The One Who Couldn’t Let Go Part 2

Three weeks passed.

I thought that would be enough time for him to disappear. Most men do. After Ghost handles them, they vanish like ghosts who got too close to the living. But not him. He sent a private courier to the my place, a boy, maybe nineteen, wide-eyed and too polite. Said the package was “from a friend.” Ghost opened it in the kitchen. Inside was a flash drive, a Rolex drenched in blood (not his, I checked), and a note written on hotel stationery.

“I can’t breathe without you. I’ll be outside the building in Room 708 until you say otherwise.”

I told Ghost to pour a drink, he poured two. Later that night, we rode in silence. Black SUV, no lights and nothing to say. The kind of silence Ghost and I know well. I wore sheer black lace under a trench coat, no bra or perfume. Men never know if they’re walking into a lesson or a fantasy until it’s too late.

We got to the hotel. Walking p to the room, I didn’t knock. Room 708 was dark except for a red lamp in the corner and a trail of cash laid out like breadcrumbs on the floor, real money, his signature. But this wasn’t a seduction, it was a cry for punishment. He was naked on the bed, face down, and breathing like he’d been waiting days, not hours.

“Miss Black,” he cried. “I’ve been good. I haven’t touched myself. I need—”…I immediately untied my coat and dropped it. “You don’t need anything,” I said with a threatening tone. “You want to be destroyed again.” I didn’t wait. I pulled his wrists behind his back, tied them with the silk belt from my coat. He gasped. I whispered in his ear:

“Tonight, I remind you who owns your you.”

I left marks. Deep, red and symmetrical, with the belt and my nails. I spit in his mouth when he begged to be kissed. When he cried, I told him to thank me louder and he did. But somewhere in all that, something shifted.

He told me he tried to fire his therapist. Tried to tattoo my name under his suit. Wanted to move into my building. Obsessed wasn’t the word anymore. Possession was setting in and it was getting dangerous.

I looked at him, used, bound, desperate, and realized: If I don’t end this now, it’ll end with one of us bleeding.

So I bent down to his ear, straddling his stomach.

“This is your final session,” I whispered. “You’ll wire $500,000 to the Cayman account. Then you’ll block this number. Erase my voice from your memory. And if you show up again…”, I glanced at the closed door where Ghost waited, “…you’ll disappear for real.”

He nodded. Still crying and now shaking. I untied him and got dressed slowly. Then I left the room without a goodbye.

In the elevator, Ghost looked at me. “You sure it’s over?” I smiled with no softness. “Oh, it’s over. But he’ll dream of me until the day he dies.”

Because that’s what I do.

I take powerful men and make them feel powerless, without ever letting them touch me.

—Shanelle Black