Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
PARIS
The needle pierces into my vein, a sharp pinch that I’ve almost grown used to after four months of this routine.
Almost.
Min-ji’s fingers are cool against my skin as she adjusts the needle. I stare at the ceiling tiles, counting them for the hundredth time while my blood fills another vial with the same deep red that will be studied, separated, and scrutinized like all the samples before it.
“You’re good at this,” I say. “No fishing expedition like Miller.”
She doesn’t smile. She never does. “Your veins are more visible now. Less fat tissue makes it easier.”
Right. Because my brother’s idea of hospitality includes rationed meals that leave me perpetually hungry. Nothing like being starved in the name of science.
“Are you at least finding anything interesting?” I ask. “Or am I a human pincushion for nothing?”
Her eyes flick to mine, then away. “I don’t analyze the results. I collect.”
Bullshit. Min-ji is Gabriel’s head researcher, not some lab tech. But in four months, I’ve learned she won’t give me straight answers. Especially, not with Mike standing at the door like a sentinel carved from steroids and bad intentions.
“How many more?” I nod toward the rack of empty vials waiting to be filled with parts of me.
“Three.” She switches the full tube for an empty one.
The fluorescent lights hum above us, the sound drilling into my skull. White walls, white floors, white lab coat on Min-ji. Everything bleached of color and life.
I miss my glitter. My blue nail polish. My penthouse with its panoramic views and freedom. Poti, Freddie, and Telly.
I miss him.
Knox.
Four months without a word. Four months wondering if he’s alive or dead. If he left me behind or came looking. If he ever really cared at all. If he ever even existed.
“Still with us, sweetheart?” Mike’s voice crawls across the room, settling on my skin like something slimy. “Looking a little pale there.”
I don’t turn my head. “Fine.”
“Sure you are.” His boots scrape against the linoleum as he shifts positions. “Been a while since your last meal, hasn’t it? Maybe you need some personal attention later.”
Min-ji’s hands pause before continuing her work.
“Shut up,” I say.
He laughs. “Gabriel says I’m supposed to keep you comfortable. I’m just checking.”
“I’d be more comfortable if you’d stop breathing.” I focus on Min-ji, desperate for any scrap of normalcy or alliance. “Have you seen my brother lately?”
She caps the second vial and reaches for a third. “Dr. Green conducted morning rounds.”
“Dr. Green.” I huff. “Is that what we’re calling him now?”
Her face gives away nothing as she inserts another empty tube into the vacuum holder. “It’s his proper title.”
“You know he’s not actually a doctor.” Father called him intellectually deficient. “Failed too many times, and then a big sum was wired to the head of the medical board or something.”
“Your opinion on Dr. Green’s credentials is irrelevant to this procedure,” she says.
“Is it?” I glare at her. “Because I think being experimented on by a fake doctor is pretty fucking relevant to me.”
Mike pushes off from the wall. “Watch your mouth.”
“Or what? You’ll tell my brother?” I roll my eyes. “He already treats me like a lab rat. Hard to go lower.”
She removes the third vial and inserts the fourth. “Almost done.”
“You know this is wrong,” I whisper, keeping my voice low, hoping that Mike can’t hear. “Whatever he’s doing with my blood, with those other people… you know it’s fucked up.”
Her hand trembles as she removes the final vial and holds a cotton ball to my inner elbow. “Pressure here.”
I grab her wrist. “Min-ji. Please.”
For one breath-stealing moment, her mask slips. Fear, disgust, resignation—they all flash across her features before she reconstructs her wall. She tugs free of my grip. “Bend your arm. Keep pressure for two minutes.”
Mike’s heavy footsteps approach. “Everything okay over here, Doc?”
“Fine.” Min-ji labels my samples. “We’re finished for today.”
“Hear that, sweetheart?” His breath hits my ear as he leans down. “All done playing doctor. Time to go back to your room.”
I hold Min-ji’s gaze as she packs away her instruments. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she says, but her eyes say something different.
They say: I’m sorry.
I stand up too fast and immediately regret it, gripping the exam table as the familiar dizziness hits.
“Whoa there.” Mike’s hand lands on my waist, fingers digging in. “Can’t have Gabriel’s prize falling and hurting herself.”
“I can walk.” I need to keep myself from throwing up.
“Sure you can, sweetheart.” His palm drifts to the small of my back. “But I’m here to help anyway.”
Min-ji turns away, busying herself with the samples.
No help there. Never is.
Although I would love some human connection that isn’t tainted with Gabriel’s agenda or Mike’s eyes stripping me bare.
“See you tomorrow,” I say.
