“What was that? You’ll have to speak louder. There’s rather a distance between us.”
With a sigh, I repeat, “Teddy.”
“Teddy. How delightful. Just Teddy, or is your full name Theodore?”
It was definitely the wrong move to engage. But at least when I’m talking to him, I feel less alone down here. I’m still scared, my heartbeat erratic as my mind plays out everything that might happen to me—torture and death repeat a few times—but keeping my feet firm on the floor, Alessandro’s jacket tight around me like an embrace, and talking with someone else…it might help.
I need to clear my mind. So I call back, “Not Theodore. Edward.”
“How fascinating.”
Is it? I nuzzle down into the jacket again and take a few shaky breaths.
“And your last name?” Julian asks.
“MacCallum.”
“Edward ‘Teddy’ MacCallum,” Julian muses. “And what did you do that so offended my brother, Teddy MacCallum? Or is this one of his twisted sex games?”
I jerk my head around at that, thankful that he can’t see me in the darkness. There are no windows in the room where these barred cells have been built, and the only light is a faint glow through the thick glass panel in the solid metal door, coming from the corridor—tunnel, really—that led down here. But the tunnel itself is only dimly lit, so that by the time any light gets to where I am in the end cell, it’s nothing but a slightly grayer shade of black.
“What do you mean?” I ask, when nothing further comes from Julian’s direction.
He gives a light laugh. “Oh, Teddy MacCallum, what a sweetheart you are. Didn’t my brother make his tastes known when he booked your time? He’ll be back down here tomorrow to have you there in that cell, if I know him. Right in front of me. He likes an audience.”
A strange sense of sick desire comes over me. What Julian is describing sounds terrible…or itshouldsound terrible. But nothing that Alessandro has said or done tonight makes me think he has any plans to do…that.
The thing is, I’m not great at picking up on cues. I never have been. Peopleseemto be attracted to me until they have to have a conversation with me.
Alessandro has had several conversations with me by now. I run back over the things he’s said, searching for clues as to what his intentions might be, and come up blank. Yes, he said things about my pretty face, leaned in close to me, but everyone does that at first.
But my mind sticks over one thing he said, just as he was dragging me down here, when I asked who found the body.
You’re about to meet them.
Julian is talking, chattering, really, making suggestions about what Alessandro might do to me in this strange, lilting voice that makes it sound like small talk instead of dirty talk.
“Julian.”
He stops his litany. “Yes, Teddy MacCallum?”
“Alessandro told me you found your father’s body. Is that true?”
There’s a long silence, and I almost repeat myself, but then I hear a long, slow intake of breath. When Julian speaks again, his voice stillseemslight and airy, but there’s a new undercurrent to it, something I can’t identify.
“Alessandro told you that, did he? Was this pillow talk, or just casual conversation?”
“Neither.”
“He just, what, happened to mention it?”
“Is it true?” I persist.
Another long silence. “Yes,” he says at last. “It’s true.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
Julian laughs. “A bedtime story?”
