“Joining the dots.” My answer was vague because I didn’t trust him. “When I had the chance to think about everything that’s been going on, it all seemed calculated as if planned. I know you’ll think I’m nuts, but…” I breathed through the nerves fluttering about in my stomach.
“Can you expand on that?” he urged me. “What dots are you joining?”
“You’ll think I’m reading into things,” I said as the gas and grease smell was irritating my throat, and I had to cough again. “Please, can I have some water?” My fingers pressed against my throat in an attempt to ease the tickling. But hopefully, once he’s gone to fetch a glass of water, I can try to escape.
Unfortunately, that plan fell short when he swiped his phone and called Ezrah, “Bro, can you bring down a bottle of water and some food, maybe a Pop-tart or something?” he shot me a mischievous look, “for the spy.”
My stomach turned at the thought of eating anything in this stinky, dirty space, but I definitely needed water. “How long are you going to keep me down here?”
He swiped off the phone and then began swiping on my phone, “Until I’m satisfied.” Then a sharpness flashed in his eyes as he held up my phone, “You lied. There are no phone calls to campus police.”
“I asked my friend to call them,” another lie, but I didn't want to get Mila in trouble with these guys, but she was safe, and I wasn't. “She’s probably talking to them now.”
He shrugged nonchalantly, like he didn’t care, and then continued to swipe through my phone. “We let you keep your phone because we put a tracker and a listening device on it to trace you.”
“Liar,” I accused him, which prompted him to detach the back of the phone and then show me the little device. “Didn’t your father teach you anything?”
“He taught me how to use a gun,” I replied, “and that’s why I want it back.”
He looked up at me from under those dark eyelashes, and it struck again how similar that look was to the man in the library. “Are you aware that the Yorks filmed you…” a hardened look pressed into his chiseled dial, “and my brother in the gardens?”
“Really? It was they who blackmailed my father?” A dormant volcano began to stir within me as the more I discovered, the more I wanted to cause hell on everyone around me, including the assholes who hold me captive in their stinking basement.
He rationalized, “So, you do know that your stepmother-”
“Yes, I have been informed that the Yorks are my stepmother’s nephews. These are the dots I was joining,” I fumed. “My stepmother convinced my father to pull me out of my previous college to send me to this shithole in the middle of nowhere.” I pointed my angry finger at him as I continued, “He…” I paused to control my emotions because I was tearing up thinking about my father. “He would never kill himself.” I moved further under the stairs, in the shadows, so that he couldn’t see the emotion on my face.
“You don’t know that because you don’t know what goes in the mind of man,” he argued, and I felt he was talking about himself.
“Why would he leave me…Forget it. Forget I said anything,” I clammed up because I didn’t want his input. I didn’t want Nicolae to tell me I was wrong or that I was exaggerating.
He said smoothly, “I agree that you have a reason to avenge your stepmother and the Yorks, hell, we might even help you with that-”
“Really? You’d help me?” I was flabbergasted, then pulled myself together. Who was I kidding? They’re my enemy. “I don’t need your help.”
He snorted. “The wabbit is contradicting herself. We wouldn’t be doing it for you. We’d be doing it because we don’t like the Yorks. That family is a thorn in our side. The thorn is not as big as the Boleyn thorn, of course, but now your father is dead and your stepmother, I assume, is taking over the running of the business. Right?”
I hissed, “I can’t let that happen. I can’t let her… No. I won’t let that happen.”
“Well, that’s two families collaborating against us,” he concluded. “Because you’re not actually there running your father’s business, instead, you’re here. Out of their way. So, I don’t care about your personal conflicts with your stepmother.My only concern is what the Yorks and your stepmother’s plans are now that Maxwell Boleyn is out of the way.”
I snarled back at him, “Whose fault is it that I’m here instead of my home?” but he didn’t hear me because a solid knock on the door drowned me out.
He ran up the stairs, unlocked the door, and let Ezrah in, armed with bottled water, a bag of potato chips, and Pop-tarts on a plate. “What’s the plan?” he asked Nicolae, then searched for me in the basement, and then seemed relieved when he found me under the stairs. “You alright, Adina?”
“No,” I spat. “I want to leave, and I want my gun back.”
“She wants her gun back, Sick,” Ez mocked me.
“Well, she ain’t getting it back,” Nicolae asserted.
“Sick?” I sniggered. “Why are you called Sick?”
“Short for sickle,” Ez educated me.
“Dumb name,” I glowered. “Wooo, my name’s Sickle, because I cut wheat. So tough.”
Nicolae cracked a smile, while Ezrah was already shooting me that dimpled smile. God, I hated them.
