When. Not if.
This guy needed to find himself some help, stat.
“It’s going to get cold in there soon,” he warned me, crossing to the thermostat on the wall — nearby, but notclose enough for me to reach by far. He pressed a button several times.
I stubbornly shook my head, only to regret it when the world began to spin all over again. I groaned, bringing up my too-heavy hands to the sides of my face and trying to make everything stop moving.
“All you have to do is take off your shirt. I’ll come get it and give you a blanket.”
I dimly noticed he didn’t say he’d turn the temperature back up, which made me wary. It could get really fucking cold in here, and it was becoming a cement prison… becoming?
I almost had to laugh at myself, and if it hadn’t hurt to, I might have.
“Fuck you.”
He shrugged, not even batting an eye — like he knew I was going to refuse and had already planned on it, which was somehow creepier than his face. “I’ll be watching you.”
Like that wasn’t worse.
“When you’re ready to cooperate, just let out a little bark.” His lips twitched into something resembling a smile, one corner tilting up a bit oddly because of the way his cheek was stretched. “Then take off your shirt and toss it as far as you can so I know you’re serious.”
“I’m not going to bark,” I told him stubbornly.
“You will,” he told me. Another one of those careless shrugs, the ones that meant he thought I’d already lost.
I hadn’t, though, and I wasn’t going to give in that easily. He’d have to take my shirt off me himself if that was what he wanted so bad.
I’d fight him as long as I had to.
2
Griffin
Breathe. Count your breaths and breathe.
The irony of giving myself the exact same advice I’d just given to the boy trapped in my cellar wasn’t lost on me.
Boy.
He might’ve been half my age, barely in his early twenties, but he wasn’t a boy.
I thought about him that way anyway, and I needed to stop before it gave my conscience a bigger attack than it was already having. It had taken all I had to stand firm with him — with the pet I’d call Toby, the pup who was going to be so much better than the spoiled kid Ryder had ever been. I knew it would be better in the end, but it had still been difficult.
I leaned back against the metal security door, shuddering at the feeling of it at my back. Going into that room and knowing it would lock behind me had been terrifying, more terrifying than I’d thought it would be… but I’d done it.
My therapist would’ve been proud of that part, at least,even if he would’ve been horrified at the last. It was part of the reason I’d stopped going. I couldn’t let anything change my mind — challenge my resolve — because now that I’d committed, that was that.
Maybe if I was some regular old person, but no. Not only was I the scarred remnants of a man, but I was the scarred remnants of someone who had been something once. It didn’t seem like he’d recognized me down there, but they’d warned me the drugs would wreak havoc on his system.
They’d told me they’d make him more pliable, too, but that hadn’t happened… yet.
Another deep breath, then I went to my office. I’d promised I’d bring him a blanket if he did what I told him, which meant I had to keep an eye on him.
I sank down into the comfortable office chair I spent most of my days in, my eyes flicking to the second computer I’d purchased just for this. The only thing it could do was play footage from the cameras I’d set up in the cellar. Everything else had been blocked. I couldn’t risk anything going… public.
That would be a disaster.
He was still curled up there, stubborn and starting to shiver. I watched in full color as he tried to adjust beneath the thin blanket he’d been given, like that was really going to do anything more than taunt him with the promise of warmth, and I palmed myself through my pants.
