Sure, I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t leave or communicate with the people I actuallydidcare about, like Lorie, but when I asked Gio nicely, he let me talk to her. He’d let me do it again at some point if I asked. Maybe he’d even let me go and visit with her sometime. It was all about developing trust. Why I felt the need to develop trust with a man who had snatched me, I wasn’t sure, but it felt like we weren’t all that different ultimately, and if I had to choose between the somewhat harbored life I’d had with him for the past few weeks or the downright miserable one I’d had with my family since my mother died, there would be no question which one I’d chose.
Maybe I was losing my mind.
But when Gio wasn’t coming to visit with me, it made it worse somehow. In my mind, I’d kind of hinged the entire experience on getting to know him better. It was a strange little challenge trying to figure him out and see what made him tick. Not only that, but I just liked seeing him. I could admit that. He was sexy, terrifying, intelligent, aggressive; above all else, he was intriguing. Perhaps I’d started thinking he could be my escape from the life I was already leading, but only if he wasn’t such an enigma. He was still too much of an unknown for me to be around, and to that end, I was probably safer if I could escape somehow.
“Grrrrr,” I grumbled out loud. My feelings were all jumbled in my brain. I was no less a prisoner with my brothers and father than I was with Gio. Were those my only two options? A knock on the door made me jump and yanked me from my thoughts. “Come in,” I called out.
My heart started to race, and I realized I was anticipating Gio walking in, but the door opened, and it was Milli who entered the room. “Good morning,” he hummed.
The relationship between Milli and I was strange, to say the least. He wasn’t a particularly kind man, at least not by comparison to Gio. He always carried himself with an air of dignity and class, but when it got right down to it, he was poison dressed up with sharp cheekbones and a dimple-laden grin. Still, there was something about the way it seemed like he had to put on a smile that contradicted who he was that I related to, so though he horrified me to my core, I felt akin to him in a way.
“Good morning,” I said, getting up off the couch and walking towards the table in the kitchen where he’d already made his way to and was setting my breakfast down. “Will you be guarding my room today?”
“No,” he replied, “I’m just here at the request of Gio to check in and see how you’re doing.”
I frowned. “He couldn’t come and do it himself?”
A smirk rose to Milli’s face. “Are you bothered by that?”
“I just don’t know what I did to run him off,” I admitted. “I tried to be nice and build trust, but maybe I laid it on too thick? He didn’t seem to like it.”
This seemed to strike a chord of curiosity with Milli. “Are you overly concerned with what he likes?”
The question gave me pause. I hadn’t really thought of it in that way, but ultimately, I felt compelled to try and please him. “I don’t know. I guess I just think it’s nice when he smiles and seems happy.”
Milli gave me a knowing nod. “I know what you mean. I was responsible for chasing Gio around when he was a shithead teenager, and it always made me happy when I felt like I was pleasing the young prince as opposed to pissing him off. I suppose that might have had something to do with Merrick though.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Merrick? Merrick Raines.”
“Yes. He dotes on Gio, so he was always happiest when Gio was happy, and I guess I chased the positive effect that it had on my life. I bought my first ever house with the bonus Merrick gave me after I convinced Gio to sit down and have meals with Merrick and his wife, Tamryn.”
“He wouldn’t do it?” I asked, enjoying hearing about Gio’s younger years.
“Given his history with his real parents, he wasn’t keen on trusting,” Milli replied.
The smile that I’d developed left my face. “Merrick and Tamryn aren’t Gio’s real parents?”
Perhaps Milli had gotten so carried away reminiscing, but it was clear from the expression on his face that he had overshared. He cleared his throat and returned to his neutral stance. “It’s not my place to share.” He looked around the table and then said, “Sorry, I appear to have forgotten your drink. I’ll be right back.”
I watched as Milli turned around and walked out of my room, but his slip-up must have distracted his mind, because he left the door wide open. My heart immediately started racing as I stood up and took a few steps closer. I expected Milli to come flying back through any minute, but a minute passed, then two, then three and he didn’t return. Carefully and quietly, I stepped closer to the door thinking, at the very least, there was probably a guard outside, but when I bravely stuck my head through the crack in the door, there was no one sitting in the chair next to my door. I glanced both directions up and down the hallway, but there was no one.
I could escape.
It was difficult to convince myself to step across the door frame. It felt too good to be true, no way after all the constant surveillance did someone like Milli just have a lapse in judgment. But it was right there, a way out, and the longer I waited, the smaller my window got to leave. I had to just go.
Picking up my courage and taking a deep breath, I took my first step out of the room. I half expected alarms to start blaring and guards to come running from every direction, but no such event took place. In fact, it was eerily silent. I tried to think back to the one time I’d been led down to that room from Gio’s office. If I could just get to that stairwell or the elevators, I could get out.
Taking a stab in the dark, I took off down the hallway. When I was on my own in the maze, it seemed even more difficult to navigate than it did when I was walking with Milli or Gio. Everything looked the same. All the doors looked the same as every other door, all the hallways were carbon copies of one another. For all I knew, I was running in circles. On at least two occasions, I’d doubled back on myself and ended up back in my bedroom.
Annoyed with getting lost, I dipped into my room and grabbed one of the charcoal pencils. It was time to treat Gio’s house like the maze it was. Establishing a rule to alternate between turning left and right to try and prevent myself from doubling back, I also used my pencil to make very light arrows on the walls to indicate the directions I’d already come from. It felt at first like I was just lost in a labyrinth of hallways cropping up as I moved to keep myself trapped inside. I kept checking inside doors that seemed different from my room door, but I was hitting everything—a library, a gym, more guest rooms—everything but the elevators or stairs.
But then I came upon a set of double doors that looked very different from the others.
I scolded myself for not paying better attention to the stairwell door, but I was fairly certain it was the same as the others. These double doors, however, could easily be the doors that led to the elevator. I thought I remembered the elevator spitting out right into the hallway, but with how garbled this place was I could easily be mistaken. Regardless of if I was right or wrong, it was the first change in scenery I’d gotten since embarking from my room. Not going through wasn’t an option.
Twisting the door handle as quietly as I could, I crept just barely into the room on the other side. For the fact that I was hoping for elevators, what I actually saw froze me in place as if I’d suddenly been paralyzed. Not much in the room was visible because it was totally dark apart from the glow of a handful of candles, but directly across from the door was a big, four-poster bed. On top of it, along with comfortable enough looking pillows and blankets, was a woman. She was naked, laying starfish on her back, with her head at the foot of the bed. Her arms and legs were tied to the bed’s posts and she was wearing a blindfold over her eyes.
Just as I was adjusting to seeing her there, a second body strode out from the shadows. A man, totally naked—god-like. He was blessed with a large package and had chiseled muscles from his arms and back down to his shins. He walked with striking confidence, and he carried some sort of device in his hand; a white handle with a translucent, dull-pointed attachment. The hand that wasn’t holding this device, went up to his head to brush his hair out of his eyes.
