I’m not even entirely sure I know where that is anymore.
Two days pass in sluggish, uneven lurches, time advancing at an inconsistent rhythm that I can neither regulate nor anticipate.
Landon’s men deliver food. Decent food, which is somehow more disturbing than terrible food could be. I’m being preserved for a purpose I have not been permitted to understand.
They deliver toiletries and garments: jeans, blouses, a sweater, and two dresses that are unmistakably Landon’s selections — short, form-fitting, like the ones he made me wear when we were together, saying I looked way more beautiful in them. I place them at the bottom of the wardrobe and don’t touch them.
I haven’t come up with a plan. Not a viable one, at least.
Nothing that doesn’t involve hurling myself from the upper floor of this building or attempting to overpower whoever stands guard outside the door.
Dushku hasn’t reappeared since that first morning, and I can’t figure out whether his absence should bring comfort or amplify my dread. The void he leaves isn’t the same as safety. It’s a waiting room, a suspended breath.
I can’t stop thinking of Anya.
Does she think I abandoned her? Did I?
And Rolan. Unless there was a security camera right where Landon bagged me, he probably hates me for leaving. By now, the wordmistakehas probably settled permanently into his mind.
The loneliness of that thought is staggering.
I’ve endured solitude before and learned to inhabit it without drowning. But this is different. This loneliness feels like erasure, like my existence is being overwritten in the minds of the people who matter most to me.
I press my face into the pillow and breathe. It smells wrong. Nothing of the scent that clung to his shirts when he stood too close, the scent I pretended not to notice and breathed in anyway.
I cry until the tears exhaust themselves.
On the fourth morning, the door opens. Dushku steps through it, flanked by two men I’ve never seen before.
“Miss Calloway.” His gaze sweeps the room with the practiced approval of a host inspecting a guest suite. “I trust you’ve been comfortable. It’s time to leave.”
I rise to my feet. “Where?”
He offers that smile. “Somewhere more appropriate. The next stage of our arrangement requires a different setting.”
I assess the door. Him. The two men positioned behind him.
I have no plan, only the sneaking suspicion that Dushku intends to use me as leverage to reach Rolan. Which means, for the moment, I hold more value to him intact than otherwise.
It’s a thin margin.
But it’s all I have.
So, I follow him through the door.
36
ROLAN
Anya doesn’t eat.
This is the other weight that has settled inside me, separate from the fury, heavier in a way that defies comparison.
She sits at the breakfast table each morning, and her gaze drifts to the chair where Elizabeth used to sit.
She no longer cries, which is infinitely worse.
I lie down next to her for two hours while she’s trying to sleep.
