“I’m starving,” Leo announced, breaking me from my thoughts. “You must be hungry, too. What do you want to eat?”
I turned from the window to face him. His beard was definitely more established than it had been a couple of days ago, and I wondered if he’d keep it.
“I don’t mind, anything.”
“What do you like? Indian? Chinese? Thai? Pizza? Chicken? Fish and chips?”
“You can get all those things brought here?”
“Of course.”
I realised my diet had been as sheltered as the rest of my life. My father preferred for his food to be simple—meat and rye bread and fried potatoes. I prepared whatever he brought home. I’d tasted other foods during my trips to the city, but those occasions had been few and far between.
I considered telling him to choose but realised if he was going to respect me as a person, he needed to know that I could make up my own mind.
“Let’s try Thai.”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” He took out his phone and brought something up on screen, then handed the device to me. “Add whatever you want.”
I scrolled through, translating as I read, doing my best to understand what the options were. I found what I thought were noodles, added them, and handed back the phone.
He frowned at what I’d selected. “Pad Thai? Is that all you’re having?”
Had I done something wrong? “I think so?”
“I’ll add a few extras.” He swiped the screen a couple of times and then put the phone away. “There, done. It’ll be with us soon.”
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt awkward, being in someone else’s place, especiallythisman’s place. It didn’t have the vibe of a man who lived alone. On the sofa, beautiful cushions in teal and gold with peacock feathered embroidery nestled among soft throws. Painting and prints were grouped together artfully on the walls. A huge bookcase took up one wall and was filled with titles such asA Thousand Splendid Suns,The Midnight Library,The Nightingale, andSmall Great Things.
I approached the bookcase, taking solace in the tomes. I ran my fingers over their spines, feeling as though this was a little piece of home. I knew the characters in those books. They didn’t seem like the kind of books Leo Cornell would be interested in, however.
“You like to read?” I asked him.
“No.” His reply was curt.
“Oh.”
Books weren’t the only things on the shelves. A photograph of a beautiful blonde girl sat in a frame. On the wall was another photograph of the two of them together, him hugging her from behind. Leo looked so different, not just younger, but carefree and happy. Yes, happy. That was the main difference. I didn’t think I’d seen him properly smile.
My stomach had dropped at the sight of the pictures. Like a punch in the chest.
“Who is she?”
I thought I already knew, but I wanted to hear it coming from his mouth.
“She’s the reason you’re here.”
I swallowed. “My father. He killed her, didn’t he?”
“Rasmus stormed a party here in London, and Jodie was shot. She was my fiancée.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t know what this thing was between me and Leo, but I was confident enough that it wasn’t a relationship, at least not like the kind he’d shared with his fiancée. Technically, I was Leo’s prisoner. It wasn’t as though I could just walk out whenever I wanted. Even if he did let me leave, where would I go? I was in a strange country, with no friends and no money. The only ID I had wasn’t even my own—correction—the only IDLeohad for me wasn’t my own. I had a new name now, and I guessed I should be grateful for it if I didn’t want my father to track me down.
I experienced a twinge of guilt at the thought. Would he miss me? I found it hard to picture him missing anyone. Even after my mother vanished from our lives, he never spoke about her. It was as though she just stopped existing, and he was perfectly fine with that. I was so young when she left that sometimes I doubted my memories of her. Maybe those fleeting moments of remembering her arms around me, or her stroking my hair, or of a song she sang to me at bedtime weren’t memories at all, but things I’d made up to convince myself that I had once had a mother, and she had loved me.
A buzzer sounded, and Leo went to open the door. A video monitor on the wall showed whoever was outside, but he pulled open a drawer from a hall console table and took out a gun. “You can never be too careful.”