Page 28

I’m not alone anymore.

I turn around slowly because some instinct even older than fear tells me not to move fast in front of a predator.

Nico is in the doorway.

I have never in my life watched a person look this angry before. The easy warmth from breakfast is gone completely.

His jaw is a hard line and his eyes have gone flat and dark.

Every cell in my body lights up at once, screaming the same word: wrong, wrong, get out, this is wrong.

For the first time since I got in that car outside my home, I fully understand exactly what kind of man I agreed to spend thirty days with.

“Step away from the filing cabinet,” he says, his voice a near growl.

I step away from the filing cabinet like it was on fire.

He crosses the room in three strides, and I make myself hold my ground even though part of me wants the wall at my back.

He looks down at the two inches of misaligned paper and I watch him read it the way I’d read a chart.

Then he laughs and that’s more frightening than anything else I’ve heard because there’s no rage underneath.

He’s actually amused, and somehow that’s worse than if he’d screamed at me.

“The Adirondack property.” He shakes his head, almost fond. “It’s twenty minutes from here. Maybe less. You’re a clever girl, aren’t you, Katerina?” He looks up, and whatever warmth was in his voice a second ago is gone from his eyes. “But this means nothing. She isn’t there, you know. This is just some additional property I’ve bought.” A small, humorless shake of his head. “Did you really think I’d leave the address of where she’s staying lying around, waiting for someone to find her? I move her every few days. New property, new caretakers, a different route every time. There is no address in this house that leads you to her. There never was.”

My stomach drops through the floor and I realize this has always been a trap. Nico purposefully left his office door open, expecting me to go searching for information about Seraphina. And I walked right into it. Fuck me.

“You let me find it,” I say, and I hate how small my voice comes out even though I’m so angry and embarrassed I nearly can’t see straight. “You—you wanted me to find it.”

He shrugs. “I wanted to see what you’d do with it.” Something flickers behind his eyes—not quite pride, but close enough to it that it makes my skin crawl. “Now I know.”

He steps closer, close enough that I can feel actual heat coming off him, and the cedar-and-linen smell I hated myself for noticing is suddenly everywhere.

My pulse jumps for reasons that have nothing to do with fear and everything to do with fear.

“Let’s be very clear, Katerina. I don’t want any confusion about the rules.” His voice drops lower, even, and it’s more frightening than if he’d raised it. “If you run, if you contact your cousins, the Santoros, the Brennans, anyone at all outside these walls. If you do anything to interfere with the next twenty-nine days—Seraphina’s situation changes.”

“Changes how.” My mouth has gone bone dry.

“She disappears,” he says gently, similar to how I would tell a patient’s next-of-kin that their loved one has died. “She wouldn’t be hurt—I gave you my word on that, and I meant it. She would be just…gone.” He makes a gesture with his hand like something is vanishing. “A door with no handle on the other side. You’d spend the rest of your life not knowing. So would her parents.” His dark eyes grow cold and I fight the urge to shiver. “And not-knowing, Katerina, is so much worse than grief. Grief ends eventually. This wouldn’t.”

The bottom drops out of me completely.

I believe every word and that’s what scares me.

I don’t doubt him for a second, because everything about the last twenty-four hours has taught me this is a man who does precisely what he says.

If I don’t comply, Seraphina will disappear completely and her parents will never see her again.

“Get out.” He’s already turning away, like I’ve been dismissed. “Get out of my study.”

I don’t argue with him.

Instead, I leave. I don’t run, but I move fast, blood roaring in my ears.

I don’t stop until I’m back in my own room with the door shut behind me and my spine against it.