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“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’ve been doing this a long time?” I kept my eyes on my plate. “Cooking, I mean. For Mr. Ashcroft.”

A pause that was just slightly too long to be nothing. “Several years.”

“He must be easy to cook for. Or impossible.” I let a little dry humor into it. “I feel like people like him usually go one way or the other.”

“He is not difficult.” She set something down on the counter. “He knows what he likes.”

I’ll bet he does, I thought. I knew exactly what he liked. It was currently sitting at his dining table eating couscous.

“Does he eat here often?” I asked. “I figure he’s a very busy man.”

“Mr. Ashcroft travels quite a bit.”

It was a non-answer dressed up as an answer, and we both knew it. But why was she being so evasive about simple questions? I couldn’t help but wonder if this was something Cain instructed her to be. “I’m sure he does.” I speared a piece of vegetable and held it without eating it. “Do you live in the building? Depending on where you live, it could be a long commute.”

Marta didn’t look up from whatever she was wiping down. “I have accommodations.”

It took everything in me not to roll my eyes. I decided to let this line of questioning go because it was getting me nowhere. Instead, I continued to eat my food in silence, because that was my only other option. She cleared my plate before I finished the last of my water. Marta’s loyalty, whether it was to Cain or just to her own job security, was airtight enough that I’d be wasting energy I needed elsewhere. And if it was the latter, I didn’t blame her one bit.

“Thank you,” I said. “Lunch was excellent.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

I carried my water glass to the sink myself, mostly to see if she’d react to the breach of some unspoken protocol I wasn’t aware of. It didn’t and so my line of questioning and small test netted me no new information. I left the dining room without looking back at the camera in the hallway because there was no point. I knew it was there and it helped the asshole in charge know where I was at all times.

The library was where I went after lunch now. Cain had given me that access without attaching conditions to it, which meant it was either genuinely benign or the most elegant trap he’d set so far. I’d decided it didn’t matter. The room was useful regardless of his intentions and I could take all of the usefulness that I could get.

I settled into the chair nearest the window with one of the historical books Cain had on the Roman Empire and opened it to page three, a page I’d already read twice without retaining a word. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in the topic or else I wouldn’t have picked it. It was the fact that I had too much other stuff on my mind and enough time to actually think about it made it a huge issue. The thoughts flying around my head weren’t stopping long enough to let the words on the page mean anything other than just words tossed together.

So I gave up on Rome and let myself think about the only thing that actually mattered: Cassie.

It had been days since I left that voicemail about the orchid that didn’t exist and convinced myself that was enough to keep her safe and away from my condo. I still did not know whether any of it had worked. At the time, it seemed like a clever idea, but cleverness only mattered if it landed. And I had no way of knowing whether it had without asking the one person who had the power to completely ruin my life.

Cain Ashcroft.

That was the part that made my stomach turn every time I circled back to it. Every road out of this uncertainty ran straight through him, and he knew it. He had built it that way on purpose because it best served him. But if I was going to get any answers, I needed to buckle up and get them from him.

A knock on the door made me jump slightly. The thought of having to face Cain right now, with no mental preparation, put me on edge. I was surprised to find Marta on the other end of the intrusion. She stuck only her head into the opening she’d made with the door and said, “Mr. Ashcroft requests that you have dinner with him tonight.”

The word requests almost made me laugh. As if I had the option to decline. This was nothing but a command in nicer clothing and another opportunity to impose another thread in the web he kept spinning around me.

“Tonight,” I repeated, setting the book down on the arm of the chair. “Did he say what time?”

“Eight o’clock.” Marta’s expression gave away nothing. “He asked that you dress up for dinner.”

Dress up for dinner. That was doing a lot for what I assumed was dinner in the penthouse. “Are we eating here?”

Marta nodded, but didn’t say anything else, so I filled the silence with words. “Of course we are,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Where else would we go?”

If she caught the bitterness in what I said, she didn’t show it. She withdrew her head and closed the door, and I was left alone with the book I wasn’t reading and the word “requests” swirling in my brain.

I picked the book back up because my hands needed something to hold. I stared at page three again and sighed. Rome was still falling, slowly, the way empires did, and I still couldn’t make myself care.

Eight o’clock would arrive whether I was ready for it or not, the same way breakfast and lunch did. There was no point in pretending I had any control over the clock in this place. What I did have control over was what I chose to do between now and then. And that was preparing for this dinner where I would make it a point to ask Cain about Cassie.

I closed the book without marking my page because I already knew I wouldn’t be coming back to Rome today. There was nothing left to do in here that I hadn’t already done, and the part of me that needed a plan more than it needed comfort had already moved on to the only thing that mattered.