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“Get into bed,” he says. “Let me wash up.”
I do what he says, because my obeying might actually make his life a little easier. I listen to water running in the bathroom, to the hum of his electric toothbrush, to the flush of the toilet. It feels like I belong here, like we’ve been settled into this life together for a million years. It feelsright, which is impossible because the video is still out there and everything is so, so wrong.
Trap comes out of the bathroom wearing only his boxers. He climbs into bed, leaving his pillow propped behind him. Sitting up against the headboard, he reaches for me, pulling me close until my head is nestled against his chest.
His broad hand spreads over my short hair. He sighs, and a little of his fatigue seeps into me.
“I have to ask you,” he says.
“What?” I answer, even as his tone sets a flurry of panic stirring inside me, a dust devil coming to life.
He shifts, and his lips touch the crown of my head. “I need to know everything you remember about Jonas and Ansel. Anything at all. I need a way to get at them, outside that goddamn fort they have on the Island.”
I don’t realize I’ve turned to stone until he slips a finger under my chin. Something crumbles inside me as he forces my gaze up to meet his.
“No matter how small it seems,” he says. “I need to know everything you know.”
“To kill them.” My voice sounds like shattered eggshells.
“To kill them,” he agrees. “That’s the only way we’ll be safe.”
Trap has seen his share of rough behavior, of dealings that would never be accepted in a court of law. But he’s not dangerous enough to take down the Herzogs.
A row of bricks rises inside me. If I say anything that puts him in the same room with Jonas and Ansel, they’ll destroy him. The Herzogs will kill Trap, and I’ll have another death on my soul.
“There has to be another way,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Princess.”
He thinkshe’sprotectingme.But I’m the one protecting him.
I can’t tell him. I can’t say all the things I did in Klaus Herzog’s mansion. I can’t let him know all the ways I let the Herzogs use me.
I should have fought harder. I gave in too soon. I let them break my spirit. This is all my fault.
But I can’t find the words to say all that. I don’t know how to tell Trap that I’m broken. Ruined. That he never should have taken me in, and now that I’m here, the only smart thing to do is to throw me out the door.
“Please,” he says, and his voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
He’s Trap Prince. He’s the one man who’s offered me shelter in this never-ending storm. He’s the one man I can trust, the one man who searched for me, the one man who stood by me as I murdered Klaus Herzog downstairs.
I love him. I trust him.
And so I close my eyes, and I tell him what I can.
“Jonas is a bodybuilder. A weightlifter. Something like that. He’s a couple inches taller than I am but he outweighs me by fifty, maybe sixty pounds. It’s muscle. All muscle.”
Each hateful word adds a brick to the wall inside me. My voice shakes, like an icy wind is blowing through the bedroom. Trap nods, but he doesn’t give me permission to stop.
“Ansel’s taller,” I say. “Maybe six feet? He’s dark, like a man who works outside. His hair is brown, not blond like his brothers.”
The brick wall is up to my chest. It’s pressing against my lungs. It’s strangling my aching heart. I pray I’ve said enough, but Trap only whispers, “Good girl.” I have to go on.
“They have the same eyes—that light, light blue. Like milk. Like they’re blind.”
“Tattoos?” Trap asks.
I shake my head.
