Somehow

This was all just a bad dream, right?

The app, the sex, the mafia... Why did it take this long for me to realize this?

All I needed to do was wake up.

...

Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

---

The first hour after Maria left, it was nothing but panic. Trying to shake the chair. Shouting until my mouth ran dry...

Then I began to settle down. I could think somewhat clearly again.

There was one thought that I had to hold on to. Just one thought that gave me comfort and kept me going.

Maria made a mistake.

If she had asked me to write that email immediately, I would have agreed. I was scared out of my mind and would have done anything to escape with my life.

But she gave me 12 hours. Why?

I could only think of two reasons. One, she wanted to **** me here as long as possible. Two, she was a experienced negotiator. This is what you do. You make option 1 seem like hell and option 2 seem like heaven, and then let the other partner think. The old carrot and the stick. In this situation it was kind of pointless, I think. She probably underestimated how ready I was to piss my pants already.

Okay then. I had time to think. I had time to plan.

Let's begin.

What if I agree to her demands? It would involve writing that email and then being sent to live my life in a 'remote part of the globe'. What would that actually entail? If she was using the carrot and the stick method, she made that option sound better than it actually was.

No way would it mean a luxurious island of the coast of Costa Rica. They would want a place they could keep an eye on me. An eye on me for the rest of my life? That sounds very costly. Unless... Yes. I would be sent somewhere to work as a ****. Probably through her mafia connections. A **** worker on a **** farm in South America or Asia sounded the most likely option. Keeping an eye on me in there would be no problem at all. I wouldn't be allowed to communicate with the outside world. Every single hour of my life was monitored and the only thing that would keep me alive was how much work I did daily.

In other words, Hell. Oh and let's point out the obvious. I would lose my phone. So goodbye to the The Submission Accelerator for good. Most likely they would destroy the phone so well that no-one could ever even dream of tracking me down.

Saying 'yes' to her demands meant a painful existence and the end of my paradise for good.

...

Then again, these last two weeks... Maybe I had gotten more than one man deserved to get in one lifetime? All the fun I had... I guess I was a fool to think I could keep that up forever...

...

No no no! Fuck her! I wasn't ready to give up! I still had so many things to do, so many dreams to fulfill! I would get out of this situation even if it killed me! And one day she would beg to lick my feet!

...That was a nice burst of energy, but it meant nothing if I didn't have a plan.

...

Okay, how about this? When I start writing my email, she hands me my phone, and instead I...

No. She wouldn't be that stupid. Why would she give it to me? I didn't need to write it. This wasn't a handwriting analysis situation. All she needed was pin code and email password. Then she would probably ask a couple of sentences from me to make it sound more authentically like my kind of text. There's no need to hand the phone to me.

Let's abandon that path for now.

Okay then. How did I get here? I fucked Gloria. As far as I knew, Maria knew nothing about my other activities.

Who acts like this for fucking their daughter? Yeah sure I took her virginity but isn't this a bit too much? I mean what I did was rude as hell but was it worth destroying a person's life over it?

And how exactly did she know I fucked Gloria? Did Gloria tell on me? Why? Why at this point, after I made her deliriously happy with my dick? There were a thousand better chances for her to do that before. Okay, let's assume Maria just found out. How?

I didn't see any cameras in the house. And yes, I did check. Unless they were expertly hidden.

...Did she have a hidden camera in Gloria's room?

Did Maria seem like the person to have a hidden camera in her daughter's room?

Yes.

Right now, that seemed like a pretty ok bet to make. Which meant she didn't know only about the fucking, she knew about the... riding crop too.

Okay maybe this wasn't too much. I understood why Maria was ready to kill me.

So where did that lead me?

...

Fucking nowhere. I couldn't find an angle.

