Sudden anxiousness made me blurt, “You don’t have to guard against me, you know. I won’t share—”
“If you know so much about me, why don’t you tell the others?” He went deathly still. “What’s stopping you from telling all those women my weaknesses?”
“Simple.” I shrugged. “They’re not my secrets to tell.”
His eyes shot to mine again.
“And no matter what you think of me,” I added. “I’m not here to hurt or betray you.”
He sucked in a breath as if I’d punched him. He flinched, unable to hide raw, startled shock. His stunned, childlike confusion ripped out my heart and snatched it for his own, even as he sneered and shut everything down. “I don’t believe you. If Marcus demanded you to tell him what I’ve been up to away from his cameras, you’d do it.”
“Marcus?” I wrinkled my nose. “Who’s Marcus?”
“The guy who threw you in here.”
Oh yes, I remembered him now.
“Ah.” I nodded. “He’s definitely a piece of work.”
“So you admit it? You’d tell him everything—”
“I’d tell him to shove his questions where the sun doesn’t shine,” I cut in. “Then I’d demand he let me and all the other girls go.” I smiled. “I would also probably ask Whisper to have some fun and see how he likes being the one in trouble for once.”
He didn’t thaw. “Am I supposed to believe that you wouldn’t trade my life for yours?”
“No.” I fluffed up the pillow a bit more, cradling it under my cheek. “But I do expect you to believe that I’m not like the rest who have betrayed you.”
He bared his teeth at the ceiling. “You’re still determined to convince me that you’re not lying.”
“I’mnotlying.”
“So even if they offered you five million dollars to either kill me or fuck me...you’re saying you wouldn’t take it?”
I scowled, insulted. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Please.” He laughed with a bitter edge. “Why would you turn down such wealth? You expect me to believe you’d choosemeover that? A stranger who bound you in menial labour?” He didn’t look at me, almost as if he didn’t want to see me go back on my previous answer.
“You’re not a stranger,” I murmured. “Not anymore.”
His jaw clenched; he didn’t reply.
I studied him where I lay on my side. The longer I stared at his thick black eyelashes, flawless skin, and sheer agony-rage that always clouded him, the more I wanted to tell him who I really was.
If I told him that five million dollars was a week’s income for me, would that put him at ease? If I told him I was the sole heir and runaway empress of Snowflake Corp, would he even know what I meant?
While cleaning his mansion, I’d come across more correspondence with whoever ran Brimstone Industries. The single flame logo had become very recognisable, even if the contents were mainly boring graphs, forecasts, and meeting minutes.
The fact that they provided him with information about the very company keeping him prisoner was infuriatingly cleverand cruel—keeping him involved in the very thing he’d tried to destroy when he was nine (if Laura was right) but was now destroying him.
I’d also gleaned enough to know that his company had done what mine had, and harnessed nature to provide perpetual energy.
The fact that I’d never heard of them filled my stomach with lead because it wasn’t just surprising at this point but suspicious.
How had no one—not one of my board members, researchers, or staff—mentioned Brimstone and the Ashfalls?
We should’ve been all over them. Should’ve tracked their patents and infrastructure, lobbied against them for risk, and done our best to infiltrate the markets they had their eye on well before they did.
And the fact that no one so much as whispered about Brimstone to me made me think that it wasn’t just him that’d been kept in the dark.
