Page 38 of Corrado

Corrado blinked, but what else could he do?

He stayed on the floor.

Bored.

He wasn’t sure how long he was down there like that, waiting for something that wouldn’t come. Long enough that he realized, somehow without a sense of time, that they were incredibly late bringing him food. And it had been a span of time since the team came in to try and beat the pride out of him, too.

He was on the floor for long enough that he was sure he would die there, wasted and broken, but it seemed like The League had one more surprise for him. Once again, when the buzz rang out in the room to signal the door opening, he didn’t move an inch.

A beating?

Food?

Les?

He doubted it would be Alessio.

It was actually … no one.

The door stayed open, light spilling in to streak across the floor from the corridor. No one came to stand there. Nothing happened at all.

Corrado kept waiting.

Still, nothing changed.

The door stayed open.

Maybe it was because his body had been put through hell, and his mind was currently shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, but he didn’t move, either. He stayed right there on the floor, watching the light spill in and waiting for something to happen.

Anything.

It was the not knowing that bothered him the most. He’d become accustomed to their routine down here, and what he could expect to happen to him. He found comfort in that—in the knowing. And right now, he didn’t know a fucking thing.

Minutes passed.

Then, maybe an hour.

It took Corrado entirely too long to get up from the floor when he realized no one was coming, and the door had been purposefully opened. Or, he suspected that was the case. They didn’t open it if they didn’t mean to.

Stumbling, weak, and nauseous with every step he took, Corrado left the dark room. He couldn’t properly process things in the light, but he forced himself to walk down the corridor. How long did that take?

Too long.

And then another corridor.

Stairs that made his bones ache.

At the top of those, he found a black door with a camera overhead. He stared up at it because the door didn’t actually have a handle on it for him to open it. Tipping his head to the side, he waited for a second before a buzz echoed, and that door opened, too.

In the next corridor, he realized all the other doors stayed firmly shut. He was being guided through The League’s complex. Only allowed to walk where they allowed him to, and granted entry to the corridors and stairwells where they wanted him to be.

The dark room taught him something else.

Trust them.

They could and would do a lot to him—everything and anything to break him, or take from him, but they wouldn’t kill him. They wanted him to understand that. They needed him to trust their process, and listen.

Orders were not always verbal.