Chapter Twelve
At some point, I turned away and looked out the window at the vista below. The green trees and rocky mountains were quickly disappearing, replaced by houses set close together, then buildings that pushed high into the sky.
I closed my eyes, my heart shuddering. We weren’t returning to Adam’s house in the mountains. The place I’d escaped. For a second I wondered if he was taking me back to the facility, then realized he’d never do that, not even as punishment.
I was his now.
There was no escaping him a second time.
I rubbed my brow. A part of me wanted to yield to him. Not that I was surprised. My body had betrayed me from the moment I’d seen him stepping out of his aircraft—alive, powerful, unchanged.
Only my mind had revolted against him. Against everything he stood for.
Everything he’d done to me.
To us.
Were any of my people still alive? Or had they all died behind sealed lab doors, their bodies broken and catalogued?
Had Angel died?
My throat tightened and I swallowed hard. There had never been anyone gentler than Angel. None more innocent. She’d deserved love, deserved a future.
She’d gotten neither.
“I know you hate me,” Adam said, his voice sliding into my ears through the headset, low, calm and familiar. Too familiar. “But you have no idea—”
“Don’t,” I cut in starkly. I jerked my eyes open and turned toward him, my voice trembling, but not from fear.
“Don’t pretend you’re something you’re not.
” I held his gaze. “I lived with the people you and the others created. I listened as they screamed through their pain. I watched their bodies break down, one cell at a time.” My lips curled into a sneer. “I saw what was done to them.”
“Bella, I—“
My breath caught. “I felt what was being done.”
Even as my words fell on him, another part of me, buried deep, where logic couldn’t reach, whispered that I wanted to stay.
Stay with Adam.
I wanted to see this—us—through even if it broke me.
Whatever this was between us, it had to finish. No matter how twisted.
He didn’t respond again. Not right away.
Not even when the metal bird began its descent, dipping toward the rooftop of a building in a far richer part of the city, glass and steel gleaming beneath us like polished teeth.
I looked out the window again, resisting a sudden, desperate urge to fling open the door and tear off my leather jacket. To unfold my wings tucked tight against my spine and soar far away.
The helicopter continued its descent when another guilty thought slid in.
Reuben.
Where was he now?
Had he driven away, as I’d asked, or was he watching the sky even now, his fists clenched and fury burning through him?
I was certain any other woman would be flattered to be wanted by two such powerful men. My lip curled. What was that proverb I’d read in one of my one-hourly screen sessions? Be careful what you wish for.
I rubbed my brow yet again. Instead of being solo and free, my mind was laser-focused on Adam. Yet it’d been Reuben who’d shown me kindness.
Until the moment you tried to leave him at the fight.
My breath hitched, and the metal bird touched the rooftop with a jolt. I was no longer in Reuben’s world. I was in Adam’s.
He stayed silent as he opened the door and stepped out, though he vibrated with barely restrained emotions, ones I could almost reach out and touch.
Jealousy. Possessiveness. Fury.
I swallowed back an outraged shriek as adrenaline surged and I followed him onto the landing pad. The wind whipped at us, pulling more of my hair free, and carrying the sharp scent of fuel and smog as we moved quickly across the rooftop toward a sleek, glass-paneled door.
It scanned him, then unlocked with a click.
The luxury penthouse we entered gleamed like something out of a magazine.
White marble floors clicked under my boots, large gray rugs softening its hardness.
Pale walls climbed toward vaulted ceilings, a height that was tempered slightly by ambient lighting.
But beneath the beauty, it was a fortress.
Steel-lined windows and blinking cameras with no obvious exit, except the one we came through.
The balcony drew my gaze, with its floor-to-ceiling windows just beyond the lounge. It was locked tight, of course. I didn’t even need to try the handle. I also had no doubt its windows were bullet-proof and impenetrable, my echolocation ability rendered useless.
Adam drew me further inside. He was still silent, still storming on the inside.
