AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Is he getting bored with me?
The thought is like a splinter buried in the middle of my back, unreachable, so that I can’t pull it out.
The third morning, I decide I am not spending another day waiting for someone to come pay attention to me like a bird in a cage. Being his stupid good girl isn’t getting me anywhere, and without him, my thoughts turn circles around getting out. Freedom itches constantly at the back of my thoughts. I want to FaceTime Kay, check my socials, even call my father. If there was ever a sure sign that I really am losing it in here, that’s it.
When Ava arrives, I make excuses about having a migraine. I tell her I plan to sleep in and spend a quiet day in bed until it goes away. She promises to check up on me in a little while.
Hopefully, a little while is enough time.
My window opens into a three-story fall to the ground below. It might kill me. It might also just leave me crippled and lying there for Salvatore to find later if he ever remembers that I’m up here. If being trapped in this room is this bad, the last thing I want to do is end up trapped in just the bed. I can’t tie a knot that I trust enough to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The door is my only real hope.
I know the old credit card trick, but my only credit card is currently out doing illegal activities. I have to improvise somehow.
I take out my sketchbook, hesitating only for a second as I consider the very real threat of getting one of my few sources of sanity taken away. Desperation vetoes my fear. I rip out a page and fold the paper over and over on itself, trying to get it to the right thickness to slide between the door and the lock. It feels genius right up until it doesn’t work. The paper is either folded too thick to fit or is too flimsy to slip between the bolt and the lock. I try to find a middle ground, ripping apart the sketchbook’s thin plastic cover. It’s sturdier but doesn’t fold on itself as easily. I scowl over my ripped paper and mangled sketchbook, the door still soundly in front of me.
Face to face with the lock, I notice the tiny hole in the middle of the doorknob. I’m not certain it has anything to do with the latch, but I can’t think of any other practical reason for its existence. I scour my room, taking pencils, dental floss, nail files. Little props in my own personal, maddening escape room.
I use the nail file to thin out the tip of the pencil, but it breaks when I apply any pressure.
While bitterly staring at the pieces of my mutilated Beige Sienna, I suddenly remember the pen in the drawer. Chicago calls to me.
The cheap pen comes apart easily in my hands, and I take out the ink chamber to try in the door. A perfect fit. Something shifts inside the knob, giving way as I put pressure on it and fiddle it around.
The locking mechanism audibly clicks, the door shifting marginally as the tension breaks.
My breath catches in my throat.
Walls and armed guards still wait between me and the rest of the world, and a pen isn’t going to help with those. But I still have one objective—I need to find a computer, a laptop, a phone. Anything that connects to the outside world. I need to know what’s happening beyond this room. I frantically hide the evidence of my method of escape, squirreling away the pen and everything else that I tried to use in vain.
For the first time, I step out into the house alone.
I strain to listen, but I can hardly hear over the pounding of my own heartbeat. Old floorboards creak under my feet. I only know my way for sure to one place—Salvatore’s bedroom. A dangerous gamble, but I don’t know why he would be there in the middle of the day.
I ease the door open a crack.
Empty.
I slip inside and shut the door behind me.
The very room seems to judge me as I enter, a trespasser into his space.
In the glass case, the old weapons glint under the display lights, drawing me to them. I never got to look at them closely before. Each weapon has a corresponding plaque. Cryptic dates and initials, significant in some horrible way, are inscribed on each. My eyes drift to the last one, S. M. engraved in gold lettering alongside a sleek, modern pistol. A chill bristles over my skin. I put the case behind me.
It’s surreal, opening the closet and looking under the bed of the monster itself. I find nothing interesting—shoes, clothes, suitcases. In his nightstand drawer, expired passports and fake I.D.s sit alongside a pack of condoms. I blush, noticing the generous size, and shut the drawer in a rush.
Even solo, I can embarrass myself.
In the drawer below it, a pistol slides out to greet me. I freeze at the sight of it, no glass case between me and a gun. I’m desperate to wander, to look around the house, to have a taste of freedom—but even imprisoned by the enemy, my urge to kill someone sits at a steady 0. I leave it behind.
I write the room off as a loss, forced to tip-toe further into the house. Every open doorway steals my breath, anxious that someone will be inside looking back at me, but the third floor seems mostly empty.
The main floor sounds loudest, the kitchen bustling with frantic noise. I prowl through the second landing, hunting for bedroom doors that aren’t closed. Suddenly, feet come stomping my way, two men talking loudly. I duck into the nearest room, a sitting room, my back to the wall as I listen to them pass.
I don’t dare to breathe—which is lucky. Otherwise, I would have screamed. No more than ten feet away, Vera stretches out on a fainting couch, her feet kicked up and a tablet in her hands. She stares over the screen, directly at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, a frantic half-whisper, heart pounding against my ribs. I have no idea what I’m saying. The words are desperate to leave my mouth before they get in trouble along with the rest of me.
