He raises his eyebrows, clearly taken back by the anger in my voice. “Excuse me?”
“You fucking heard me!” I snap, straining against my cuffs. “What did you do to her? Where is she?”
I notice that the ring of raw skin from where I’d tugged at the previous set of cuffs has been treated with some kind of antiseptic ointment. I don’t know what to make of that, so I decide not to think about it at all.
“Emile is probably at the penthouse right now, cleaning,” he says with a shrug. “I did nothing to her, apart from keeping her employed.”
“You… you didn’t kill her?”
He cocks his head to the side, a slight frown playing across his eyebrows. “Why would I have killed her?”
“She let me go. I escaped because of her.”
“She didn’t know you were in that wardrobe. And that was my fault. I expected to have dealt with you before she arrived. I forgot.”
I’m only vaguely aware that my mouth is hanging open as I stare at him. I snap it shut, not entirely sure if I believe what he’s saying.
“She didn’t want to let me escape. I forced her to give me the security code. I… I choked her…”
“Well, that’s not very nice. Didn’t know you had it in you. You should probably send Emile a fruit basket or something.”
I don’t know why, but I feel the need to explain myself. To justify my brutish actions. I’m not like you, I want to scream. I would never hurt someone innocent.
“I was desperate and starved for oxygen,” I ramble. “I knew that if I stayed, you’d kill me and… and…”
“You decided you wanted to live at any cost,” he says simply.
Even now, I don’t understand my need to survive. There was a time when I’d dreamed of death. Prayed for it, even. Which is saying something, since I stopped believing in a higher power a long, long time ago.
But lately, I’ve fought so hard to keep breathing. It’s the one instinct I thought the beast had forced out of me a long time ago.
No. Don’t think about him now. Or ever. Put him back in the box and lock the key.
Somehow, the ordeal I’ve been through the last couple of days has pulled down the defenses I spent years building in my head and heart. All my demons have been allowed to come out and play. Pushing them back in again is harder than I expected.
“If Emile is at the penthouse,” I ask, “then where are we?”
“We’re at my mansion in the Hamptons,” he replies.
“Fuck off. Seriously, where are we?”
He chuckles. “Come again?”
“Your mansion? In the Hamptons? Fuck off.”
Kian smirks. “Listen.”
“To what?”
“Shh. Just listen.”
I scowl, but I shut up and do as he says. Cocking my ear towards the window, I wait for something to happen.
And then I hear it. It takes me a second to understand what I’m hearing. But suddenly…
“The ocean.”
“Smart girl.”