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Before I could stop him, John grabbed the door handle and pulled it shut.
‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Can you open it back up for me?’
I gave him a blank look, but inside my stomach was twisting into knots. Oh God, he knows, he knows about me. He knows I’m not normal. He knows I’m trapped in here.
‘Sure,’ I replied. I stared at the keypad, tried to think of a number Dornan would use. His birthday? I punched that in and tried the door. Nothing.
I looked at John, who had one eyebrow raised. He was dressed in black from head to foot, his leather cut and jeans hugging his body as he towered over me, black steel-capped boots encasing his feet. His dark blonde hair hung in front of his eyes, adding a smudge of boyish charm juxtaposed against his ferocity.
I shrugged. ‘This thing’s temperamental,’ I said. ‘I swear it hates me.’
I tried another couple of combinations. Of course, they didn’t work.
‘Forget your own birthday?’ He rolled his eyes, shouldering me out of the way and stabbing at the keypad with his index finger until the door gave a small metallic click.
He’d tricked me. And how the hell did he know when my birthday was?
Furious, I shoved the door open and tried to slam it behind me. John wedged his boot in the door before it could close. I tried to push his boot out of the way using the door, but he was much stronger than me.
‘I can stay here all day,’ he said. Finally, I moved back, letting him into the apartment.
He closed the door behind him and strode past me, down the hallway and into the dining room, which faced the ocean and had its own small balcony.
‘It’s hot today,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you have this door open?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m home alone. It feels safer with everything closed. How do you know when my birthday is?’ How did he know anything about me?
‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘I bet if I try this door right now, it’ll open, won’t it?’
‘Of course it’ll open,’ I responded, panic building inside me. ‘It’s just a door.’
He made a point of opening and closing the balcony door, then passed me again, going back to the keypad at the front door. There was one inside and one outside, and he armed the inside one with quick fingers.
He crossed the apartment again and tried the balcony door.
It wouldn’t budge.
John turned to me slowly, his eyes practically bugging out of his head.
‘They keep you here,’ he said slowly. ‘They keep you here like a fucking prisoner. Don’t they?’
Fuck. What if he spoke to Dornan about this? What if he spoke to Emilio?
I pressed my teeth together in my mouth and tried not to scream.
He rushed towards me, and for a moment I had the uncanny thought that he was going to grab me by the throat and toss me against the wall. Conditioning, I suppose. Living in the middle of a fucking drug cartel with people like Emilio Ross and Christopher Murphy always hovering on the edges of your existence could do that.
But he didn’t grab my throat. He grabbed my shoulder with one hand, his touch gentle, and the other hand trailed along my chin, forcing my head up so we were eye to eye.
‘Don’t they?’ he repeated, much quieter this time. His eyes were full of anguish, and something else I couldn’t quite fathom.
‘What do you want from me?’ I whispered, turning my head away.
He cupped my cheek with his hand, his other palm starting to burn as it gripped my shoulder.
‘You don’t need to lie to me,’ he said, and something in his words snapped me back to reality. I did need to lie to him – to him and to everyone else in the world if my family was going to be safe. My sacrifice, my complicity, my ownership at the hands of Emilio Ross and the Il Sangue Cartel meant that I had to lie every time I opened my fucking mouth, lest I find a gun jammed down my throat for my transgressions.
‘I’m not a prisoner,’ I snapped, levelling my gaze at him again as the mask slipped back over my soul. ‘I’m forgetful.’
