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“Unfortunately, this offer is only for you. If you accept, I'll have to kill your companion. But you'll be free and safe. I think it's a pretty good offer. You should carefully consider your answer.”
I'm stunned for a moment. Why would he let me go but not Seven?
“No!” I say as soon as I can get my vocal cords to work again. My refusal comes out shrill and panicked.
He shrugs. “I could just kill you both. I'm offended that you would spit on my generosity in this way.”
I'm crying now, great heaving sobs that I can't get control of. “Please, please...” I whimper.
Then I hear Seven's quiet, strong voice rising above my crying and begging. “Take the deal, Kitten,” he says.
I extricate myself from the hand still stroking the nape of my neck. Our captor acts as if this entire conversation were about something unimportant—not two lives hanging in the balance. But our lives are unimportant to him. I crawl the few feet to Seven and bury my face in his chest. I'm grateful the chains give enough leeway for him to put his arms around me. He strokes my back.
“Shhhh,” he says. “I'll be fine. Don't worry about me. I need you to go. Live your life.”
I shake my head, my tears dripping onto his chest. “No, I won't leave you. I love you.”
I involuntarily flinch when I say this because I remember our captor is standing so close. He heard this confession of love, and he surely won't be happy about it.
There’s a long beat of tense silence, and then Seven laughs. It’s a dark, sinister laugh, like nothing I've heard from him before.
“What was that, Declan? Three weeks?” Seven says.
“Impressive. I thought she'd take the money.”
I pull away from Seven to look in his eyes, still not believing what I've just heard. This can't be real. I trusted him. I thought that he... I thought he was like me...
“You are so adorable,” Seven says. “So sweetly trusting. I love it.”
“No! No, no no...” I can't stop the word. It's gotten stuck on repeat. I scramble back to the corner I was in only minutes ago when Declan first stepped into the room.
I'm still trying to put it all together. I had thought Seven was my captor that first day, but I'd become quickly convinced by the lie of his innocence which only became more convincing the more time passed. And after the way he was tossed in the cell all bloody and broken the day we were punished for speaking each other's names in the seemingly safe space of the shower... Did he let Declan beat him like that?
It's strange having a name for my captor now... my other captor. Declan unchains Seven, and the two of them stand together, watching me, amusement on their triumphant faces. It was a game, and Seven won. Good for him.
I seek desperately to put together a new narrative of what really happened these past weeks. Obviously, he did let Declan beat him that day, something I can't begin to comprehend. But it served its purpose. It convinced me we were in this together. That we were a team. Us against the monster. It bonded me to him more tightly than any other play they could have made.
Did they plan and coordinate each move? Did Seven know ahead of time how every last detail would unfold? When Declan was keeping me in his bedroom and blindfolding me to take me to the dungeon... Seven had to have been walking around free outside the cell. Did he watch? Did he become the new voyeur?
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to think about the fact that while I worried Declan was starving him and beating him, or had even killed him, that he was just taking a break from the game.
Whenever Seven was dragged out of the cell, Declan wasn't moving him long distances to punish him or whatever. It was all just a show until he got out into the hallway.
Seven knew there were no real drugs in the syringe the day of the escape attempt. He knew Declan was lying there fully conscious waiting for us to almost get free before pulling the rug out.
Another realization slams into me like a mallet. Seven was never drugged. The food he ate was the same as mine. And every time he was injected with what I thought were drugs, it was only a saline solution. Nothing was real.
Declan told the truth every time he said Seven wasn't my hero and everything was an act and a game. He put the truth right under my nose in plain sight. He openly stated it while I thought he was just taunting me.
“You're going to kill me aren't you?” I say, the tears still flowing down my cheeks. I loved Seven. God help me, but I still love him.
“No,” Seven says. “We really are letting you go. I mean there's only so long I can live in a cell with nothing else to do. So here's the deal. You will sign a non-disclosure agreement, backdated to the date that we took you. The contract states that you were here of your own free will playing a game with us. You can tell no one about anything that has happened here.”
I wish it was Declan telling me all this because it's so hard to see this change in Seven. I thought he cared about me... I thought...
“You will not go to the police. We own nearly every judge in this corrupt city, and we can guarantee we would get one of those judges should a trial ever occur. And we own about half the police. If you go to one of our guys, he'll just bring you right back to us, and we will be very displeased. You can't imagine the punishment.”
“Master, please...” I can't dwell on this betrayal because starvation is still a real possibility, and I have nowhere to go, and I'm sure the money was part of their sick joke—the carrot they could take away as soon as my greedy little eyes lit upon it. “Please... I have nowhere to go,” I say quietly.
