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“Except your freedom.”
“Well…” I didn’t have an argument against that.
“The guy kidnapped you. End of story.”
“It’s not black and white, Joseph.” I stirred my food with my chopstick, suddenly losing my appetite. “I cared about Crewe. He cared about me. If I had the chance to talk to him about everything, he probably would have let me go.”
“Doubtful.”
“You don’t know him the way I do.”
“And I’m glad I don’t.”
I stared at my brother and felt my rage come to the surface. “I told you not to hurt anyone. I told you not to shoot Crewe.”
“His men fired first. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Because you were ambushing his castle with guns and tanks.”
He shook his head. “They still fired first. And I wasn’t planning on shooting Crewe until I looked at him… Then the anger took over.”
“He didn’t deserve that.”
“And I didn’t deserve to have my sister kidnapped for six months. You just lost your mind in the process.”
“I didn’t lose my mind, Joey. Crewe is a good man.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Have you heard anything about him?”
“What do you mean?”
“How’s he doing? Is he working again?” The doctor told me he would live. I just hoped that meant he would live a normal life.
“As far as I can tell, he’s back to normal. I haven’t seen him with my own eyes, but I hear he’s still running the scotch business with Ariel and taking care of his royal duties like the douchebag that he is.”
I shot him a glare. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
He met my fire with his own. “What the hell is wrong with you? He stole you from your bed in the middle of the night and kept you as a prisoner. As in, he broke international law. Why are you protecting him?”
Joseph would never understand. No one would ever understand. “It was more complicated than that. Crewe and I had a relationship…we were friends. We were close.” There were no words to describe what we had. I wasn’t even entirely sure what the two of us shared.
Joseph set down his chopsticks in the center of his food and looked at me, his expression hard. It was a stare he’d given me countless times as we were growing up. It usually meant he was pondering what he was about to say. “London…did you love this guy?”
I told Crewe I loved him, but I thought it was just an act. I was tricking him into caring about me, being an actress in a play. But maybe those words weren’t meaningless. Maybe I meant them from the bottom of my heart. “I…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” he whispered. “The fact that your answer isn’t a simple no is concerning to me.”
“It’s concerning to me too.”
He’d hardly eaten his food, but he pushed it aside like he was finished with it. “London, I don’t understand, and I’ll never understand. I tried to make it right with Crewe by doubling the amount of money I owed, but he took you anyway. I’ll always hate that man for the way he stabbed me. But…I’m trying to have an open mind about this. I just don’t understand how you can care about a man who took away all of your freedom. Help me understand.”
“I can’t…it’s complicated.”
“Well, try anyway.”
There was a lot of graphic content that would make Joseph upset, and I couldn’t mention that. It would just make us both uncomfortable. “I hated him in the beginning. I fought him every chance I got him and put up a wall that he couldn’t penetrate. But when he said he was going to sell me to Bones…I did what I had to do to stay with Crewe. So I slept with him.” I didn’t look at my brother as I told the story. He probably wasn’t looking at me either. “I think that’s when everything changed. I think that’s when Crewe began to soften. He kept me for himself. And if I’m being honest, I enjoyed being with him.”
Joseph turned his gaze out the window, like he wasn’t listening at all.
“As time went on, we got closer and closer. We started to trust each other. And then it became a routine…a comfortable one. Crewe always treated me with respect, took care of me, and listened to me. He didn’t feel like my captor anymore. Honestly, I miss him and that castle.”
Joseph rubbed his jaw. “You miss him now?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’ve been on a few dates, and I don’t feel anything. All I can think about is him. I can’t stop thinking about the way we left things. I can only imagine how angry he is…how much he hates me. But I wonder if he misses me as much as I miss him.”
Joseph sat back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He released a quiet sigh of irritation. “I don’t know what to say.”
