The Faceless Bachelor

Part One: Innocence

First part of two. Not for the kiddies, folks. Part two will have a definite lemon.

How did she end up in this predicament? Only Pavi fully understood. It turned from him almost raping her, to them going on a date a week later. She had been terrified of him then, and he had made his attempt at the most inopportune time. He had tried that night, right after the Opera—just an hour after her father's death, just two after Mag's. And no matter how unpleasant it was, everything about the encounter was so… vivid in her mind that she couldn't keep thoughts of it at bay.

She remembered the night all too clearly. She felt the purest fear that she had ever felt. It engulfed her—if people had a fight or flee reaction, her reaction at that moment was to flee for her life. She remembered the feel of Pavi's skin against hers, and it was the first time someone had touched her sexually. Rather than being turned on, she was horrified.

And then the Graverobber showed up randomly, claiming to be her uncle. She almost believed him, and almost wished he was. If he was her uncle that meant that she wasn't entirely alone. But just after Pavi finally left, the Graverobber explained his true part of her life.

"Sorry I had to lie, kid," he said helping her walk into her house. She was shaky, still in shock from her father's death and almost being raped by Pavi Largo. "I'm not really your uncle, and my name isn't Terrance."

"Why… did you help me, then?" she asked, giving him the look of a helpless doe.

"Your father put me under contract. See, being a Repoman pays really well. He hired me as your bodyguard, and told me to watch over you in case you ever got out, but to make sure not to let you know. He gave me a huge monthly check, which I used for living expenses, my tools, and occasionally, paying off the cops."

"How did you know my father?"

"He was addicted to Zydrate until you were ten, did you know that?"

"He was? I never noticed…"

"He didn't use it in front of you. He only used it when he was supposed to be at work, and then he'd come home just in time to tuck you in, so that you wouldn't notice."

"And you're the one who sold Z to him?"

"No. I'm the one that broke him of the habit. I thought he was sadder than the prostitutes and the scalpel sluts that usually frequent the use of Z. Using it to forget his past, using it to forget his work, and using it as if he was a teenager trying to hide cigarettes from his parents? I thought he was pathetic. So I helped him quit. I was young, then. Much younger. Around 20 or so. But that's when I still had some humanity left in me, before I stooped to being a grave robber."

"I see. So, now, you're leaving me, too?"

"Sorry, kid. I'm a business man, first and foremost. There's no more money in this gig. Besides, you're a big girl. You can make decisions for yourself, and you can make it," he leaned closer to her. Shiloh scooted backwards, and he smirked. "Please, I wouldn't touch anyone that didn't want it. I was just going to say, 'I suggest carrying a weapon around from now on.' Have a good life, Shiloh." He walked away from her, and swung the door open.

"What's your real name?" she called after him.

"You didn't know? It's Graverobber," he turned, gave her one last bow, and left.

A week later, when she finally had the determination to leave her house, she was only planning to leave for a few minutes in order to buy a weapon from the weapons dealership across the street from her house. She had seen minors much younger than her enter the shop before, and had figured she wouldn't need to present any identification there.

She walked into the store, and decided immediately that she didn't like guns. She remembered how it felt in her hands as she pointed it at her father and Rotti, and she didn't like the feeling that when she pulled the trigger, someone could die.

"That one," she pointed to a knife on the second shelf. It was a silver blade, and had a dark, polished handle. It was open, but she could see that it folded in on itself to close.

"ID?" the man asked. He pointed to a sign that read, 'We Do Not Serve Anyone Under 21.'

"I'll-uh buy it for you." Shiloh froze, and turned. Pavi was standing behind her, and outside, she could see Luigi and Amber standing just outside of their limousine. He pulled out a wallet from his back pocket, and handed the man a wad of bills. "Give her a nice case, too, so that she doesn't hurt-uh herself," Pavi winked at Shiloh, and she couldn't help but feel very… awkward.

"It's to protect me from you," she finally blurted out.

Pavi smirked at her, and received the knife from the man at the counter. He gave it to her, anyways.

"You wouldn't get the chance," he finally said, "I can disarm-uh Luigi when he has a knife. How else do you think I-uh managed to live all this time with him as a brother? You need it, it's true, though."

"I'm not dating you, or screwing you, or whatever it is that you want from me," Shiloh rushed forward, towards the door.

Pavi grabbed her wrist, but he was gentler about it this time. "Won't you think a little harder about it? You are interesting, it's true!"

"Yes, but I'm not interested in you!" she snatched her hand from his grasp, and rushed out the door. She turned to walk back home.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, Miss Shiloh!" Luigi grabbed her around the stomach, and spun her around to Amber.

"I got a business proposition for you, Shiloh," Amber Sweet said, her voice dripping with sweetness. She was wearing a dark collared shirt and tight black pants with stiletto-heeled boots. She looked sexily dangerous, but at the same time, somehow professional.

