She knew what real freedom looked like. It wasn’t that check, and it certainly wasn’t a well-maintained prison cell, no matter what the dickbag who had imprisoned her thought.
Reyna turned on the shower and peeled the sweaty layers off her body while she waited for it to heat up. She stuck the clothes in a chute and grabbed another white T-shirt and a pair of loose cotton shorts, which she dropped on a stool before entering the steaming shower.
Her closet was nothing compared to what it had been at Beckham’s apartment. At first, she’d resented the silk and satin and lace. All the little unmentionables. The mile-high heels she’d only just begun to get used to.
No one cared for her to dress up now. She was just a blood bag.
An actual fucking blood bag to the most powerful vampire in the world—William Harrington, the president and CEO of Visage Incorporated and Beckham’s boss.
He was the ruthless ruler who had brought vampires out of the darkness. After the economy had collapsed, Visage had emerged as if they were a benevolent organization dedicated to helping humanity. What they’d actually done was instate the blood type cure. It wasn’t so much a cure for vampirism as a bandage over the real issue: vampires who drank blood from a human who matched their blood type became less animalistic. Instead of bloodthirsty monsters lurking in dark alleys, they became bloodthirsty monsters in two-thousand-dollar suits, taking over the world.
The newspapers proclaimed that Visage had brought the world back from the brink. They registered the vampires. They paid humans—bloodescorts—to allow vampires to drink from them. Killed two birds with one stone.
Except Reyna knew that Harrington would never be satisfied with his current status. He would never rest until all the power was his to control. But first he needed a match, which was where she came in.
Harrington had kidnapped her for her specific and very rare blood type: Rh null negative. She had none of the Rh antigens that were found in 99.9% of people in the world. A true universal donor. And unluckily, she matched Harrington.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d convinced her only friend in the city, Everett, to betray her. She didn’t even know if he had ever been her friend or if he had been conning her from the beginning. She’d been so naive. Worst of all, she had no idea what Harrington had told Beckham, or whether he’d been left without answers about why she’d disappeared.
And knowing her blood type made everything feel worse. That she wasn’t officially a match for Beckham. That as a true universal donor she shouldn’t have made him turn into a monster. Terrifyingly, anyone could drink from her. So had he only lost control because of…her?
She slammed her hand onto the tile wall. She hated thinking about this. But the shower was her only solace, one of the few places without cameras. She couldn’t appear helpless anywhere else.
Even waking up with screams irritated her. It ruined the mask she had carefully constructed these long eight weeks. She needed to get a grip. That dream had gotten to her. It wasn’t the first she’d had, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was certainly the most vivid one so far. It made her ache for him, and she couldn’t do that anywhere else. Beckham belonged in a compartmentalized shelf in her brain where he could keep her alive and make her stronger but didn’t interfere with the person she had to be to survive.
With new resolve, she got out of the shower, dressed, and slicked her still-wet hair back into a ponytail. Time to get this day over with.
When she walked back into the one-room cell, the human nurse was already waiting for her. She was a white woman with nondescript features—dark hair, dark eyes, wan expression.
“Miss Reyna,” the woman said.
She wore the crisp white Visage nurse uniform. That uniform had made Reyna cringe the first time she saw one, at the Visage hospital all those months ago on her first day as a blood escort. The only color on the outfit was the bloodred V logo. The sight still made her feel sick.
“I’m ready.”
“You should eat first. You know that you get dizzy if you don’t eat breakfast,” she admonished.
Reyna wanted to snap at her to stop mothering her. Her mother had died just over a dozen years ago, when Reyna was eight years old. Her deadbeat uncle had taken her and her brothers in for three years before the economy had gone to hell in a handbasket. Then it was ten years alone with her brothers before desperation had pushed her straight to Visage.
But she didn’t voice any of her thoughts. She kept her face blank. “Sure.”
She sat down and ate the food that had been carefully selected for optimal nutrition. A perfectly balanced diet and a healthy amount of exercise was forced down her throat. No one cared how much iron she pumped; there was no chance of her overpowering a vampire.
“Ready,” she said, pushing the tray aside.
“Don’t forget your water.”
Reyna snatched it off the table as she headed to the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Of course,” the woman said with a bland smile.
She’d been the same nurse twice a week for eight weeks. Not a single change in all that time. Reyna didn’t know a thing about her. They spent an hour together every Monday and Thursday for one of the most unpleasant experiences of her life, and she didn’t even know the woman’s name.
The door to the room slid open silently, and Reyna held her breath. Every time it opened, she envisioned herself slipping out and running away undetected. It was a pipe dream. Still she clung to it.
She followed the nurse out of the bedroom and took a right down the hallway. When she’d first arrived, she’d tried the exact thing she still fantasized about. She’d made it three feet before a shock wave ran up her arm and she fell forward flat on her face. Some hugely muscled vampire had picked her up with one arm and deposited her back in her cell.
He’d laughed as he told her about the device they’d implanted into her arm to prevent escape, then shut the door in her face. As if it wasn’t enough to have vampires guarding her. They had an invasivethingput into her arm.
