The voices above me go quiet.Footsteps cross the floor—hers, quick and deliberate.A door closes.
Then nothing.
I pick up the next panel.Measure.Cut.Press.
Above me, the floorboards creak.Then his voice—muffled, but clear enough.Three words.Just three.
I set down the knife.
28
Marin
“Untie me.”His voice is hoarse.Not yelling anymore—he burned through that twenty minutes ago.Just two words, raw and flat, aimed at me like I’m the last person on earth.Which, as far as he knows, I am.
I set the tray on the nightstand.
“Not yet.”
Charles pulls against the cuffs.The bedframe groans—old iron, heavy, the kind that doesn’t give.Despite the padding, his wrists are raw, red.I should wrap those.I should get gauze and antiseptic and take care of the skin I’m damaging by keeping him here.And I will.Because I’m not a monster.I’m a woman with a plan and a timeline and a man who refuses to cooperate with either.
“My ribs,” he says.Quieter now.A different strategy.“I think one’s broken.Maybe two.I need a doctor.”
“I’ll wrap them.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“No.But I’m what you’ve got.”
He looks at me then.Really looks.And for a second I see it—not the anger, not the calculation.Fear.Actual fear.The kind he’d never admit to, the kind that lives underneath the arrogance and the charm and the way he’s always been able to talk his way out of everything.
He can’t talk his way out of this.And he’s starting to realize it.
“Marin,” he says, lowering his voice.It’s the voice he used in bed, late at night, when the performance dropped and it was just us.“Please.Just let me go.I won’t tell anyone.I’ll say I went on a trip.I’ll say whatever you want.”
He’s good.God, he’s good.That voice almost worked on me a hundred times—when he canceled plans, when I found the texts, when he told me he needed space and I could hear Vanessa laughing in the background.
“No,” I say.
“Marin—”
“You don’t get to use that voice on me.Not anymore.That voice is how you got Vanessa into your bed while I was in Chicago closing a deal for you—forus.That voice is how you convinced me for six months that I was imagining things.So no.You don’t get to ‘Marin’ me in that tone and expect me to fold.”
He closes his mouth.
I pick up the Ambien.Hold out two tablets.
“Take these.You’ll feel better after you’ve had some rest.We’ll talk more when you’re ready to have a real conversation.”
“A real conversation.”He almost laughs.“I’m tied to a bed.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Yours!Objectively, literally, yours!”
“I meant philosophically.”
He stares at me.I stare back.