"What kind of proposition?" Shiloh said, walking backward away from Amber slowly. Luigi shoved her forward again.

"Now, don't be so rough with-uh my flower!" Pavi called from the doorway.

"Shut the fuck up, Pavi, I'm doing you a goddamn favor!" Luigi yelled.

"Look, I know they make you uncomfortable. I was thinking…." Amber leaned forward, right into Shiloh's ear. Shiloh was beginning to get tired of people leaning so close to her and bursting her personal bubble. Amber whispered in a very low voice, so that neither Pavi nor Luigi could hear her at all, "I was thinking just us girls could jump in the limo and drive somewhere else. We'll go back to my office, and talk this out like the smart, mature women we are. You know? They don't need to be any part of this. Only the dumb girls want anything to do with them, and we're both intelligent. Let's just leave 'em, okay?"

Amber pulled away, and talked in a normal voice. "Otherwise, I can't do much about whatever it is they want from you. Do you really think you can go home right this minute, anyway? And what would you do when you get there?"

Shiloh figured she didn't have much of a choice. In her dress, she couldn't run faster than either Luigi or Pavi. She bit her bottom lip, and then slowly nodded.

"Okay?" Amber smiled. Shiloh didn't trust this 'nice' façade, but even though she didn't, something about it was almost soothing.

"Okay? She'll-uh do it?" Pavi's face was hopeful. Luigi was currently yelling at someone for bumping into him, so he was already unaware of Amber and Shiloh.

"She left her purse in the store. Could you get it, Pavi?"

Pavi turned to go into the store and Amber opened the door for Shiloh. She dove into the limousine, and Amber rushed in after her. Amber had just slammed the door shut when Pavi rushed out of the store, having realized that Shiloh had her purse with her, but Luigi was still screaming at the wayward pedestrian.

"Go home, now," Amber yelled at the driver. The driver turned the limo on and hit the gas immediately, and they zoomed forward. Amber opened her window and leaned out of it, yelling, "Damn right you cunts!" Shiloh just barely caught a glimpse of them chasing after the car, waving their hands.

Amber slumped back down in the seat and rolled her window back up. "I have a present for you, Shiloh, which will make your life a whole lot easier. Okay?" Amber winked.

"Just… just so you know, I don't trust you being so nice," Shiloh said, crossing her legs and brushing her dress down, looking away and to the side as she said it.

Amber raised an eyebrow and smirked. She tilted her head, considering Shiloh. "I think you need to amend that statement. You shouldn't trust anyone being so nice. There's a condition to the present, but anything you do is up to you, honestly. And everything we give to you comes with a condition."

Amber ended up offering Shiloh a trade—one date with Pavi for medical records, identification, proof she was a citizen—everything she would need to live a normal life without being hassled by the government. Amber even added the data in electronically, so that there would be no contestation about whether or not she was legal.

Nathan hadn't thought about such things when he kept knowledge of her from the world.

At any rate, the date hadn't been quite as awkward as she had imagined. Amber kept Pavi from doing anything physically unsavory, and Pavi had managed to keep conversation somewhat interesting and not-at-all creepy. But, by that point, he had found out that Shiloh did not have an uncle named Terrance Wallace.

She had even managed to pull out a little bit of his personal history from him. Apparently, Pavi's mom had been a Z-addict. When he was four, she took him camping along with his grandfather from that side. She had gotten high, and his grandfather on that side was the only one around who could help Pavi when he fell into the campfire, face first.

He had gotten there after only five minutes, but five minutes had been enough for him to have permanent facial damage.

Needless to say, Rotti made sure that Pavi's mother conveniently asked for a divorce and disappeared soon after the incident. And though Rotti had hated Pavi for being obsessed with face-collecting, he had been the one who pushed Pavi into such activities in the first place.

When she heard, she didn't know what she was supposed to do. Her father had allowed her so little contact with other people… Pavi seemed depressed, however, as he thought about it. He was looking down at his salad, and for once, he was slumped over instead of sitting perfectly straight.

She placed a hand on his wrist. He gently removed it, and said, "No, bella, you-uh should not do this."

"I… I'm sorry."

"We all-uh have inner demons, mi bella."

She felt like she should have been horrified when she touched him, out of her own free will. But, somehow, it didn't feel disgusting to her at all. Not anymore.

After the date, things turned worse. Amber had offered her a ride home—Shiloh accepted, because the alternative was walking through the city, and she wasn't completely confident in her knife.

She had thought that everything was normal; nothing Amber did hinted at anything that was to come. When the driver said, "We've arrived," Shiloh stepped out of the car, looking down at her feet to make sure that she didn't trip onto the curb. When she looked up, all she saw was the Largo Mansion and one of Amber's bodyguards placing a rucksack over her head.

