I breathe hard, my pulse pounding with painful realization. Every task he gave me. Every floor I scrubbed, every meal I cooked, every humiliation I endured. It was all planned. All part of his evaluation process to see how long I’d last before he added my death to the final page.
“You saw him do this over and over and didn’t lift a finger to stop him?” I ask, the words choked.
“Edward’s control over me was absolute until you,” he replies.
A shudder runs down my frame, igniting every nerve ending until I’m coming apart at the seams. All those nights I lay in bed wondering if I was losing my mind with Rochester blowing hot and cold. All those times I questioned my own sanity for playing along with this charade while he studied me like a bug under glass.
“I don’t believe this,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Do you want to see the corpses he keeps in the cottage basement?” Rowland asks.
“No.” The word comes out strangled. I can’t handle returning to the place where he locked me up that night. Can’t handle seeing another body. Can’t handle knowing that I was trapped mere feet above a graveyard.
Rowland rounds the desk and pauses at a distance. “I meant it when I said I’d find a way for us to be together. Every word. But I have to know, do you still want to be with me?”
I stare up at this broken man who’s survived hell. Who still has enough humanity left to want to protect someone else instead of just saving himself. Who knows exactly what kind of monster his brother is because he’s lived it.
His black eyes burn with something fierce and desperate. Like the next word from me could condemn him to a lifetime of captivity or set him free.
“We’re not so different,” I murmur. “Just trying to survive in a world that wants us dead.”
His breath quickens. “Then you agree? That Edward must die?”
I glance down at the notebook. At my name written in the elegant handwriting marking me for death. At the page titled DEMISE waiting for him to fill it with details of how he killed me.
Rochester isn’t going to stop. Even if I run, even if I disappear, he’ll hunt me down. And when he catches me, I’ll end up in that cottage basement with all the others.
“Yeah.” The word tastes like blood. “Edward dies.”
Relief transforms Rowland’s features, smoothing away the lines etched with pain. Seconds pass, and he doesn’t move. Just gazes down at me with those fathomlessblack eyes like I’m the keys to his salvation. Then he takes a slow step toward me, his fingertips skimming the desk.
At the second step, I straighten, finding him more imposing than he was in the kitchen. Taller. Thicker in the shoulders. The quiet confidence in his next step makes him feel heavier somehow—more rugged, more masculine, more real. How on earth did I not notice this before?
Has he always been like this? Or did something inside him shift when I said the words? Or maybe I’ve been so focused on survival that the only viable men to me have been those with resources. High rollers, sugar daddies, gangsters like Gil. For a moment of insanity, even Edward Rochester. And the entire time, I’d been looking in the wrong places.
Rowland’s rawness and blunt edges are the polar opposite of Rochester’s refined manipulation. Nothing about him is calculated. Everything about him is unvarnished and direct.
He stops close enough that I can smell the attic on his skin. Feel the heat radiating from his scarred chest. My pulse quickens, and shivers run down my spine as he lifts his fingers toward my face, hesitating just an inch from my skin. His features flicker with uncertainty as if needing my permission.
I raise my chin, and he trails them along my jaw, making my skin tingle.
Breathing hard, I place a hand on my chest, only relaxing when he breaks eye contact to let his gaze roam across my face as if he’s memorizing every contour. No one's ever looked at me like this before. It’s like I’m the answer to every prayer he’s been afraid to ask.
Then he leans closer until our faces nearly touch. His breath warms my heated skin. The air thickens, the walls grow closer, the study ceases to exist. It’s just me and him and this unspoken need.
“Annalisa?” he asks, his voice wavering and unsure.
“Yes?” I whisper.
“Kiss me,” he says.
THIRTY-FIVE
The request hangs between us, thick as smoke. I stare into Rowland’s black eyes, finding the kind of naked hunger that makes my insides seize. Oh, God. When did anyone ever need me this much?
But I have to know.
“Why do you want to kiss me?” I whisper.
