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She was shaking all over now; I could hear her teeth chattering. “Can I get in like this?”
Sitting around in wet clothes was certainly notmyfavorite thing — I couldn’t wait to change, actually — but if that’s what she wanted, who was I to argue with her? “Sure.”
Lyse turned and, on shaky, colt legs, headed into the bathroom. I trailed after her: I didn’t want to chance her drowning in the tub. I still needed her for leverage, after all.
Sure, tell yourself that.
I shook off the intrusive thought and followed her into the bathroom. Lyse was trying to swing her leg over the edge of the tub, and I knew she was going to fall. Her arms shot out as she tried to catch herself, but there was nothing to grab onto.
In one step, I was there to catch her, and even though she tried to jerk away, I held onto her. “Let me help you.”
This time, I didn’t give her an option. I lifted her, easily, off her feet and set her in the tub. “Are you going to stand there, staring at me, the whole time?” she demanded.
Another flash of irritation, but I bit it back as best I could as I knelt beside the tub. The look on Lyse’s face was unkind, and my answering smile matched. “I’m not standing,” I pointed out and reached for the shampoo.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you,” I said. “I’m helping.”
With my mother dead, and Angel needed at the right hand of my father, I grew up with Lili as my companion. I was put in charge of getting her ready when our housekeeper was busy: I had washed and styled her hair more times than I could count. Padre hated how much I doted on Lili, but Angel encouraged it. I think it was his way of ensuring that I didn’t just become a weapon for my father’s use. Not that I was saved from that fate anyway. At the very least, I knew that I could handle this particular task.
Gently, I worked the shampoo into her nest of hair. The salt water was already making it feel brittle. Her bathroom was stocked with a conditioner in the same scent as the shampoo; a leave-in conditioner would make detangling everything easier.Get a fucking grip, I told myself. Lyse wasn’t my girlfriend, or even a friend; she was my hostage, and if Felix let me down again, I’d kill her. I had to.
I pushed that thought from my mind and did what I could to detangle her hair with the conditioner. I found a comb on the vanity, and that helped. Lyse, for the first time, looked relaxed…or as relaxed as a woman who was being held captive could get.
Her face, tipped back with her eyes closed, exposing the long line of her throat, made my chest constrict, and I struggled to catch my breath. “Helena is bringing you tea,” I told her as I stood. “Stay here until she comes to help you out of the tub.”
Lyse hummed in agreement, her eyes still closed, and I hightailed it out of the room as fast as I could, needling my chest with my knuckles. Why did it suddenly feel like I was the one who’d almost drowned?
CHAPTER12
Lyse
Felix had failed, and I should be dead.
So, what the hell happened?
That was something I tried to figure out for the rest of the day. Omar had stood on that dock, watching me drown, only to save me. It didn’t make any sense.
What bothered me more was his sweetness afterward. It contradicted everything I thought I knew aboutLa Bestia. He wasn’tallowedto be sweet to me. It went against every rule in the book…and it was making me hopelessly confused.
Maybe that’s what he wants, I thought.Maybe it’s just another tactic to torture me with.
I pushed myself up on my elbows in bed: my prison remained the same. It was the same beige walls that I had endured for the last week, but it felt different now. Safer, somehow? The world outside of these walls was full of uncertainty. Here, at least, there weren’t any surprises… outside of Omar’s shifting personality.
Helena should be coming upstairs with my breakfast tray soon. Since the older woman had an issue with me being in pajamas past a “respectable time in the morning,” I went to the drawer and retrieved more oversized clothing, pulling on shorts and a tee shirt.
So far, Helena had been precise in what time she brought me meals. Breakfast came around 8 a.m., lunch around noon, dinner at 5:30 p.m. I could have set a watch by her predictability. But the digital clock on the bedside table soon read 8:30. Then, 9:00. Then, 9:15.
Fear chewed at my stomach.Is this his new plan? To starve me to death?It seemed like something that Omar would do…but the shockingly soft look on his face while he’d washed my hair kept popping into my mind. That man couldn’t be the same one who threw me off the dock yesterday, but he was, and there was no telling what he had planned next for me.
Sudden, white-hot anger filled me, and I threw myself off the bed, intending to pound on the door until someone answered or it broke. Whichever came first.
But when I reached the door, I could see that it was cracked open. It wasn’tlocked. There hadn’t been a slip-up in the last week — that door was always locked unless Helena or Omar was coming in or going out — so what was happening now? Was this some sort of trick?
Blood pounded in my ears as I pulled the door open and peeked out, fearing that Omar would somehow be waiting for me in the hallway. But there was no one.
Emboldened, I stepped out into the corridor. Everything was bright and white, just like it had been the night we arrived, and it looked so damn…cheerful. Full of sunshine. It felt like the world’s biggest lie, given what I knew about the Castillos and Omar in particular.
