I know I’m in his bed even before my mind registers anything else. I can feel the weight of his gaze on me and as my eyes drift open, as though he’d ordered them to. I see him staring down at me from his towering height. I can’t even begin to describe how creepy it is to have your captor watch you while you sleep. I’m grateful to find that I have my clothes on this time but still, I want to pull the comforter over my head and hide away from him. He says nothing as he walks away and returns within the same second with a bottle of water in one hand and a bottle of cough syrup in the other hand. “Sit up.” I have to fight against my body to do as he commands but I manage to prop myself up. He sets the bottle of cough syrup down on the nightstand before twisting the cap off the water bottle. “Open your mouth.” When I hesitantly part my lips, he drops two pills inside my mouth. “Drink it.” The cold water feels good going down my throat, but it elicits a shiver. When I’ve had enough, he pulls it away and sets it down on the nightstand. He then takes the bottle of cough syrup and pours an ample amount into the measuring cup. My mouth opens before he says the word. He settles the cup against my lower lip and slowly tips it forward. It’s artificially flavored death disguised as cherry liquid. I swallow it down with eyes closed like I did the night before. With any luck I’ll wake up to find that this has all been a nightmare.
The thud of my heart slamming against my rib cage provokes a domino effect in my body, causing my head to start pounding and my pulse to race when I feel the roughness of his palm against my forehead. That hand slides down my face and he cups my cheek, sending me into a tailspin of conflicting emotions. Everything comes at me all at once and I want to cry, I want to fight him, hurt him, I want to shove him away from me and run. But most of all, what ultimately prevails, is wanting to crawl into his lap and let him do whatever he wants with me, so long as he touches me only this way. It takes every ounce of energy I have left to not succumb to that debasing need to turn into that hand and bask in this small show of tenderness.
But what makes this situation even more depressing, what twists the knife even further in, is that this is the closest I’ve come to being cared for in a very, very long time, and that care is coming from a person who’s only objective is to hurt me. Who has hurt me. And will undoubtedly do it again and again and again until I inhale and exhale my agony.
He gives me this look like he knows exactly what I’m thinking, like my thoughts are written across my forehead and he can read every last one of them. He closes the distance between us, leans into me so that he is all I can see and then he whispers, “Sleep.” His breath warms my cheek. “I need you well so that I can have the pleasure of ripping you apart again.” That utterance freezes the blood in my veins and sends my heart into a free fall. He’s extremely good at that. Making me want him one second and hate him the next.
***
With as much medicine as I’ve taken, I shouldn’t be able to dream, and yet, the underlying concern for my mother bleeds into my subconscious and haunts me, torments me with such crushing guilt that I suffocate from the force. I wake up with a gasp and bring my hand to my chest like that will help me get the air I’ve deprived myself of. “Breathe,” he says, and then he’s there. Solid, real, and warm. An anchor in the tumult of my own making. He fists a hand through my hair and pulls me to his strong chest. “Stop thinking…just breathe,” he murmurs above me, the command a deep reverberation in his chest and it’s what my body ultimately listens to, as I draw in deep, even breaths. “That’s a good girl.” My stomach flutters at those words. “You were calling out for your mother.” And my stomach drops. I don’t want to talk about this with him or anything else personal for that matter. My first instinct is to pull away from him but when I shift, the fist in my hair tightens considerably enough to bring tears to my eyes as he tugs my head far back enough for me to meet his gaze. “Move again and I’ll forget you’re sick, understand?”
I can barely give him a nod but the small jerk of my head seems good enough for him to loosen his grip. “You seem to have a knack for carrying around guilt you don’t deserve. What is it about these people that aspire such loyalty from you?”
“They’re my family.”
“They’re predators.”
My anger flares and results in me saying, “I guess you would know a lot about that.” Funnily enough, I don’t regret it after I say it. I expect his immediate punishment for my boldness, my body stiffens reflexively, bracing itself for it. But it never comes. His expression remains impassive and though his eyes narrow, he remains silent as he stares intently at me. He makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds suspiciously like a chuckle, but I can’t be too sure.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I am. I prey on people and do things to them that you’d never want to imagine. I make no apologies for it. I will never deceive you into thinking I am anything else. Can you say the same thing about your mother and brother?”
“You don’t know them. You don’t know me. You think you do, you think just because you know a few personal things about my life that you have me all figured out but you don’t.”
His condescending attitude is like a tundra to my blowtorch fury. “I know you want your mother back. And I know exactly how and where to find her.” And just like that, he shoves my world off its axis. I take advantage of his slackened hand in my hair and push away from his chest to look at him.
“She’s…she’s not dead?” That’s what I had been so afraid to say before, because saying it would’ve somehow made it true. But now the words fall freely and I’m so desperate for him to confirm them, that I involuntarily rest my hand on his hand.
Like a hawk, he tracks the tiny movement, only to have his gaze shift up a fraction of a second later. Eyes like lightning over an ocean stare back at me from a frighteningly handsome face. “There it is again,” he murmurs cryptically.
I frown. “What?”
“Your hope. You’re radiating with it just now. I’m wondering if I should rip it away or let you hang on to it for a little bit longer.”
