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When we drive to the outskirts of Seattle, toward the industrial parks, my insides fall back into the cold rhythm of the anxiety I’d felt earlier in the day. An empty, long forgotten building is where Gage’s beautiful car comes to a stop.
The warehouse looks as if it’s been in disrepair for several years.
“Gage?” I mutter as I amble out of the car, shutting the door behind me. It’s heft makes my arms burn, reminding me I’m awake and thisismy life.
He grabs my hand, shivers snaking through my body, almost hypnotizing me instantly with one touch. Tugging me along beside him, he unlocks the door he’d had padlocked with chains from the outside, as if a magnificent beast resides behind it. And I guess, in reflection, one does.
Emery Stanner’s behind it. A monster in his own right.
“Let me the fuck out of here!” Emery chides as Gage moves us through the shadows in the room, pulling me in step with him.
When I exit the shadows at the back of the room with Gage, Emery snaps his mouth shut. Sweat beads on his brow, even though the room is frigid. He’s been fighting the chains he’s bound in. The metal chair he’s in is welded to the floor, as if this is where Gage brings people all the time. I’m sure Emery doesn’t know his fight is all for naught.
“Carina, get away from him. He’s a psychopath.”
Something in me tightens as anger pools. I roll my neck. “He’s a psychopath? And what’s that make you, Emery? Hmm?” I ask, eyeing him sternly.
His jaw ticks, and his eyes dart away from me.
“I told you I don’t remember what happened. I’ve only recently...” Emery trails off, dropping his eyes, looking at his lap that’s likewise covered in chains, binding him to the chair.
I look over at Gage, who’s leaned up against the wall, unaffected.
He inclines his head toward Emery. “Go ahead, little phoenix. Get your answers. You deserve them.”
Can I? That night is a blur of fog for me, too. I spent most of it knocked out. All I know is what happened when I came to and got out of the smoldering house in one, shattered piece. Images come and go from when I’d come around during the attack, but I’ve never trusted my concussed mind and the things it conjures in my sleep.
But that’s when there was nothing that I could do about it. There is now. At least, Gage says there is.
Moving closer to Emery, I watch Gage for a reaction as I straddle over the chair and drop down onto Emery’s lap. Gage’s eyes darken and his teeth set on edge, and I turn back to Emery, my breath hitching with anger instead of lust as it does for Gage.
“Tell me what you did to me that night. I know the condition I woke up in, I know how long it took my body to heal. My mind is still fractured, and it’s your fault, isn’t it?”
Emotion wells in my chest, begging me to spill it, but I won’t.
He doesn’t get the satisfaction of my tears.
“I don’t remember. I swear. I was so fucking high that night...” he drops my gaze, looking down in shame.
High? He’d been high? That’s his excuse for what he’d done to me?
Rage coils like a fucking snake around my heart, blackening it by the second.
“You’re a fucking liar. If you didn’t remember, why use daddy’s money to hide it all, hmm? Why the fire?” I ask through gritted teeth.
Emery’s eyes flick back up toward mine, shifting uneasily from me and Gage.
A low chuckle sounds as I hear Gage push off the wall. Boots hit concrete as he comes up behind me, encasing my face in his hands.
Dropping, he skims my ear with his lip. “He was hiding more than what he’d done to you, weren’t you, you piece of shit?”
Emery chokes on a sob as he nods, dropping his face.
I push off his lap, easing into Gage’s chest, breathing intensifying. “What else? What else happened that night?”
Emery shakes his head. “Someone died. Declan...”
“Why do I know that name?” I ask myself out loud.
