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I prowl every inch of my new cage, looking for any weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, I find none. Frustrated, I plop onto the plush sofa and groan.
I won’t allow myself to think of my father. The moment he traded me to save his own ass he died to me. I refuse to shed tears over a father I never really knew. Everything about him had been a lie. My heart aches at the thought. Was he always like that, or had it all happened after my mother died?
I’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter now. I won’t allow myself to think of him.
Instead, I spend the morning stewing until a man comes to the room to give me a tray of food. My stomach betrays me by growling loudly, but I ignore it and try to solicit the man’s help.
It’s no use, though. No matter how much I try to tell him I need help, that I’m being held here against my will, he just looks away and asks if I need anything else.
He won’t even acknowledge my plight. There’s no telling what Gage pays this butler for his loyalty.
I consider trying to barrel past him out the door, but his hulking frame is almost as big as Gage’s, and I’m not naive enough to think that he’s only a servant. This man is a guard too. I’m sure one of his duties is to make sure I don’t leave this estate.
I eat my food resignedly after he leaves. I have to begrudgingly admit that it’s some of the best food I’ve ever tasted. The crepes are light and fluffy, and the tomatoes are fresh and juicy. I swear the orange juice is fresh-squeezed, and the coffee tastes like a gourmet roast.
After I finish eating, I sit there for a moment contemplating my options. I can keep sitting here making myself miserable, or I can grab a book from one of the many shelves and try to forget about my problems and lose myself in another world.
Eventually, I opt for the latter option, selecting a historical fiction novel about life in the Old West. I become so engrossed in its pages that I don’t look up until I hear the door open again.
The same man from before comes in bearing a tray of lunch, and he’s followed by a woman pushing a rack of clothing through the door. The man brings me my tray while the woman heads over to the closet and wordlessly begins loading it up.
My stomach sinks within me. As if I needed any more proof that this was real, that this was really happening, seeing that my captor has funded me a full wardrobe only reinforces the notion that he plans on keeping me for a long time—forever even.
“What are your names?” I ask the man and woman, but they both keep to their tasks as if I haven’t said a word.
So they’ve been forbidden to talk to me outside providing for my basic needs then.
I try to ask them more questions, but they continue to act like they don’t hear me.
I finally give up and give them the silent treatment back, going back to my book and ignoring them as they continue stocking the piles upon piles of clothes in the closet.
Jesus, how many clothes does he think I need? Especially if he’s going to keep me locked up in here? Out of the corner of my eye, I see some gorgeous dresses and even some frilly lingerie, and my face heats in anger. If he thinks he’s going to keep me caged up and I’m going to dress up all nice and pretty for him every day, he’s out of his fucking mind.
I make a mental note then and there to dress in the drabbest shit I can find daily.
Fuck him.
* * *
Gage
I don’t plan on keeping Ava caged up forever, but just like I knew she would, she’s trying to plot ways to freedom. I’m hoping that after enough time passes she’ll see it’s futile and give it up. That maybe she’ll even grow to be happy here when she sees what all I can give her and what all I’ll do for her.
Jose and Rosa have already reported back to me about how she’s tried to solicit their help, which lets me know if I took her out in public right now she’d no doubt do the same of any passerby.
I don’t begrudge her for trying it. It’s only natural. What would be unnatural is if she accepted her fate without qualm.
Still, I can’t help but yearn for the day when all this is behind us and she accepts what is and begins to open up to me.
Because that’s what’s going to happen.
As it is, I’m trying to give her space. As much as it kills me and goes against everything in me, I’m letting her sleep alone in her own room, giving her time to acclimate to her new life.
I force myself to go to work, leaving her alone for hours on end in her room. Though I can’t trust her enough yet to give her access to any sort of communications devices, I did have a TV installed in her room with every channel in the sky on it. And she has shelves upon shelves of books to read. I know that’s where her real passion lies.
Although Jose and Rosa know better than to get too friendly with her right now (I’ve forbidden them from speaking to her in any context other than attending to her needs for the time being) they watch her accordingly and have informed me that she rarely turns the TV on, spending most of her time with her nose in a book.
I’m not purposefully being cruel by denying her human contact. It’s just that when she takes solace from her loneliness, I want it to be with me.