She nods once, already absorbed in her work. Or pretending to be.
“Back to your cage, sweetheart.” Mike steers me to the door and down the corridor, his hand a constant unwelcome presence on my back.
The walls are another endless parade of sterile white, with white-coated scientists working on whatever horrors Gabriel has commissioned, passing by us.
“You smell good today.” Mike’s breath hits my ear. “New soap?”
“Get your hands off me.” I wrench away from him, nearly stumbling against the wall. “I know the way back to my room.”
“Boss says you don’t go anywhere alone.”
“Your boss is my brother. Maybe he can act like it instead of my jailer.”
Nobody here has the spine to acknowledge what’s happening. They just scurry past like frightened mice, pretending not to see the walking blood bank Gabriel keeps locked up.
“Slow down, sweetheart.” Mike’s hand clamps around my bicep. “Blood loss makes you unstable.”
“Your face makes me unstable.”
His fingers tighten painfully. “Cute. Real cute.”
I yank my arm free the moment we are back at my old family mansion, flanked by several men patrolling. We used to take ‘family’ vacations here, which was really my dad being closer to his town-lab he created.
Inside, everything is full of ghosts I’ve been trying to forget, from high ceilings that carried my mother’s piano notes to expensive furniture we bounced on to an old family portrait showing the aristocratic Green family.
From the main entrance, it takes one flight up to my ‘suite,’ which is really my old bedroom transformed into a gilded prison cell. The stairs wind upward, each step sapping what little energy I have left after Min-ji’s vampiric session and the uphill walk.
“Taking your sweet time today,” Mike says behind me.
“Maybe if Gabriel fed me more than prison rations, I’d move faster.”
“If you were nicer.”
I turn on the landing, facing him. “I’d rather eat dust.”
His eyes roam over me, lingering on places that make my fists clench. “Your loss.”
The mansion used to feel like a home… before Gabriel filled it with assholes like Mike.
He opens the door for me with a mock bow. “Home sweet home.”
I step inside, keeping as much distance between us as possible. “You can leave now.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, filling the space with his bulk. “Maybe I’ll keep you company for a while.”
“Maybe you’ll fuck off.” I sink onto the bed.
“You think you’re so special because of your fancy blood. But when your brother gets what he needs, you’ll just be another mouth to feed.”
“Are you threatening me or flirting? Hard to tell with your limited vocabulary.”
He abandons the doorframe, taking a step inside my room. Shit. I need to control myself. My heart kicks against my ribs, but I force myself to remain seated, to show nothing.
His mouth curves into a wicked smile that doesn’t touch his eyes. He takes another step closer, close enough that I can smell the cigarettes on his breath.
“Your heart’s racing, sweetheart.” He taps his ear. “Can hear it from here. Like a little bird trying to escape.”
My fingers dig into the mattress edge. “Medical condition. Nothing to do with you.”
“Sure.” He runs his tongue over his lip. “You know, Gabriel doesn’t care what happens in here. As long as you’re breathing.”
I meet his gaze, refusing to blink. “Then we’re in the same boat. How does it feel being another one of my brother’s disposable tools?”
A twitch at the corner of his mouth, a tightening around his eyes. I’ve hit a nerve.
“I’ll be back with lunch.” He backs toward the door, hand on the knob. “Get some sleep.”
The lock clicks into place, and his heavy footsteps retreat down the hall. I scoot further onto the bed, away from where he stood.
Four months of this psychological torture. Four months of Mike’s thinly veiled threats and wandering hands. Four months of—
No.
A blue box sits on my nightstand like a ghost from another life. Small, square, unmistakable.
Tiffany blue.
No, no, no.
I reach for it with trembling fingers, afraid it might dissolve into nothing if I touch it. The weight of it in my palm feels impossible, a dream fragment that doesn’t belong in this nightmare.
I’ve searched every inch of this prison a hundred times. The box wasn’t here. Someone placed it while I was at the lab.
Am I imagining things again?
My thumb traces the ridge in the middle, and I’m transported back to the night in the candlelight, when I confessed my silly pre-apocalypse dream to Knox.
A Tiffany blue box.
The symbol of everything I’d lost, everything I’d never have.
I open it up, my lungs refusing to function properly. Inside, nestled between black satin, a princess-cut diamond holds fractured rainbows like glitter.
“Knox,” I breathe his name like a prayer.
It can’t be.
How—
The box slips from my fingers, hitting the floor with a soft thud. The ring remains inside, winking up at me like a cruel joke.
“Mike!” I bolt for the door, slamming my fists against the wood until my knuckles sting. “Get your ass back here! Right fucking now!”