Page 28

The days turn into a week, and I start to feel stronger.

The bruises on my skin morph from an angry dark purple to faded yellows and greens. My headaches become less frequent and without that ‘shut myself in a darkened room’ intensity. I’m still sore and stiff when I wake, but it eases as I move through my day, and the brain fog and famished hunger that I’d suffered from the hypothermia no longer seems as bad.

I’m recovering, but what for?

None of the men have forced me into anything sexual, but will that last? If I’m only here as a wet hole for them to put their cocks into to keep them warm over winter, they’re not going to put up with me hiding away in my room for weeks, or even months on end. Someone is going to snap.

It might be me. How am I going to go without sex for all that time, especially considering how physically attracted I am to all three of them? I know what I’ll be missing now, too.

But Dov has killed a man for sexually assaulting me.

Would he do the same if it was his father or brother?

Does he even consider that drugging me and sneaking into my room is as bad as what Tobias did?

No, he doesn’t have those boundaries because of the accident, and that makes him the most dangerous of them all.

I haven’t completely given up on the possibility of contacting the outside world. If I were able to get an internet connection, I’d at least be able to see if there was anything on the news about Tobias being missing. I know internet searches can be tracked by police if they were to seize our devices, so I wouldn’t do anything obvious, but I could watch the small news channel from back home.

I remember my first night at the hotel. I’d had a bar of service on my cell phone back then. It had been the one and only time, but it meant something. It meant it wasn’t impossible to pick up service here. Would the weather affect that? Yes, when it’s snowing, but it wasn’t going to snow all the time. Some days, the sky would be bright blue, though the sun was not strong enough to melt the snow on the ground.

I haven’t explored the whole hotel, though, far from it. Even though I’ve been here for weeks, there are places I’d believed were shut off to me, such as the east wing, and rooms I’ve never entered.

Levi’s bedroom, for one.

Why have I never asked him which room is his? It had felt like an invasion into his privacy, but it’s kind of weird I still don’t know which, out of so many, is his room. I even know where Dov’s room is now, and I didn’t know Dov really existed until recently.

Could the missing Wi-Fi box be in Levi’s room?

It’s possible. Maybe there are other things he’s trying to keep hidden from me.

I try to think of the best way to conduct the search. Should I be methodical and start at the end of the corridor my room is on and just go from one room to the other? Or would I be better starting down in the living spaces? It would make more sense for it to be in the living spaces, but nothing in this place really makes sense.

I wonder what else I might find. What other secrets Windridge Hall holds, because I’m sure there are plenty.

If only it had occurred to me to Google the place before I’d said yes to Blake bringing me here. The hotel is a hundred years old. Who owned it before Blake, and why were they selling it? Why was it allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair? I know Blake has spent years on this place, so I can’t even imagine what it was like before.

Mind made up, I decide to look for Levi’s room.

I’m fairly certain it isn’t on the same corridor as mine and Blake’s. I’d have seen him coming and going if it was. I also don’t think he’s in the other wing with Dov. That leaves a number of other corridors to explore.

The hallways in this place seem endless, but I pick one I’ve seen Levi heading down on a handful of occasions. Identical doors lead off them, equally spaced out. I start at the beginning, going door to door, trying the handles. Would Levi lock his door? But none of these rooms are locked, and I open them up, peering into identical, sparsely furnished spaces.

I reach the end of the corridor and turn back, then take a left where it branches off and try again.

Finally, I open the right door.

This is clearly Levi’s domain.

It isn’t just a bedroom, like mine and Blake’s, or even Dov’s. Several of the rooms have been knocked together, or perhaps they were always adjoining like this. It gives the vibe of an expensive suite rather than a hotel room. Archways rather than doors divide the spaces. In one area is a sitting room. Large, expensive leather couches face a set of full height French doors that open onto a Juliette balcony. The bedroom is in the area through the archway, and I’m assuming the door leads to a bathroom. There’s no kitchenette, which is why Levi always comes to the main kitchen to eat.

I step in deeper, trying to get a better idea of the sort of man Levi is. I note a distinct lack of photographs. None of his mother, or even him and his brother when they were younger. It’s as though he’s done his best to completely forget that part of his life ever existed.

Just like in the rest of the building, there’s no sign of a television or even a radio. These men seem to have an aversion to technology that’s almost pathological. Then I remember Dov’s room, all the screens and cameras, and I almost smack myself in the head for being so stupid. Can those cameras run without an internet connection? It might just be that all they need is Bluetooth, as long as Dov isn’t using online cloud storage for the footage, but there is a strong possibility that he would need some kind of connection.

I wish I had access to the internet so I could actually Google this shit. I’ve had zero experience with security cameras. I’d struggle to type it into a search engine with my dyslexia, but thankfully, now I’m able to speak into a phone’s microphone, hope that it hears me correctly, and have it spoken back to me. I don’t always love technology, but it has made accessibility to that kind of thing easier.

“I knew you’d find your way to my bed eventually.”