He didn’t release my hand as he led me from the bedroom, nor did he rush me to the front door. In fact, there was something almost maddening about the steadiness of him. The way he moved as though this outcome had been decided long before I ever started stuffing clothes into a suitcase.
We crossed the living room together, my apartment suddenly feeling smaller than it ever had before, as though the walls themselves were shrinking inward. The sofa, the scattered cushions and throw blankets, the familiar clutter that once felt comforting, now seemed fragile and temporary. It struck me, with a strange ache, that I had never really looked at this place as something I might ever lose.
At the front door, he opened it for me, and his hand settled at the small of my back in a gesture that would have appeared gentlemanly to anyone watching. It wasn’t forceful, but it wasn’t optional either, reminding me of his earlier threat.
The warmth of his palm pressed through the thin fabric of my top, guiding rather than pushing, yet the weight of it carried something heavier than simple direction. It felt like inevitabilitydressed as courtesy. Then the door shut behind us with a firm click that made me flinch despite myself. The sound echoed in the narrow hallway, and I found myself glancing back at it as though committing it to memory.
A ridiculous thought surfaced, uninvited. When would I see it again? Would I ever? The last traces of pretense between us had dissolved in my bedroom, and whatever thin shield I had clung to about “employment” and “contracts” now lay in pieces. This was no longer a professional arrangement. It was imprisonment, no matter how elegantly he framed it.
He guided me down to the street in silence, the city greeting us with its usual indifference. Cars passed. People laughed somewhere near the corner. A woman maneuvered a stroller around the sidewalk while speaking animatedly into her phone. The normalcy of it all felt almost cruel. Life was continuing exactly as it always had, while mine had tilted sharply into something unrecognizable.
His expensive car waited at the curb with the driver standing beside it. The moment he saw us, he stepped forward immediately, and my captor handed over my suitcase without a word. It disappeared into the trunk once the rear door was opened for us, but I couldn’t help staring at the back seat with a growing sense of dread, knowing exactly what getting inside would mean. It was also a reluctance he must have felt as once again; he stepped close, close enough that I could feel the heat of him at my back. His hand came to rest lightly on my shoulder this time, not gripping, not a bruising hold. Yet it was present enough to remind me that choice was an illusion I was currently fooling myself with.
Still, I hesitated. My gaze drifted over the sidewalk, over the people moving past. If I screamed now, if I bolted into the crowd…
He leaned closer, his voice low enough that only I could hear.
“Remember, little mortal, they will see what I want them to see,” he murmured softly, and the certainty in that statement coiled through me. This was not an empty threat. It was simply fact, spoken without arrogance, because arrogance was unnecessary when one possessed that level of control. That terrifying amount of power.
So, with no other choice, I sealed my fate and ducked into the car.
He followed, the door sealing us inside a cocoon of leather and tinted glass. The outside noise dulled immediately, replaced by the quiet hum of the engine as we pulled away from the curb. For several moments, neither of us spoke, and the silence felt different now than it had in the café. Less playful. No gentle niceties, as clearly, there was no need for them anymore. Not when we both knew what this was at its core…
A kidnapping.
But then he surprised me once again by cutting through the silence,
“So… Lily-pad?” he asked at last, his tone almost conversational despite the tension still lingering between us. I stared at the passing buildings rather than at him.
“The frogs,” he added, the faintest trace of curiosity threading through his voice. I let my head rest back against the seat and exhaled slowly, bracing myself for embarrassment. Of course, I could have just ignored him. But then that age-old saying of ‘better the devil you know’ came back to me.
“It’s a childhood thing,” I said, attempting to dismiss it as trivial, but he wasn’t about to let me off with that vague answer.
“Tell me,” he replied.
I turned my head then, studying him carefully.
“Is that an order?” I tested, as if needing him to spell out the rules to me on how this relationship between us was going to go.
His expression did not harden but, instead, he held my gaze with quiet steadiness and replied,
“No. That is me asking.”
The absence of command unsettled me more than if he had demanded it outright. My fingers drifted unconsciously to the bandage wrapped around my palm, my thumb catching the edge of it in a nervous habit I had developed without realizing. I watched the city blur past through the window before answering.
“I killed a frog,” I said finally, the words sounding small even to me. There was a brief pause in which I almost regretted admitting it at all. Then he laughed, the sound low and genuinely surprised rather than mocking.
He turned slightly toward me, disbelief evident in his expression as he repeated,
“You killed a frog?”
“Not on purpose,” I said quickly, heat creeping up my neck. He lifted his hands in mock surrender, the amusement still lingering in his eyes.
“I wasn’t suggesting you were conducting amphibian executions,” he offered, and despite everything, a reluctant flicker of a smile tugged at my mouth. I dropped my gaze again and shook my head faintly.
“I was little, and I was outside in the garden…” I said quietly before I continued, my voice softening despite myself as the memory pulled me backward.
“I had one of those little plastic toy mowers. Bright yellow. It blew bubbles when you pushed it along. I was obsessed with it. I’d march up and down the grass like I was doing very important landscaping,” I told him, before glancing sideways at him and catching the unmistakable twitch at the corner of his mouth.