“Please…don’t.” My hand, still on top of his, clamps around until my fingertips are enclosed in his palm. “Just tell me, tell me she’s not dead. Tell me she’s okay.”
“She’s not dead.”
My heart jumps, sending my emotions all over the place, but nothing is more prevalent than the relief that rushes throughout my entire body in a surge of happiness. I can feel the prickle of tears behind my eyelids, but I blink furiously to fight them back. I take in a deep, shuddering breath and look down at our hands. With my mind racing a mile a minute, I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from blurting out what I’m thinking. I know nothing about him. We’re not friends. We’re not even lovers. Violence is all I’ve experienced with him. I’ve only known him two weeks and what he has done to me in that time span can only be classified as abuse, rape even. But then, there are times like this when he shows me slivers of kindness.
I swallow hard around the lump lodged in my throat that feels suspiciously like my pride. I have to remind myself a few times that I need to stop being selfish. This isn’t about me. It’s about my mother. She’s alive and he knows where she is. He knows how to find her. “I…” The words retreat to the back of my throat. Diffident—afraid to be uttered. What will the price be this time? How much more of myself will I need to sacrifice to him for the sake of my family? First Dante, and now my mother. At this rate I’ll be indebted to him until I die.
“You think too damn much.” I flinch when he flicks at my forehead. “Spit it out.”
“You say you know where my mother is…I need, I’m asking you to please help me bring her back home.” I’d run out of options weeks ago.
“You’re better off without her,” he says dismissively, rising from the bed.
“Please…” I reach for his arm before he moves too far away. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I know I can’t let him leave like this. There isn’t anyone else I can ask for help. Knox
is the only one I have left. Desperate times call for desperate measures. “I don’t have anything else to give you.” I fight back the dizziness, clench my teeth, and ignore my pounding head, as I slide off the bed. I fall to my knees in front of him. “But you can have me for longer than the twenty-five sessions.” I’m suddenly so tired. So tired of everything. I rest my head on his thigh and even with the rough fibers of his jeans separating my skin from his, I can still feel his sun-hot heat against my cheek. The heady musk of his scent fills my lungs as I take in a shuddering breath. “I’m yours for as long as you want me.” I say it so quietly, as if I’m not sure I want him to hear it.
“Hmm.” His hand sifts through my hair before it slides to cup my chin. He tilts my face upward, forcing me to look at him. “I let you keep your hope and this is what you decide to do with it? But then again, you fascinate me with how beautifully you play this role, Lacey.” Wryness is evident in his low tone. “You even supply the tools needed to nail you to your own cross.”
I shake my head as best as I can, “No, that’s not…”
“I’ll get her back,” he interjects quietly. Taking hold of my arm, he tugs me to my feet and jostles me back into his giant bed. “Stay in bed. Get better.”
I blink at him, still stuck on the idea that he is actually going to get my mother back. He is going to find her and bring her back to me. Finally. After all this time, I’m going to get to actually hold her again. My mind jumps from thought to thought, wondering the sort of condition she’s going to be in when she gets back. “She’s going to need me,” I’m hesitant to voice, not sure of how much it’ll take before he snaps.
“That’s not my problem. Understand that nothing concerns me but you and how effective you are at doing what you are told,” he states with cold finality, leaving no room at all for me to oppose him. “You will not leave this room until I return.” He leaves me with those words as he walks across the bedroom and I don’t blink until he opens the door and disappears behind it. I hear a key turning twice in its lock and then the jiggle of the door handle as it’s pushed down. He’s testing to see that it’s been locked properly, effectively trapping me inside. I don’t know if he’s gone because I can’t hear anything else but my wheezing breaths in the pin drop silence that follows.
Seated in the middle of the bed that can fit two or three more people comfortably, I wrap my arms around my raised legs and rest my chin on my knees. I sit like this for a long time after, staring listlessly around the room that is now my prison. With all that’s occurred, I wasn’t able to examine his room before. But given that he’s taken my freedom away once again, there is nothing but time now. It’s a pretty big room, styled in the same impersonal, understated lines of the bathroom and living room. Blacks and whites with touches of gray, sum up the color scheme. Three of the four walls are white, the fourth is an accent wall painted black that frames the bed. I assume there’s a window behind the dark gray curtains to my far left. The dim lighting of the room is made possible by light fixtures hidden into the walls.
I search for any touch of him, something personal that will give me insight into the sort of person he really is. I don’t know where the sudden interest comes from, but there has to be more to him than this callous, impassive persona he shows. No one that heartless can do what he’s done for me. And it’s these acts of kindness that I choose to cling to. Just the fact that he said he was going to find my mother and bring her back, despite all that I still owed him, is beyond anything I could’ve expected from him. I’m grateful to him because of that. Whatever I’m giving up now is nothing compared to what he’s giving me in return. No longer able to stand the pounding in my head, I fall back to the bed and curl up on my side.
