Page 1 of Control
Prologue
Daniela
I don’t know how I got to this point. I don’t know why I keep coming back.
It’s not like I have much of a choice, though, do I?
I can’t pretend I don’t feel it. The pull. The heat. The desire.
The way he touches me…like he owns every part of me, like he’s taking something but also giving something, something I can’t name.
When he looks at me, there’s a coldness to it, a depth like he sees everything I try to hide.
Running doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t stop the hunger. That primal, animalistic hunger to be taken. Owned. Possessed.
I hear his voice in my ear, and it makes my skin crawl in all the wrong ways. And yet, I crave it. The sting. The fix. The way he fucks with my mind and body until I’m not sure where I end and he begins.
It’s funny how easily we can become addicted to chaos.
I knew that from the start. I still know it. But somehow, it doesn’t matter.
Because when it comes down to it, we will do anything to satiate the hunger with something that makes us feel alive for a second, even if it’s just an illusion.
Chapter 1
Daniela
Nights like this devour the city whole.
Brooklyn, at this hour, is like a beast, restless and cold. Shadows in the dark stretch and twist, muffling sounds, swallowing light. Nothing sleeps.
It’s my favorite time to be out.
I step into the street, the city’s pulse tugging at me. Distant sirens wail, voices blur into echoes, and a car horn in traffic slices through the air. My boots scrape the pavement as I walk, but any sound I make is swallowed by the noise.
I mutter to myself, but it’s more of a reflex than a real thought. I’m alone, and I don’t need anyone to answer.
The music in my headphones pounds and syncs with my heartbeat, and every thump is a reminder that I’m still alone here, still moving. Still breathing.
The city has a way of making you feel, even when everything else is trying to tear you apart. Maybe that’s why I come out at this time. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t need to be pretty, kind, or safe. It just exists. And somehow, it lets me exist too.
Arriving at my spot for the night, I let my hand take over. The brush moves on autopilot, sweeping across the rough surface of the wall. Colors burst under my touch—orange, blue, red—as I try to drown out the emptiness. As I try to patch the hollow spaces where everything else has rotted away.
This wall is no different from me. No one notices it. People pass by, their eyes sliding over it like it doesn’t exist. But I see it. I see something worth saving.
I pause, my brush hovering in mid-air. There’s a crack running through the concrete, jagged and deep, like a scar that never healed. It’s been there for years, but tonight, it catches me and holds me.
“You know,” I whisper to it, “you’re kind of like me. A little broken.”
The crack doesn’t answer—of course, it doesn’t. So I keep painting. Maybe if I cover it up, it won’t matter anymore.
When my parents died, the world didn’t stop. No grand gestures, no cosmic pauses. Just an empty black hole where their lives used to be. I tried to fill it with scraps—memories as well as stories I spun to make sense of it all. But the hole wasn’t satisfied. It ate everything. Pieces of me and things I didn’t even realize could be lost, all swallowed without a trace.
Now, the only way I know to push back against the emptiness is to leave something behind. To take blank walls and turn them into something alive, something loud, something no one can walk past without noticing. Maybe if I create enough, I’ll finally feel like I’ve given them something back. Or maybe that’s just another lie.
Either way, the brush moves, and for tonight, it’s enough.
The warehouse smells like rust, mildew, and regret. It’s the kind of stale air that seeps into your skin. A forgotten place in a forgotten part of the city. But here, in this hollowed-out space, I’m free. Free of the weight of my failures, free of the chains that wrap around me everywhere else. At least while I’m painting.
