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Alistair scours the refrigerator. “What would you like for dinner tonight?”
There he is again. Existing.
“I’ll eat at the chow hall,” I deadpan.
“Suit yourself.”
True to his word, Alistair hasn’t touched me.
Yet.
But that doesn’t make him safe, and he’s certainly not better than any of the other nut jobs running the Keep. The dead aren’t the only zombies. When the world ended, so did humanity.
He pulls on his jacket to leave, pausing at the door. “Kick ass in self-defense today.”
“Careful what you wish for,” I reply sharply.
After he leaves, I start the coffeemaker. As I pull down my mug from the cupboard, I notice it’s filled with Ferrero Rocher, my favorite chocolate.
I press my eyes closed and think up half a dozen curses, but none of them do the situation justice. It might seem unreasonable that I’d get upset with the gift, but let’s be clear—this isn’t a gift. The men of the Keep have expectations, and Alistair is just biding his time, waiting to collect on a debt I had no say in.
Despite my disgust, I unwrap a chocolate and scarf it down. Then I eat another.
The other Kept are head over heels for their Keepers, but what do they have to be thankful for? The men aren’t protecting them out of the goodness of their hearts, and their expectations are sickening. None of the other women truly get it, but they don’t know betrayal the way I do.
I think back to my father, who sold me for a backpack full of booze and three visits to a whorehouse.
Everything changed for me that day.
And as terrible as that is, that’s not the worst of it.
Because he still has Maisy.
Escape from the Keep is impossible, and they’re not about to let me go. Women are their most prized possessions.
I can’t tell anyone about my dilemma, because if they decided to rescue my sister, they’d bring her back here, and she’d never survive this place.
Every night, I go to sleep, my stomach twisted with guilt, wondering what’s happened to her or if I’ll ever see her again.
If only I had someone I could trust. Someone that could rescue her and ferry her away from the hell she’s inevitably living in.
Thankfully, the situation for her isn’t as dire as it was for me. With how the Keepers shot up the club, it’s unlikely my father will go back there again, and I’d like to think that my sister’s young age would make him hesitate to do to her what he did to me.
But men are vile.
Every-last-one.
The way Alistair looks at me, with eyes so full of desire, makes me sick.
But admittedly, it could be worse. Gage tied Remi up the first time he took her, and Blake made Selina a deal she couldn’t refuse, because she had her daughter to worry about.
I don’t know when Alistair will finally cave and take me, but it’ll happen eventually. It’s bound to.
I eat another chocolate, mulling over my situation.
Men may be pigs, but they’re predictable pigs, their minds singularly focused.
The men of the Keep have control of what might be the last haven left on this planet, and they use it to satisfy their base needs: sex and passing on their genetics.
