One week after the fight between the Salvatore families.
The question still lingered on Zane's tongue like venom: what did Lorenzo want from him?
It had been exactly one week since his entrapment, so he spent his time thinking of the possibilities Lorenzo had planned. He had thought about humiliation, yet none came. He thought about a slow, painful death by starvation, but it did not happen. He thought about torture; it was fitting considering he liked torturing men himself; no one tortured him though. Instead, although he was left on his own, he was cared for and fed.
Lorenzo came to visit him once or twice a day. He often brought dinner, and despite Zane's refusal to eat—spitting the food into his cousin's face or knocking the bowl out of his hands—much like a misbehaving child, Lorenzo ignored his tantrums.
However, then it got worse, and Lorenzo got angry.
Although Lorenzo had taken him down from where he'd been hanging from the ceiling on the first day, the older man decided chains fitted Zane better, so soon his wrists were bound behind his back and his ankles got shackled once more. Like this, he spent his days in the prison cell. Still, Zane continued to fight with every bit of non-existent strength he had left, and Lorenzo slapped him around because of this. The alpha growled at him and snarled words like, "If you won't take care of yourself, I'll be forced to do it for you!" before he shoved food down Zane's throat whenever he refused to eat. Sometimes he choked Zane, too, until his lungs burned.
Sometime later, the food Lorenzo fed him started tasting odd—sometimes bitter and sometimes salty—and was barely noticeable but always there, numbing Zane's tongue whenever he pondered it.
Zane wasn't a fool; he figured out quickly that Lorenzo had been drugging him every couple of days to keep him docile and compliant. Still, he couldn't do anything to stop it.
As the days passed by, Lorenzo rarely talked about anything, and Zane refused to shed any more tears. Then one day, Lorenzo brought someone to visit Zane.
It was Darius, Lorenzo's soon-to-be husband. The alpha that Lorenzo chose to replace Zane as the second heir, giving him everything Zane had worked so hard for. It was the same alpha who Zane once drugged with hopes of bedding said drugged alpha. Darius was naive back then. However, Zane had to admit, this time the alpha appeared more sophisticated and wise, and oddly enough, his eyes were just as maddening, hungry, and a bit dark, nearly mirroring Lorenzo's own from days earlier.
Like Lorenzo, Darius said nothing; he simply stared at Zane from head to toe every time he visited the prison cell with those same damning eyes.
Zane soon concluded that the two alphas whom he tried to kill would undoubtedly rip him limb from limb before they ended his life in the cruelest of ways.
He was sure of it.
Death would come soon.