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He leaned forward with his elbows resting on the table, his glass cupped between both of his hands. He considered my question for nearly a minute, his eyes flicking back and forth between me and his glass. “I’ll take it to the grave.”
Twenty-One
Mia
He said he would never let me go.
Never.
After everything I’d been through, settling for living in a beautiful mansion near Verona didn’t sound so bad. After being cruelly treated for so long, I was exhausted. I didn’t have faith in people anymore.
That belief died a long time ago.
It would be easy to give up, to hang myself from the bedpost in the bedroom.
It was very tempting.
But I had one thing to live for, one thing I couldn’t give up on.
Never.
So I had to come up with a plan. I either had to kill him or run away.
Even though he said he would never let me go, the idea of killing him didn’t seem right. He said I could eat whenever I wanted, and as long as I didn’t provoke him, he never laid a hand on me. He was attracted to me, wanted a reason to get between my legs, but he never acted on it.
This guy was a god compared to the devil I used to live with.
Egor deserved death, not Carter.
That gave me one alternative.
To run.
I had a tracker in my ankle, and I was stuck in a mansion with an alarm system and a wall that surrounded the property. The wall wasn’t an issue. With adrenaline pumping in my veins, climbing over that thing wouldn’t slow me down. Even the alarm system wouldn’t stop me, not if I timed it right. If I did it in the dead of night when he was asleep, I could make it out the front door and over the wall before he could catch up. In the darkness, I could run or hide somewhere. With the countryside on either side of us, I had a good chance.
Or better yet, I could take one of his cars. I could dismantle all the others so he couldn’t come after me.
It was an elaborate plan, but I could pull it off if I took my time.
I had to make sure this worked. If I didn’t, Carter would make good on his threat.
He would hurt me and fuck me—like he promised.
It would be nothing like being with Egor, that was obvious. Egor was just cruel. Carter was a good-looking man, a man so confident that he could subdue me without hurting me. His words were enough. He was the king of this palace, and he ruled so effortlessly. Fucking him wouldn’t be the worst, not when he had the body of a god and the face of a model. If we’d met under different circumstances, I would gladly get under him.
That lowered the risk significantly.
Because if I didn’t make it out…I could deal with the consequences.
I walked into the kitchen that morning and found Carter sitting at the dining table, the sunlight filtering through the windows and bringing heat into the room. Shirtless and in just his sweatpants, he looked the same as he did every morning. With messy hair, a beard growing in, and lazy eyes, he sat with the newspaper in his hands. A cup of coffee was beside him.
He didn’t have any breakfast because he expected me to cook for him—every morning.
I stepped out of the kitchen, my arms crossed over my chest. I wore the jeans and t-shirt he’d provided for me, my hair pulled into a braid over one shoulder. “Do you ever wear a shirt?” Unless he left the house, he always paraded around half naked. His body was perfect, and he obviously wasn’t ashamed of the chiseled muscles of his chest and torso. With his strength and tanned skin, he possessed the kind of fitness that suggested he worked out on a regular basis. I had no idea when those sessions occurred because I’d never seen them.
He wasn’t startled by my unannounced presence. His eyes kept scanning his paper. “Too distracting for you?”
I rolled my eyes.
He grinned like he knew what I’d just done. “My door is always open, sweetheart. Just let me know.” He looked up from his paper, wearing the most arrogant grin I’d ever seen. “You can hop on my lap right now.”
I rolled my eyes again, exaggerating my movements so he could see how sincere it was. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“You.” He set the paper down and dropped his smile, looking at me with an intensity that would frighten anyone.
I’d have been more scared if I didn’t know he wouldn’t rush me and pin me against the wall.
He kept up his stare, not blinking or even moving. His broad shoulders covered the back of the chair, and even without a crown, he still possessed the kind of power only a member of the nobility would have. When he looked at me like that, his stare was even more invasive than Egor’s bare touch. Carter could touch me without placing a hand on my skin. He could invade me easily, getting inside my mind with just his confidence.
