“Is he okay?”I gasp.“Is he alive?”
“He’s alive, but he’s not...available.”
Right, I’m finished with the riddles.
“What the fuck doesthatmean?”
He doesn’t answer–I never realized this guy was so stingy with words–but grabs my arm and starts dragging me down the stairs, and though my gut is screaming at me that this is not a man you want to go down a dark staircase with, my heart is screaming louder.
Because Simon says he knows where Beau is.
And I desperately need to know that my brother is okay.
We stumble down two flights of stairs onto the landing that leads to the basement, and Simon takes out a key and inserts it into the door.
“This door has a key?”I gasp, shocked.
Just when you think you know everything about a house.
“Of course it fucking does,” he snaps.“How else would we keep people locked in here?”
Okay, fair.I knew there was alock.I just didn’t know there was a key for it.Though the moment he says it, I feel stupid for not assuming there would be.
He opens the door slowly, then creeps across the dark hall to the door directly across from where I’m standing.
The room where I thought I saw Beau and Corinne the night I was down here.
That door is closed now, though, and evidently locked, though Simon makes quick work of that little problem.When he opens the door there, I see why this door was locked.
Because I wasn’t hallucinating Corinne and Beau.She’s chained to a chair, her hair tangled around her face and her eyes enormous and bruised.She looks like she hasn’t eaten in days and hasn’t seen water in longer than that.
And my brother is standing over her, fierce and protective like he’s willing to kill anyone who gets close.
His eyes flare when he sees me and I immediately start toward him, my senses screaming for me to free him, but Simon puts out a hand and stops me.
“We can’t,” he hisses.
I throw him off and turn to him, furious.“What the fuck do you mean we can’t?My brother is right there and he’s the heir to this fucking family.Who the fuck is keeping him down here?”
“He’s keeping himself,” Simon mutters.“No one is keeping him prisoner.”
“What?Why?That doesn’t make sense.Why would Beau–”
“He’s protectingher,” Simon answers quickly.“Making sure they don’t hurt her any more than they already have.”
I turn my eyes to Corinne and try to focus on the fact that Lucien’s sister is also here.I don’t know why my father has her or how long she’s been here, but this is dangerous.
Gemini would tear this place down brick by brick to get to her.And Lucien...
Lucien would light the place on fire and laugh as everyone who hurt her burned, if he knew.
“What is she doing here?”I whisper.“Why does my father have her?”
Simon snorts.“She’s the prize your father is saving for a rainy day.Your brother is trying to keep her safe from whatever he has planned.And we can’t touch either of them, because your father has cameras in that room.”
Cameras in that room.He didn’t have cameras on the girls in here, or in the warehouse, but he has cameras on Corinne and my brother.
What the actual fuck.
