I gasped, going completely still, the voice familiar. So familiar. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. It was familiar for a reason. I had to focus. If I just focused, I could remember.
Whose voice was that?
Not Steven’s. Not his, um…
Oh! “Ev…Everett?”
“I’m here, pup.”
I inhaled sharply, shaking my head. I knew it. It was always him, it would always be him. “Where did you go?”
“We’ve been speaking every hour,” he said, his low, sultry voice filled with something I didn’t quite recognize.
I looked around the room carefully, slowly. “They moved me,” I whispered hoarsely. “This room is smaller. Phil is lying to me now, he said it’s been a week, but I know it’s a lie, I know it. Can you use that information? He has a wife and son too. I don’t know why everyone is lying to me, but it has to mean something, I know it does.”
“It does mean something, you’re doing so good, Olivia, but listen, I need you to listen to me, okay?”
At the shift in his voice, I knew exactly what he wanted, and I wanted it too. I missed him so much. I just wanted to see him, just for a second. “If I do what you ask, will I get something in return?” I dared, my eyes locking on that door.
He was quiet for a long time before he answered again. “Anything you want, just name it.”
“I want to see you,” I told him, feeling my heart flutter at the possibility. “Just for a second and I’ll do whatever you ask, I promise. Just come right through that door, and I’ll do anything.”
Seconds passed. “It might be a bit, but I promise you will see me.”
Relief filled me and I nodded. “Okay.” My eyes filled at the possibility of seeing him. I had been good. I was being so good, I deserved to see him, I was sure of it. I had more than earned it.
“Okay,” he whispered back, that thing in his voice back. Like a crack or a break. If I were writing the story out, I might have paired it with crying, but that was impossible because Everett didn’t cry. Ever. He didn’t have it in him. “Olivia, I want you to repeat some things for me, okay? Over and over again. I want them engrained into your mind; do you understand me? I want you to say it so many times that the words don’t sound like words anymore, okay?”
My brows furrowed. “Words? That doesn’t seem like a challenge.”
“Not yet, but it might feel like it later, so you need to do this for me. Over and over again. Out loud or in your head, just keep saying them no matter what happens, okay?”
That didn’t seem like something he would request from me, but who was I to question him? “Okay, I understand.”
“Good, repeat after me; ‘I am Olivia Rose’.”
“I am Olivia Rose,” I repeated.
“I am a writer, I am unbreakable, I am Claimed.”
I watched the door for a long time, thinking over his words. Just truths. He was having me repeat truths. Why? I wasn’t sure. I was fine, everything was going fine.
“Olivia?”
I swallowed, my tongue dry, the taste of bologna still lingering. “I am a writer, I am unbreakable, I am Claimed,” Irepeated back at him just as the door opened.
Isaak walked in, his eyes narrowing as someone behind him pulled in a hose. “Were you talking to yourself? Perhaps confessing a sin?”
I sneered at him, so angry, so exhausted. I just wanted some food. “Sin?” I asked vehemently. “The only sin I committed was not swinging the gun towards your daughter’s chest when I had the chance. The desperate whore deserves to be six feet under.”
“Bide your time, pup,” Everett’s voice drifted through me.
Yeah, I knew that. I knew I needed to bite my tongue, to hold back my reactions, but I was so tired, and it was getting harder and harder to hold it back.
His expression darkened. “Now, Olivia, I’ve tried to be fair. I’ve given you water, I had Phil feed you today. I’ve done my very best to keep the miscreants away because look at yourself. A ragged dress, hanging on the wall, no way to fight back. I have many men up there begging me for the chance to get a few minutes down here with you. Olivia, please, please do not give me a reason to punish you for your dirty little mouth. I’m a good man, I would hate for you to ruin that.”
I worked my jaw, my heart beating way too hard. I wanted to yell at him. To ask him why he was even keeping me alive at this point. I had been here a week and I hadn’t said a single thing regarding The Family. If it were my book, he would have killed me by now and moved on.