And believe me, I tried. I spent the next three hours on that alone. My limbs were starting to get numb. It was kinda of a blessing though, because they didn't hurt as much as they did before. But the silence of this room coupled with my recent chloroforming... I was really sleepy and still feeling dazzled. Yeah so Maria spies on her daughter. I can't get anywhere with that. Right now I needed to give her a reason to not send me away and not kill me.

There was only one another to angle to think about now.

Frank. Rain. 14th. Frogs Will Bloom.

For all I knew it was just some scribblings of a madwoman.

But it was the only thing that I had.

Who was Frank? No idea. While researching Maria I never ran into any Frank. Nor did she had anything to do with rain. Did something important happen to her on the 14th? No way I could remember something like that. And what about that last part? Frogs will bloom? Good luck trying to decipher that.

But then again. That was sort of the thing. It sounded like a sequence of words that needed to deciphered. Not just some memorization shit. Like some... spy talk.

...

...

Really? This was the angle I was thinking about?

As the hours wore on, it became clearer and clearer to me that this was the ONLY angle I could think about. This was the only angle that had at least one percent chance of working.

So I needed to ask myself. Do I do this and risk my life, or live a painful existence on the other side of the globe with little to no chance of escape?

The answer was obvious.

---

SLAP!

Ouch!

What a painful way to wake up.

A fucking slap on the side of my face. And there she was. The nightmare creature. Maria.

Wait, when did I fall asleep? Did I finish my plan? Oh God, what was it again?

"It's been 12 hours now, Jack. I hope you had good time to think. And look."

She held a plate in front of my face. A plate with warm toast, eggs, french fries and salad.

Jesus Christ it smelled nice. And I didn't notice until now, but I was hungry as fuck. She was an expert manipulator. No doubt about it.

She put the plate back on the ground. It was hard to look away from it.

"I'm going to remove your gag now, Jack. Then you are going to help me write that email. When I remove this, the next words you are going to say will be 'Yes, ma'am.'. You do still remember what I said about castration, right?"

Shit. Fuck. Sorry, can't do that Maria. I was risking my balls on this. But they understood. We've come this far together, just believe in me a little bit longer, guys.

The gag left my mouth. She was staring expectantly at me.

Here goes.

"Frank. Rain. 14th. Frogs Will Bloom."

She was almost immediately trying to fit the gag back in my mouth, but stopped. I had surprised her.

That was a very good sign.

"What did you say?". I think I saw signs of worry flicker on her face.

There was a chance!

"They've been watching you for a while now, Maria."

She actually took a step back, and turned her back to me. Like she didn't want me to see the signs of distress on her face.

Was this really happening? Was my extremely unlikely plan that was based on nothing but intuition and bluffing going to work?

She turned back to me, this time with a look of determination.

"You better explain yourself. Fast."

I cleared my throat. I had practiced so many times in my head. I didn't know how it sounded coming out.

"You know I've done some stupid stuff in the past, right? I mean you know everything about everyone?"

"Yes yes. Keep going."

"Well there's something you don't know. I did something really stupid. And the next thing I knew, I was in the crosshairs of a couple of FBI agents." If she was stunned, she didn't show it. "So. To avoid going to jail for a long time... I made a deal. They needed me to spy on you, and tell them information about you."

Her breathing was a little shallower now. Yes. This was a fair assumption to make. No way she was completely clean, coming from the background she came from. The worst thing she could possibly hear is that FBI was interested in her.

"Explain that sentence you said. About the frogs. Right now."

"...It was something they told me to look out for. Like try to find if you that written somewhere. ...And no, I haven't yet."

She didn't need to know that I had. The best case scenario was that she had completely forgotten that she ever even wrote it down. Therefore, the fact that I knew the sentence, made my story more believable.

She sat down on the chair in front of me. No doubt about it. I had shook her. I had zero fucking clue what that sentence meant, except that it was suspicious as fuck. And that's what I was given to play with.

She was really taking stock of the situation. Not looking at me, thinking of her next move. I could take some lead now.

"I need to contact them every 24 hours. If you're lucky, it's not been that yet. What time is it?"

