“I’m only curious.” And only trying to learn everything I can about him. I don’t know whether any of it is ever going to help, but I need something to hold onto. Clues I can piece together to create the full picture of who he is.
A soft growl rumbles in his throat. “Somebody helped me. Took me under his wing. Made it possible for me to survive.”
What a shame. I wouldn’t be going through any of this if it wasn’t for that person, whoever they were.No, stupid, you would still be living at home, under Dad’s thumb.
“I was already used to fighting.” Now that I’ve gotten him started, the words are pouring out. “He helped me refine myskills. Made it possible for me to finish school. I owe him my life.” But he never says who it was, I notice. I wonder if I would recognize the name.
He touches a hand to his left ribs. “I can’t tell you how many I broke. Maybe all of them at one point or another.”
Then, he touches his nose. “This was broken and badly set afterward. I needed it re-broken and reset years later.”
He’s on a roll now. “Knife wound,” he mutters, touching a thin scar I’ve noticed on his left shoulder. He then touches another one on his side, pulling back the covers to give me a look. “There were times it was kill or be killed.”
The next question is natural. “How many people have you killed?”
“Do you really want an answer to that? Because the truth is, I lost count.”
I believe him. It makes me shiver and pull the blankets up closer to my chin. What must it have been like, living that way? Fighting just to survive. Having to kill if it meant living to see tomorrow.
He snorts like anything about this is funny before asking, “What about you?”
“How many people have I killed?”
He laughs louder, though the sound is flat. Like a voice in a parking garage. “What was your life like?”
I can’t tell if he’s asking because he’s really interested, or because he wants to find a new way to punish me by forcing me to remember the past. “I was under lock and key all the time.”
“I guessed that much.”
“I’m sorry. Am I not entertaining you enough?” Maybe I shouldn’t have snapped, but I won’t apologize. “I couldn’t make any decisions. I wasn’t even allowed to have makeup. I wasn’t allowed to talk to people. I just… existed.”
He doesn’t really care. He wasn’t asking because he genuinely wants to know. Even though I’m aware of all of that, I can’t help but keep going. I guess it’s because nobody has ever asked before. Nobody who honestly wanted the truth, anyway.
“I guess I was kind of like a doll on a shelf,” I whisper. It’s embarrassing, admitting to that, especially after what he just told me about himself. I’m sure I have to sound spoiled. Poor little rich girl. But then that’s what he always thought about me, so I guess this won’t change his opinion. “He would leave me sitting around until it was time to take me out and show me off. Everybody had to know what a great father he was.”
“I’m sure nobody actually believed it. Nobody who knew him.”
I wonder if that’s true. Dad’s image was always the most important thing. He guarded it almost as carefully as he guarded me. Not because he loved me. Because he couldn’t afford to lose me.
“I was lonely,” I admit. “I know you probably think I sound spoiled. I mean, after everything you went through, but it was awful being alone all the time. The only people around me were the people who worked for Dad. His guards. Staff around the house. I couldn’t trust any of them because they reported to him. If they wanted to keep their jobs, they couldn’t keep my secrets. So there was nobody to trust or confide in or any of that. I kind of felt like a ghost in my own house.”
“All I had were my friends,” he counters, and now he sounds kind of wistful. “All we had was each other for a very long time. I had to trust them; they had to trust me. We got each other through.”
Was Selina one of those friends? It would explain the blind faith he has in her. Why he believed her without ever asking me my side of the story. Still, he got me out of the cell, and he isn’t shackling me to the bed now, so he must at least have doubts.
If he didn’t, I wouldn’t be here, right? In bed with him, comfortable, warm. I need to stop thinking—it’s making my head ache. The bigger problem is the exhaustion that’s pulling my eyelids down no matter how hard I fight to keep them open. He’s talking. I want to keep him talking. I need to find something, anything, that I can use against him and get the hell out of here.
Tomorrow. Once I’ve slept. I don’t think I have a choice; eyes closing, darkness pulling me under before I know what’s happening.
20
LIAM
“We have a few leads, unfortunately nothing concrete,” Ethan explains, leaning over my desk and pointing at the map. “There were rumors about Donovan being seen here, but we searched all of these buildings and there wasn’t any sign of him.”
“He is most likely hiding with an ally, someone who always supported him,” Nick chimes in. “I started a list of people who fought the takeover the most.”
“I’ve hacked all the city’s cameras and have been running the footage through facial recognition software,” Selina says without looking up from her laptop. “If he is still in the city, we’ll find him.”
