“Then let me go,” she says, shaking. The desperation in her voice nearly breaks me.
I step toward her. Just one more step, and she flinches as if I raised a hand to her.
Fuck. The sound that escapes my throat is barely human. Like I'd ever hurt her. Like I haven't spent six years keeping every other bastard from so much as breathing wrong in her direction. Like I didn't once break a man's fucking jaw for being rude to her in class.
Probably best she doesn't know that.
Like I haven't spent six years of my life puttingeverything on the line, making sure no one and nothing else ever could.
“I can't do that.” I stop and force myself to stay still, even though I want to close the distance between us. “Come sit down, Bianca, and we'll talk about this.”
“Talk about this?” Her laugh is brittle, edged with something like hysteria. “You drugged me. You threw me in a car, and you brought me to—” She looks around frantically. “Where even are we?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Safe.” She's breathing too fast now, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath that innocent dress. “You think this is safe? You think I feel safe with you?”
She should feel safer with me than anywhere else in the world because there's nowhere she’s safer than with me. But I can't tell her that when she's looking at me like I'm the villain in her fairy tale.
“You'll see,” I say quietly. “Eventually.”
“I have a fiancé,” she says, trying to sound brave, almost defiant. “Marcus is going to find me. He's going to?—”
“Marcus Crowning is the reason you're fucking here, and he would do fuck all to save you.”
That stops her. For a second, confusion flickers across her face, chasing away some of the fear. “Are you one of his enemies?” she asks.
“Oh, you could say that.”
She's so fucking beautiful it hurts to look at her. Pale skin, dark hair cascading around her shoulders, red lips parting in shock. How beautiful. A princess in a world full of monsters.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“If you sit down, we'll have a reasonable conversation.”
“No.” She strains against the cuffs, and I see the steel beneath the softness. Good. She'll need that. “Tell me right now. What does Marcus have to do with this?”
I study her for a long moment, watching the way she bites her lip when she's scared. The way her fingers twist in front of her stomach. The way she won't break eye contact with me, even though I can see she wants to.
My brave little princess.
“Your fiancé,” I say slowly, knowing before I even say the words that she won't believe it, “has killed two women before you. You're in line to be the third.”
The color drains from her face, but she shakes her head. “I'm supposed to believe a kidnapper?” She shakes her head harder. “You're lying.”
“He had two women before you, lass. All young. All innocent. All with the same fucking profile.” I keep my voice flat, emotionless. Because if I let myself feel what I'm feeling right now, I'll lose control, and I won’t do that. “Fair skin. Dark-blue eyes. Brunettes. All dead within a year.”
“That's…” She shakes her head and backs up. “That's impossible. You’re wrong. He would never?—”
“Marcus Crowning is a fucking psychopath. He gets off on hurting women, lass.”
“Says the man who fucking kidnapped me,” she says. “My god. How am I supposed to believe you?”
I knew this conversation would go nowhere. I draw in a breath and let it out, and that's when she sees her mobile on the end table.
“You took my phone.” Her voice rises. “What did you do with it?”
“That's none of your concern,” I tell her.
