Instead of a house in the suburbs and two-point-five kids, my future now holds a heavily guarded compound near the Amazon jungle and a man who both excites and terrifies me. It’s impossible for me to imagine having children with Julian, and I dread the fact that in a few short months, the three-year birth control implant I got at seventeen will cease to be effective. At some point, I will need to bring up this issue with Julian, but for now I’m trying not to think about it. I’m no more ready to be a mother than I was to be a wife, and the possibility of having that choice forced on me makes me break out in a cold sweat. I love Julian, but raising children with a man who thinks nothing of kidnapping and killing? That’s a whole other matter.

My parents and friends back home aren’t helping. I spoke once with Leah, telling her about my hasty marriage, and her reaction had been shocked, to say the least.

“You married that arms dealer?” she exclaimed incredulously. “After everything he’s done to you and Jake? Are you insane? You’re only nineteen—and he should be in jail!” And no matter how much I tried to spin everything in a positive light, I could tell she got off the phone thinking that my abduction left me a few cards short of a full deck.

My parents are even worse. Every time I talk to them, I have to fend off their probing questions about my unexpected marriage and Julian’s plans for our future. I don’t blame them for adding to my anxiety; I know they’re worried sick about me. The last time we had a video call, my mom’s eyes were red and swollen, as though she’d been crying. It’s obvious that the hastily concocted story I told them at my wedding has done little to alleviate their concerns. My parents know how my relationship with Julian began, and they’re having a hard time believing I could be happy with a man they see as pure evil.

And yet I am happy, my fretting about the future aside. The icy emptiness inside me is gone, replaced by a dazzling abundance of emotions and sensations. It’s as though the black-and-white movie of my life has been redone in technicolor.

When I’m with Julian, I’m complete and content in a way that I don’t fully understand and can’t quite come to terms with. It’s not like I was miserable before I met him. I had great friends, a loving family, and the promise of a good, if unexceptional, life ahead of me. I even had a crush—Jake—who gave me the proverbial butterflies in my stomach. It makes no sense that I somehow needed something as perverse as this relationship with Julian to enrich my life and give me that which I was missing.

Of course, I’m no shrink. Perhaps there is an explanation for my feelings—some childhood trauma that I’ve repressed, or a chemical imbalance in my brain. Or maybe it’s just Julian and the deliberate way he’s been molding my physical and emotional responses since those early days on the island. I am cognizant of his conditioning methods, but my recognition of them doesn’t alter their effectiveness. It’s strange to know that you’re being manipulated, and at the same time enjoy the results of that manipulation.