed for a long time, just looking at her. She could feel his gaze like a weight on her skin, tracing the outline of her body beneath the thin duvet. It was a possessive inventory, and she felt like a piece of livestock being valued.
Then, the bed dipped with his weight as he sat on the edge. The movement was deliberate, heavy. The scent of him, of alcohol and male intent, filled the space around her. A small, involuntary whimper escaped her throat before she could stop it.
He knew she was awake.
A low, soft sound came from him. It wasn't a laugh, but a vibration of satisfaction. "You're not sleeping, Mirna," he murmured, his voice a rough, intimate caress in the darkness.
His hand came to rest on her hip, over the duvet. The touch was a brand, even through the layers of fabric. She flinched, a full-body spasm she couldn't control.
"Shhh," he soothed, but the sound was a lie. There was no comfort in it, only a promise of forced calm. "There's no need to be afraid."
His hand began to move, a slow, stroking motion from her hip to her waist. Then, his fingers slipped under the edge of the duvet. The touch of his skin on hers through the thin nightdress was an electric shock of violation. She gasped, her eyes flying open in the gloom. She could see the broad, dark shape of him, the glint of his eyes in the faint moonlight.
"You were very… animated today with my son," he said, his tone conversational, but the undercurrent was a riptide of accusation. His hand slid from her waist to her stomach, his palm flat and hot against her. "I saw you smiling. I didn't know you could smile."
The words were a punishment. He was letting her know she was always being watched, that her every moment of happiness was a transgression against him.
He leaned over her, his face close to hers. The rakija on his breath was thick and sour. "This is your home, Mirna. I am your home. You would do well to remember that."
And then his mouth was on hers.
It was not like the kiss on the terrace. That had been a brand of ownership, a hard, public claim. This was different. This was darker, more intimate, more terrifying. It was a kiss that sought not just submission, but a response. His lips were demanding, moving against her stiff, unyielding mouth with a desperate, angry hunger. He used his tongue to force her lips apart, and the invasion was so visceral, so violating, that a silent scream echoed in the vault of her mind.
She lay perfectly still, a statue in his arms. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, her nails digging into her palms so hard she drew blood. Tears, hot and shameful, began to well in her eyes and spill over, tracing slow, cold paths down her temples and into her hair. She was a shell. A hollow, porcelain doll. If she did not move, if she did not breathe, if she made herself disappear, perhaps it would end.
His hands began to roam.
Emboldened by her passivity, by the absolute power her terror granted him, his touch grew bolder, more comprehensive. One hand tangled in her hair, holding her head in place for his devouring kiss. The other slid from her stomach, up her ribcage. His touch was not tender. It was a mapping, a claiming of territory. He was re-inscribing the borders of his possession over the landscape of her body, erasing the ghost of the smile his son had inspired.
His fingers found the soft, yielding curve of her breast through the cotton nightdress. He cupped it, his thumb brushing back and forth over the peak until it hardened, not with desire, but with a reflexive, horrified betrayal by her own body. A fresh wave of tears, silent and desperate, soaked the pillow. This was a new level of violation. This was not just her skin; this was her most intimate self, being handled like an object.
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged and hot against her wet cheek. He looked down at her in the dim light, at her tear-streaked face, her wide, unseeing eyes staring past him at the ceiling.
"You see?" he whispered, his voice thick with a grotesque parody of passion. "You see how you respond to me? This is real. This is what matters. Not his… childish stories about fish."
His hand moved from her breast, sliding down her side, over the plane of her hip, and then down her thigh. He pushed the hem of her nightdress up, his rough, calloused palm sliding against the smooth, sensitive skin of her inner thigh. She jerked, a violent, involuntary contraction of her muscles, a final, desperate signal from a nervous system pushed to its absolute limit.
He paused, his hand resting high on her thigh. He looked at her face, at the sheer, unadulterated panic in her eyes, at the silent, relentless river of her tears. He saw that she was not present. She had vacated the premises. The body beneath him was an empty vessel, a beautiful, breathing corpse.
A complex, furious emotion warred within him. The animal part of him, the part that had claimed her from the beach, wanted to take her completely, to consummate his ownership in the most primal way possible, to shatter this remaining distance and force her to acknowledge him, even if it was only with a scream.
But the strategist, the collector, held back. To go that far, to cross that ultimate threshold while she was this catatonic, might break her in a way that could not be repaired. He did not want a broken doll; he wanted a compliant one. He wanted her fear, but he also wanted the perverse satisfaction of her eventual, terrified surrender. To take her now would be an admission that he could not win her spirit, only conquer her flesh by force. And after seeing her with Ante, her spirit was the prize he craved most.
He withdrew his hand, slowly, letting his fingers trail possessively over her skin as he did so. He pulled her nightdress back down, a gesture that was somehow more degrading than the exposure itself. He smoothed the duvet over her, as if tucking in a child after a nightmare he himself had authored.
He leaned down, his lips close to her ear. "This is enough for tonight," he murmured, his voice a low, possessive hum. "It is a beginning. You are learning. Your body is learning who it belongs to."
He stayed there, sitting on the edge of the bed, for another few minutes, just watching her cry. He drank in her utter helplessness, her complete subjugation. It was a balm on the jealous rage that had consumed him all day. Ante could make her smile, but he, Jure, could reduce her to this. He could touch what he wanted, when he wanted. That was a power his son could never wield.
Finally, he stood up. The bed groaned in relief as his weight left it. He looked down at her one last time, a dark silhouette against the moonlit window.
"Sleep, Mirna," he commanded softly. "Dream of the sea if you must. But remember whose hand pulled you from it."
He turned and left, closing the door behind him with the same soft, definitive click.
The moment the door shut, the spell of petrified stillness broke. A great, shuddering sob wracked Mirna's body, then another, and another. She rolled onto her side, curling into the tightest possible ball, pulling the duvet over her head as if she could hide from the memory of his hands, his mouth, his smell. The tears were no longer silent; they were great, heaving, body-wracking sobs of utter despair and violation.
She was a shell. He had scooped her out, leaving nothing but a hollow, echoing chamber of shame and terror. The fleeting sense of self she had discovered with Ante had been annihilated, replaced by the grim, incontrovertible knowledge of her status. She was not a person. She was a belonging. A beautiful, breathing object to be used for the gratification of the man who owned her.
She cried until she was empty, until her throat was raw and her eyes were swollen shut. The moon continued its cold journey across the sky. The sea continued its relentless boom against the cliffs. And in the dark, silent villa, two forms of obsession lay awake: one burning with a jealous, possessive fire, the other frozen solid in the absolute zero of despair. The war for Mirna was no longer a battle of wills; it had become a systematic demolition of a soul, brick by terrified brick.