Page 104 of Captive Ruin

Tony doesn’t move. He just watches me, expression carefully blank, and suddenly all my frustration, all my anger, is focused on him. I know it’s not his fault, but he’s the symbol of it. Unable to even call my sister, left behind when Van Wyk’s gone wherever the hell he’s gone. I feel so… alone. Abandoned. So helpless.

I jab my finger into his chest. “Admit it!” I cry. “I’m a prisoner here!”

No response.

“Are you going to let me leave?”

Nothing.

“Will you give me the keys to that stupidly large garage? Even if I say please?”

He doesn’t even blink.

“What would you do if I hit you?” I say, raising my hand, wanting to lash out at the world.

At last he speaks. “Tell Lukas,” he replies, his voice quiet. “I don’t think he’d be pleased, do you?”

My hand falls down to my side. I scowl at him, then head back to the house.

Tony follows me, six steps behind all the way.

Van Wyk doesn’t come back that night. Or the next day. Or the next.

Or the rest of the week.

Tony swaps out with Jorge on alternate days. Jorge is swarthy, built like a bouncer with muscles but no fat. I’m certain Tony doesn’t like me, but Jorge stays silent and never engages no matter what I do. On balance, I prefer Tony, because at least I can occasionally get a response from him.

After that first day, I spend every morning and afternoon at the pool, if only to stave off the boredom. I can’t bring myself to swim naked, but I do take my time getting changed in the pool house, putting on a show for the cameras that I don’t even know are there. There’s a perverse satisfaction in walking around in the buff, flipping off random parts of the ceiling.

The sunroom is my other sanctuary, especially when I explore the library. It’s short on romances, but there are some classics that apparently everyone should read and I haven’t, so I catch up.

Yet there’s a limit to how much of my time I can spend treading water, figuratively and literally. My mood oscillates wildly, flicking from anger to depression at the drop of a hat, paying long visits to boredom along the way, and landing on frustration for most of the time.

And if I’m honest, I know why.

I miss him. The weight of his hand on my neck, the certainty of him. The sound of his voice, those unsettling steel-grey eyes. I miss the bastard who broke into my apartment and cuffed me to my own headboard. Who killed two men in my living room and then checked my cheekbone with hands that were still warm from it.

The way he takes up all the space in the room without even trying, and pushes his hard body against my back.

No one has called me Little Stray in far too long.

No, I don’t miss him, I’m angry at him. Furious. Six days, not a word. Not a note, not a message through any of his lackeys, like I’m one of his goddamn cars in that locked garage.

How could he drop me off here like so much luggage, then just up and leave without even so much as a goodbye? Or telling me where he was going? Or when he’s getting back?

What if he isn’t coming back? What if he got hurt?

God, I hope he’s not lying in a ditch somewhere, finally reaping what he’s sown. I picture it too clearly, and it stops me from breathing. I have to steady myself with a hand on the wall, closing my eyes to ward off the images of him injured and broken. He leads a violent life; has it caught up with him? If he’s not bleeding out, if he’s only forgotten about me, when I see him next he’ll wish he was lying in a ditch.

It’s a shock to realize I don’t want anything to happen to him when only a week ago, I wanted him dead. But then I wanted Serranto dead too, and now he is, and I’m to blame for that, whatever Van Wyk says.

Who have I become?

That night, I storm off to my room without eating the dinner Linda prepared, feeling like a petulant teenager and hating him for it.

My frustration has another cause, too, and that’s on him as well. I’m horny all the goddamn time, and it’s because I’m in his house. There are reminders everywhere. Linda won’t stop talking about him, with nauseating admiration. His study smells of him. The bedroom smells of him.

There are seven other bedrooms and I tried sleeping in one of them, but came back in here.