Vee lifted a dismissive shoulder. “You already know the answer to that too.”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you,” I threw back.
She clicked her nails on the top of her desk, waiting for me to figure something out while I had no idea what it was.
She sighed. “I know you took the journal, Bells. You and your sister aren’t as clever as you think you are.”
“Not my—” I started to argue, and Vee raised a hand to cut me off.
“I don’t want to hear it. You two are sisters in every way that matters, and Alice would have wanted that for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “The only thingAlicewould have wanted for me is a rich husband. And only because that was what she wanted for herself.”
“You don’t know what she wanted. You don’t know what anyone really wants until you’re standing in their shoes, until you get inside their head.”
“Yeah, well, there ain’t much inside Allie’s head besides worms anymore,” I snorted.
Vee didn’t seem to find that as funny as I did, though. She held out a hand to me. “I want it back.”
“What? Oh…” I stiffened as realization sank in.Shit.“I don’t have it.”
“Gabby then.” Vee nodded once and pushed up from her desk.
“Gabby doesn’t have it either,” I called after her before she could make it to the door.
She paused in her tracks but she didn’t turn around. Her shoulders pulled back and her chin slightly raised. She was staring straight ahead, like she could see through to the other side. And whatever was there was world-ending. “Who does?”
Two words, one question, that had me feeling twelve years old again. I swallowed, forcing down the anxiety only this woman could bring out of me. “They do.”
“Who? Which one?” She still wouldn’t look at me, and I didn’t know if that was better or worse.
“Adrian.” He had the backpack at least. My gun, supplies, and replacement pump. What he did with them, I had no clue.
Vee nodded once, grabbed for the door, yanked it open, and calmly walked out of the room. It clicked closed behind her, and I was left wondering how badly I’d fucked up while also wondering how she’d managed to get away without answering me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
VEERA: AGE 20 YEARS, 2 MONTHS
My eyes shot open to a dark room and a darker figure hunching over me. I squeezed them closed and took a deep breath. My first thought was always the same.
Don’t fight. Just let it happen.
The sick bastards liked it when you fought. They liked it more when they had an excuse to fight you back. A reason to kill you. I wouldn’t give them that reason. The other women needed me here. I needed to be here.
“Get up, girl. I know you ain’t sleeping,” Nina hissed, and my eyes shot open again.
I pushed myself up on the bed, threw the covers aside, and swung my legs over the mattress. My feet already sliding into the slippers I’d left on the floor. Just in case I had to run.
“Is Maria okay?”
Nina didn’t answer, just jutted her head forward and signaled for me to follow her. “Come on, now. We don’t have much time.”
“Much time for what?”
She shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips as she led me out of the room. She continued along the windy hallway in the servants’ corridor, guided by instinct and not much else. We didn’t have any windows, no real way to tell what time of day it was when all the lights were switched off. The family had them set on a panel. They wanted to control everything, including what we could see and when.
We may have been several floors down from where they slept, either passed out from overindulging in wine or coming off their high, too far away for any of them to hear us. But it didn’t matter how quiet you were. In a house like this, every stone and floorboard and wall groaned.