I don’t know what he did with my comforter but the one I pull over myself is nothing at all like my threadbare one he used to cover me from the cold to bring me here. He doesn’t seem like the type to wear cologne but his scent, all intrinsically male, is drenched in every fiber of bedding around me. Even the pillow beneath my head smells like him. I close my eyes and inhale deep, dark, and smoky, like being around a campfire, with an undertone of leather and sandalwood. It’s the sort of smell that goes to a girl’s head and makes her do stupid things. I have a knack for getting myself into trouble, but I’m the furthest thing from stupid. I can only imagine what’s waiting for me if I allow myself to contemplate any further than what is expected of me. But in spite of myself, I nestle deeper beneath his comforter, surrounded by warmth that radiates his scent, and my eyes drift shut. I dream of ropes, chains, and whips.
All of the next day is spent in limbo. The mixture of boredom and my cold has me taking naps between runs to the bathroom to empty my bladder. I barely hear from him, barely see him, but there’s always a tray of food on the nightstand when I wake up from my naps. I have the bottles of cough syrup and aspirin to self-medicate and once or twice, I even contemplate taking a little too much of each just to put a stop to everything. But I’m too much of a coward to go through with it. To fight off the crazy thoughts, I slide off the bed and stretch my legs. I’m feeling mildly better than I was yesterday and the day before. My head isn’t pounding and I only have the occasional irritating dry cough now. My body has always been resilient; it’s been a curse and a blessing.
The carpet absorbs my footfalls as I walk around the room when my eyes catch the dark gray curtains and I’m moving toward them before I can convince myself against the idea. I have no way of telling what time it is. Maybe looking out the window will give me a small indication, and maybe even provide something else for me to look at for a while. The curtains aren’t made of linen like I originally thought, but a tweed-textured fabric that feels thick in my hands. From where they meet down the middle, I pull the left side away and gasp at what I see behind it.
It’s not a window at all.
Hurrying over to the opposite end, I pull back the right side, revealing fully the massive full-length mirror hinged on the wall. Starting on the floor, my eyes travel upward until I have to tilt my head back to the ceiling to see where it ends. It’s framed by thick, black ornate wood that compels me to reach out and touch it. Running my hand along the frame, I feel small in its reflecting shadow and as my eyes move back down, I catch a glimpse of myself in the cold, giant glass. I look like the aftermath of a disaster. Bags under the eyes, ratty hair, bloodshot eyes, and sallow skin. I’m still wearing the baggy sweats I came here with. There is nothing remotely attractive about the girl staring back at me and it’s just as well that he would put me in this room, lock me up, and ignore me. Even I wouldn’t touch me looking like this. But just as quickly as the thought comes, I’m quick to knock it back down. What the hell am I thinking? Surely it’s better to be left alone and ignored than be subjected to his touch. And if looking like this made that happen, then why the hell am I complaining?
I don’t know how I do it, but suddenly, my fingers catch on something midway down the frame of the mirror and I hear a click. It’s barely audible and I would’ve convinced myself I’d imagined it if it wasn’t for the small piece of metal beneath my fingertips. Stepping to the side of the mirror, I lick my lips and dart a nervous look around me, expecting him to step out of the shadows and demand to know what I’m doing. I wait, and thankfully, there’s no sign of him. My eyes revert back to the frame, more specifically to what my fingers are touching, and as I tilt my head to the side, I can clearly see it now. The D-shaped ring is so small that it blends in with the frame’s black, intricate woodwork. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t running my hand down the frame.
The click I heard more than likely released the now slightly jutting panel on the side. I reach out to pull on it but my right hand stops midair and as I take a second careful look around the room, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s around. I know he isn’t there. I saw him leave. But invading someone’s privacy, especially someone like Knox, is bound to make you a little jittery. My curiosity, however, trumps my anxiety right now
, so before I can chicken out completely, I gently tug on the panel. It’s heavy and it takes a few more tugs to get it to come free. When it does, I quickly realize, with cold dread, that I really should’ve just left it alone in the first place. The panel is divided into four shelves; the top, two middle shelves, and the bottom.
There is an unknown source of light that illuminates each shelf and with it the multitude of weapons lined within. The light, however, gleams more off the repository of polished surgical instruments and knives on the top shelf. The second shelf holds tools you would find at a hardware store. Drills, hammers, wrenches, and screwdrivers. It continues down to the third shelf where zip ties and ropes of all different types of width and braid patterns hang in perfectly lined rows. And then, there are the guns on the bottom shelf that really drive in the fact that I may have just stumbled on something far more dangerous and chilling than I ever realized.
Knox is a killer. Maybe even a serial killer. He wasn’t simply bluffing when he said he was going to do those things to Dante. These weapons are proof that he’s very much capable of killing someone. Maybe he’s done it already. Nausea rises in the back of my throat and I have to swallow around the bitterness to chase it back down. With shaking hands and a battering heart, I push the panel back into place, hoping, praying, that he doesn’t notice I’ve messed with it. I return to the bed on wobbly legs. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. All I feel is this enveloping numbness that has me curling up on the bed, knees to my chest, with my arms wrapped tightly around them. What is he going to do to me when he’s done using me? Will he let me go? Or will he kill me? Those haunting questions follow me all the way into my sleep.
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