My heart seized up on me, beating erratically, turning to a cold lump in my chest.
“Lucy,” I whispered.
The man in front of me had a face nothing like Alaric’s: he was ruddy complexioned, brown-eyed, with an attractive face that did not rival Alaric’s in perfection or intensity. But his expression was the same: cold, stony-eyed, dark. It did not change, and he offered me nothing when I said her name.
He stared me down, until I started to back out of the room.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to stick around with me, my dear,” he said quietly.
The old me—the foolish me, the me who had thought that some clunky thug like Andrej Sulov was a powerful man—might have been inclined to say something ‘spunky’ to that. Like, “Or what?”
But now that I had seen the kind of quiet, profound, dark power of men like Alaric—and Eric was one of those men—I knew better.
“I have to pee,” I almost whispered.
He said nothing, and seemed to be glaring at me, but he moved in the direction of the hallway to the bathroom between the living room and the kitchen. In his steely glare, I understood that I was to follow him. He walked into the bathroom ahead of me, and my heart sank to hopeless lows; I had asked to go because I wanted to be alone and cry.
But he was sweeping the room. He picked up the wastepaper basket and swept the spare contents of the cabinets into it, looked in the remaining cupboards, which held only towels, and then walked to where I was standing.
His look chilled me as though it were made of a cold liquid. I jumped a little when he dipped his hand to a pocket in his black utility pants. It was at that moment that I noticed his forearm, and the tattoo that looked so similar to Alaric’s.
He snapped something in front of me, just below my chin.
I shook but held his gaze defiantly. He reminded me of a dog, one you didn’t want to show any fear to. I felt it—surely he knew I did—but I wasn’t going to scream and run away, like I wanted to. I was sure he had a knife beneath my chin. But Alaric wouldn’t leave me with a maniac who would kill me, would he?
Not even the maniac who had advised him to do just that...?
My gut twisted. Now I needed to throw up.
He pushed me aside with one hand, almost smiling as he did.
Holding the wastepaper basket, and with a skill level I could not fathom, he disassembled the door lock and plopped it into the basket as though he were doing shopping. The tool he had used went back into a pocket on the side of his pants.
Then he pulled the door behind him, the hole where the lock had been staring at me like an evil eye.
I backed up and sat down on the edge of the tub, and was just about to let the tears pour out of my eyes when I was aggravated by a moment of fury.
I snapped the hand towel from the rack and stuffed it into the hole.
And then, shaking uncontrollably, I sat down again and started to cry.
I barely made the toilet when I threw up.
“Five minutes, Natalia,” his voice said, flat and emotionless from behind the door.
* * *
Iwanted to go backto sleep—to go back in time, to just days before, when Alaric had seemed so close to me, when I had been blinded by love. I was still blinded by it; even though I knew that Alaric was gone to do a terrible thing, and even though I hated him for it, it was impossible to get rid of all the feelings I had for him. Iwantedto hate him, and I knew that I could make myself hate him, and I knew that it was right to never forgive him, but the real feelings inside of me were more complex. I couldn’t stop looking for a way to forgive him.
Eric watched me silently, his eyes cold and unfeeling. He gave me the creeps, and he also gave me the sensation that he was looking for an excuse to push me off the balcony. So I did what he said, stayed within his sights, and pretended to sleep on the enormous sofa in the living room. I’d have thought the guy would go take a piss once in a while, but he didn’t until morning, when he peed off the side of the balcony, keeping me in his peripheral vision.
At ten o’clock, he nudged me on the shoulder. “You need to eat something. Come on. Into the kitchen.”
The meals were usually prepared by Alaric’s ever-rotating cast of service people, who were all silent, seemed to be from totally disparate parts of the planet, and never said a word. If I saw them, they scurried away. But we seemed to be alone on the island. Eric pointed to a chair at the large island. “Sit there.”
He didn’t ask me what I wanted, just began taking things out of the fridge. I noticed he had three guns strapped to his legs and in a holster on his back. He kept them holstered, but I felt sure he could grab them faster than I could. Just like Alaric.
It was this kind of thing I knew was part of Alaric’s world, and I didn’t want any part of it. I didn’t like guns; I’d never even fired one. Alaric had told me after the boat rescue that the safety had been on the whole time... what did I know? The heavy, steel power hanging all around Eric made my stomach twist.