She struggled, but he carried her as if she were nothing.

"You know what to do, Pavi!"Amber's voice crooned.

"Yes, brother knows what he's best at! Do it here, in the hallway!" Luigi laughed a high-pitched, inhuman laugh.

The bodyguard threw her roughly on the ground, and her back hit the wall hard. She took in a deep breath, and glanced around, confused and worried.

Luigi leaned close to her face, and asked, "Did you think you'd get away with trying to steal our inheritance?" he whipped out a knife, and held it to her face. She turned her face away from the blade, only to see Amber.

"Did you think that we wouldn't make sure that you wouldn't try to fuck things up?"

"Please, mi fratello, mi sorella! Do not-uh get in the way of my… art," he pulled Shiloh up quickly, so hard that would have fallen over again if she hadn't hit Luigi's abdomen.

"Come on, Pavi, let us watch!" Luigi whined.

"Mi fratello, if you watched, I would not-uh be able to get it up!" he turned to Shiloh, pressing her hard against the wall. He stroked her face as he said, "And this bella deserves much-uh more than that, no?"

Luigi, Amber, and Pavi shared in maniacal laughter. Pavi pulled Shiloh along down the hall, as she dragged her feet, pulling at Pavi's arm and protesting, tears streaming down her face.

"No, please, I swear I wasn't thinking of doing anything at all… Please, just don't do anything… Don't hurt me, I never did anything to you… I'm sorry! Please!"

He threw her into the room, and locked the door behind him. She was still crying and protesting, and he began laughing in a lustier tone as he walked briskly through the room. After a minute of Shiloh's crying and Pavi's strange laughter, he returned with hair gel and paper.

And here they were, sitting on the floor together. Pavi's plan was ingenious. In usual circumstances, he didn't object to rape. But in this case… This case was different. This time, he was staging the rape. Shiloh, of course, had to participate, but only because Pavi couldn't make his own noises as well as hers. They each had covered their hands in hair gel, and were clapping their hands together as fast as they could while making noises.

Shiloh continuously made half-sobbing, half-pained noises while Pavi made moans of pleasure. Meanwhile, every few minutes, they would write a quick note to each other and then clap even faster. Pavi wrote, at one point, that the pauses and the sudden bursts of quicker noises had made it all the more realistic.

At another point, he told her to pause, and then say, 'No, not there!' Shiloh paused in the clapping, and Pavi stood up and bounced on the bed a little. At that point, Shiloh yelled her line, and Pavi yelled, "You like-uh that?" in response.

Finally, he wrote, 'Stop clapping now.'

Shiloh stopped, and Pavi clapped four more times, this time louder and more forceful than before, while making strong guttural noises.

'Cry even harder.'

Shiloh began bawling. Somehow, along the way, she had gotten so terrified of being caught acting that she could do nearly anything on command. Meanwhile, Pavi began laughing again as he strode across the room, he grabbed a napkin and opened a mini-fridge that was in his room. When he came back, the napkin was covered in blood. He began removing her stockings, and when she moved to protest, he raised an eyebrow at her.

She cried even louder, and he began laughing again pretending to enjoy tormenting her.

"You done in there, Pavi?" Luigi's voice called from the other side of the door. As expected, he had been listening.

"Almost, mi fratello!" he laughed even louder. He began ruffling her clothes and tearing different parts of the fabric as quietly as he could. He instructed her to mess her hair up, and as she did that, he dabbed some of the blood down her legs.

"Let's-uh go," he pointed to the door. He leaned into her ear, and whispered, "Keep your-uh pretty head low, and if they-uh touch you, whimper and shrink away. Got it, mi bella?"

Shiloh nodded.

He pressed a piece of paper into her hands, and she quickly tucked it away in her bra.

They exited the room together, and she did exactly as she was told.

As she thought about it later, it disturbed her somewhat that he had known so much about rape, and that he had known everything about virgins, and what sounded like sex and what didn't. But at the same time, that completely was overshadowed by the fact that he had saved her. After the ordeal, Amber did take her home, and told her that if she ever tried to take the inheritance again, worse would happen to her.

Shiloh got the feeling Amber was more into torture than Rotti had been.

The piece of paper came to mind, and she pulled it out again.

"Mi bella, everything comes at a price. I shall not charge heftily for the service I paid you at the mansion earlier. However, mi bella, I would like another date. Just you and I, mi bella, just you and I and no one else. I promise it shall not end as unpleasantly for you as the last one did. –Pavi Largo"

Below the overly curvy signature of Pavi was an address and a number.

Shiloh smiled, and pulled the note to her chest. Perhaps it was a strange feeling for a strange person, but as her face turned red, she knew it was an offer she couldn't refuse.