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My knees shake at the very thought, but I roll back up on them anyway, pulling myself up on my tattered feet. My thighs shake under the weight of my body, and I lean back on the wall to catch my breath.
“Oh, you’ll be a real fun time like that.” He chuckles, his eyes low on my body, and I clench my legs together. “You’re always nice and tight when you’re shakin’.”
I ignore him, placing one ruined foot out of the tub, then the other. The linoleum is rippling, and I never would’ve noticed it before, but it’s like standing on glass now. “I don’t know where any of the money is.”
“Then I guess you’re gonna crawl your tight ass around until you find it,” he says, reaching around to grab my ass and yank my naked body against his. He’s half hard already, which means his actions up to now weren’t even meant as foreplay. He’s nowhere near done hurting me. “That’s not what I want, anyway. We’re gonna have a little fun, and then I’m sending you back to Ghost.”
I want to pull back, but my body won’t move. “I told you, he—”
He lets go of my ass and hits my face again, in the same place as before, and I stumble back, catching myself on the edge of the tub.
“Someone in that building will take you,” he says, “and when they do, and you get the code, you’re gonna come back to me.”
The code. What if… Roman was trying to tell me something. Talking in a code I don’t know, perhaps? Van Gogh and Degas… Maybe he’s not all bad. Maybe it’s just his henchman, and he has no idea about any of this.
“I won’t—”
“Or,” Damian grabs my face hard, forcing my mouth closed, his nose bumping mine when he growls, “I’ll kill Ghost in front of you.”
Bile lurches up my throat, but I keep my mouth shut. Something tells me Ghost would have Damian at the bottom of the harbor before Damian knew what hit him, but I’m not about to tell him that.
I’m not about to admit, to him or myself, the things I’d do to keep from risking it.
He pushes me, trying and failing to knock me into the bath, and then turns to leave. He’s in the doorway, waiting while I grab my clothes off the floor.
“You won’t be needing those.”
I hesitate in the mirror, setting them down on the counter and taking a moment to breathe. Stalling. Hoping if I play this right…
Yes! He steps out, too impatient to let me limp out first, eyeing the floor like cash will sprout through the mess like a field of daisies. “Could always skip right to—”
I slam the door and twist the lock, pressing my back against it as his fists barrel down on the cheap wood. He curses, kicks, punches, screams so loud my ears ring, the door wheezing under his onslaught.
If he breaks through, I’m dead. I’m dead a million ways over. But that’s better than whatever else he’s got planned.
“You wicked little slut,” he growls, his voice lowering with my body as I sink down into a trembling, pained heap. “Don’t be stupid, Lucinda. Open the door. Now. And maybe, just maybe, I won’t break your fucking legs for this.”
I brace my legs on the wall, hoping I can hold him off long enough for…for… For what? I don’t have a phone to call the police, and if anyone hears him, they’re not going to do a damn thing about it.
“Open the fucking door!”
A particularly brutal hit cracks the wood, and I scream, quickly clamping both hands over my mouth. Tears stream unbidden down my face, ragged hiccups shaking my whole frame. The door gives under his attack, but I push back, hard as I can, frozen in my fight response without any other options in sight.
Then he stops.
I hear him breathing on the other side, deep, huffing pants against the wood. His voice is lower now, sinister with promise, when he growls, “You’ll regret this.”
Silence rings out as that bone deep cold washes over me. It’s a trap, I know it. He wants me to open the door, try to run, just to plow me over and follow through on his threats. He thinks I’m stupid. And maybe I was, or am, but I won’t just let him win.
If he wants me, he’ll need to break the door down piece by piece, until there’s nothing left in the way.
Still…he’s been quiet for what feels like an eternity—
Bang.
I shriek as the door nearly collapses over me, ducking my head between my knees and pushing back as hard as I can. Splinters rain down on my hair, prickling over my damp skin. One more swift hit, and he’ll be in.
“You alone in there?”