She just glared at me.

"Tell me what time is it."

"It's 1 PM." She said tersely. (MARIA: +1SP) (-99SP)

Did that just happen? I got a point out of Maria?

Was this the beginning of something beautiful?

"Okay, you're lucky. I have to contact them in an hour. So..." I said, signaling with my head to my restraints.

She placed her head on her hands, looking a little demoralized.

"It makes sense, doesn't it. All of it. Your two miracles. Is Gretchen involved too?"

Excellent. I wanted her to reach that conclusion herself.

"No, not really. But FBI did contact her. All she knows that it was better for 'national security' if she gave me a passing grade on that article. As weird as that sounded to her probably."

"And the second article? You got that from..."

"From the FBI, yes. I don't know who they hired, but they did excellent work didn't they?"

She said nothing. She was just taking it all in. Her life had just been completely turned around. That's why I tried to give her as little time to think about this as possible. Just one hour.

"So." she finally turned to me. "Why in the Hell do you think I would release you now? If I kill and dispose your body, yes, it's problematic. But if I release you, why the fuck wouldn't you tell about this to the feds?"

Okay, so we were here now. The hundreds of times I went through this conversation, all the best scenarios lead her to ask me that question. Let's just hope she buys the answer.

I took a deep breath. "Because I love Gloria." She was wide-eyed now. "Yes, I planned on just seducing her to get to your house. But I fell mad in... lust with her." There was the murderous gaze again. "And that lust turned into love. I'm too deep in it. I want to work for you now. I don't want anything bad to happen to either of you."

"You spanked her with a riding crop of you fucking asshole!"

"That's our form of love. Go ahead, just ask her about it." Please don't ask her about it. Oh yes, and seems like the camera assumption was probably correct.

She was gripping her hair now.

"Look, I'm just going to assume you have some compromising video of me now? What do you think would happen if I went against you? You have a fantastic counter-argument. The feds made a CI fuck your daughter! You could have a field day in the court with that. But all of that leverage goes away if you get rid of me. You know it."

She was holding in a scream of frustration. No doubt about it.

"I love your daughter. Let's all work together here. Release me."

She took the breakfast plate and threw it against the wall. It shattered into a million pieces. After that, she stormed out of the basement.

Well that... It went well, didn't it? No loopholes, right? Keeping me alive was the better deal?

After fifteen scary, silent minutes she finally returned. We stared at each other in silence for a minute. I wouldn't slip up here, not from staring alone. I had come too far now. My story was too solid.

Then, she finally gave up. She reached behind and began untying my knots. Holy fuck. (MARIA: +15SP) (-84SP)

After my hands and legs were freed, all I wanted to do was run away from there. But I couldn't. The circulation hadn't returned. So I just fell on the floor, exhausted, like I had just ran a marathon.

Maria dropped my phone in front of me.

"You better not miss the fucking call. Tomorrow, we talk about the next move."

With that, she left the basement, leaving the door open.

Oh boy. I was so happy that I just wanted to pass out.

But no. Not yet. I grabbed my phone. I needed to see that the app was still there.

And it was!

Also...

---

MARIA DIAMANTI

-THE CRIMINAL-

ROUTE A -JUSTICE

-SEEMS FAIR-

Every time the user is aware of a crime the subject has committed, he's allowed to punish the subject. The subject will agree to the punishment if it fits their current submission score and the severity of the crime. NOTE: The punishment cannot be asking for knowledge about all the other crimes the subject has committed.

ROUTE B -CARROT-STICK

-VERY PAVLOVIAN INDEED-

If the subject is planning against / planning to disobey the user, they will punish themselves by either pinching a nipple, slapping their face or spanking their own ass. If the subject is planning on obeying the user or planning on doing things that pleases the user, the subject gets a wave of sexual pleasure.

---

Wow... These... seemed... nice...

Just... don't... pass out now....