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1
ALIX
* * *
Some nightmares never die.
My hands shake as I stare at the photograph of the man who sold me into sexual slavery. Leo Key. My brother. My twin.
He’s supposed to be dead. That’s what one of the women said, one of the slaves who was tortured with me in Klaus Herzog’s mansion in the Delaware woods.
“Princess?”
Trap stands in the doorway to his bedroom—ourbedroom—holding an insulated mug filled with coffee. Given the look of concern on his face, I must have made some noise while I stared at the evidence I just found.
I shut the computer, as if folding down the screen is enough to push Leo out of my life. My hands are shaking. For some reason, I can picture my brother and me playing hide-and-seek in my grandmother’s house. We must be five or six years old, and Leo just jumped out of Granny’s closet, screaming bloody murder and making me cry.
“Princess?” Trap asks again. “What’s going on?”
“Leo,” I say, but my voice doesn’t sound like my own. “Leo’s alive.”
Trap doesn’t call me a liar. He doesn’t question where I got my information. Instead, he crosses the room and forces my fingers around the mug. He tucks his hand under my elbow and guides me to sit on the side of the bed.
I stare at the coffee. It’s easier to talk to a mug than to Trap—especially after having told him the truth last night, the entire truth, that I love him and can’t imagine living my life without him.
Something tugs at me in the morning light. It costs too much to love me, even if Trap is a billionaire.
I killed a man in the most violent way possible. The police investigation into my crime is dragging Trap down too. His most loyal clients are on the hook because of me—targeted by my victim’s brothers.
And now… With Leo still alive…
It’s all too much. I’m dissolving. I’m melting into a ghost of the woman Trap once knew.
I force myself to piece together the facts I know, to tell them to the mug. “Back at Herzog’s house… Lilyana, my best friend there… She said Leo was a… boyfriend to several of Herzog’s women. He raped them, Trap. He brought them chocolates and colored pencils and they thought he was their friend, but he forced himself on them when they didn’t have a choice.”
“The whole place was fucked up,” Trap says. He must think his words will make things better, but I see the cords tense in his wrists. The skin on his knuckles is tender and pink. He’s punched walls and guards to tear down my nightmare, and I have no doubt he’d reduce Herzog to a pulp if I hadn’t already killed my tormentor.
He’d destroy Leo for me.
But I’m still trying to make sense out of the files I just saw on the computer. “Lilyana was so certain,” I say. “She said Leo owed Herzog. Leo promised me as payment of his debt. He told Herzog I was a virgin, and they agreed that three days with me would clear the ledger.”
It’s a good thing I’m still talking to the coffee, because Trap is straining beside me, barely biting back all the things he wants to say. He knows Leo was wrong. I wasn’t a virgin. Leo liedbeforeI spent the most magical night of my life here, with Trap, in this room, in the bed we’re sitting on right now.
“I heard him,” I say. “Leo. I heard him at Herzog’s house.” I don’t know why I need to defend my brother, why I feel the urge to protect him even now. But twenty-six years of living with Leo burned pathways in my brain. He was my twin. I knew him.
Heismy twin. Iknowhim.
I force myself to finish my thought. I tell the coffee, “In Herzog’s house. Even before I knew where I was, when I was in the Holding Room, and the drugs they gave me were first wearing off, I heard Leo begging. Pleading. He said, ‘Please. I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Please! Don’t do this to her.’”
Trap’s hand is gentle on mine, even though I can feel the tension in his fingertips. He takes the cup of coffee and puts it on the nightstand. With his other hand, he cups the curve of my jaw. He echoes Leo’s unsuccessful plea. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I loved him!” I say, my voice breaking on the second word.
“I know.” Trap wants to make everything right. But the truth is he doesn’t know how. Hecan’tknow how.
I’m not sure I have the words to tell him, but I have to try. “We used to joke about sharing one brain,” I say. “Leo and me. ‘I need the brain for third period. I have an algebra test.’”
“Let it go, Princess,” Trap says. His fingertips are gentle on my cheek, and I’m surprised to see they come away wet.