I could feel the weight of it, the way his hands flexed, the stiffness in his jaw. Then finally, his harsh and brittle voice broke the silence as he turned to me. “Do you want to know the kind of man Reuben really is?”
I didn’t answer. What was the point? Despite everything, Reuben was still a stranger to me in many ways.
Adam stepped closer. “There are rumors...about some of his fights.” He shook his head, as if to clear it.
“Never mind. Just know he’s not a good man.
He sleeps with women and discards them like they’re nothing.
Nobody. Just a release. A convenience. After a fight, after a win, he wants more, and he gets it.
He doesn’t care who with. He doesn’t even remember their names. He just needs a body.”
The words hung like acid in the air between us.
I lifted my chin. He’d clearly done his research. No doubt from the moment he’d seen footage of the kiss Reuben had bestowed upon me. I met Adam’s glittering eyes. “Yet I was the only woman he wanted to keep.”
Adam stepped even closer, anger tightening every line of his body. “Then I guess that’s the one thing I have in common with him,” he snarled. “You.”
I didn’t bother suppressing the laugh that slipped out. “I think you have more in common with Reuben than you’d ever admit.” His eyes narrowed, and I pressed on. “You’re both violent and obsessive. You both don’t like being told no, and you’re both convinced I belong to you.”
Adam’s nostrils flared. His entire body became rock-hard, his jaw locked so tight I thought it might crack. A beat passed. Then another. “I could’ve let him die,” he said finally, his voice low and simmering. “Back there. I should have. But I didn’t. Do you know why?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t even blink.
“Because the second I saw you, I knew I couldn’t lose you again.” He exhaled angrily. “I couldn’t stomach the thought of you hating me even more than you already do.” His eyes flashed. “You stopped me from destroying him.”
He reached out and ran the back of his fingers down the side of my face. My skin tingled at his touch, and I hated that instead of revulsion I felt something deeper, a touch I’d craved but been denied for too long.
“Come,” he said. When I didn’t move, his fingers closed around my wrist. “I won’t say it twice, Bella.”
I grudgingly relented. There was a time and a place for a battle, and this wasn’t it.
He guided me down the hallway, deeper into the penthouse. The silence felt heavier now, the air too clean, too still. He opened a door at the end of the hallway, and I stepped into a bedroom I’d never seen before.
It was spacious. Minimal. Impeccable. A king-sized bed with sharp corners, snow-white sheets and a jet-black comforter. Opposite the bed, a fireplace was set into black stone. But there were no personal touches. No clutter. No history. Just wealth and power.
I snorted my disgust. “This is just another sterile prison, a little fancier this time, but still a prison.”
Adam turned to face me, his expression unreadable even as he said softly, “Except there are no guards.”
And no cuff around my ankle, but I wouldn’t remind him of that. I wouldn’t put the thought into his head of putting one on me again. My spine tensed. If he even considered it I wouldn’t be held responsible for my actions.
Instead I replied scathingly, “And no freedom.” I looked around, scoffing. “What even is this place?”
He’d moved me from one cell to another. Had he built this just for me? Or even worse, for others like me? I swallowed hard. As much as I wanted to ask, I couldn’t force the words out of my throat.
“I’ve had this place for years,” Adam said. “But I’ve never brought anyone here. Until now.”
I stared at him. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Yes.” His voice was low. Frustrated. “I waited for the right moment to bring you here, waited longer than anyone could have possibly understood. Longer than I understood even myself.” He pushed a hand over his face. “You don’t know what it cost me. Holding back. Watching time run out.”
I snapped my head up. “You mean the time before I turned twenty-one?” I let my disgust show, my lip curling, my eyes flashing. “You waited for me like I was a ticking clock, and now you’re angry someone else got to me first.”
His jaw locked even as his brilliant gaze flickered.
“You think that waiting makes you different?” I said, pushing home my point. “You still planned to claim me. You still kept me a prisoner. You still tried to take away my choice.”
His nostrils flared, his breathing becoming uneven.
I managed a small smile. “I never slept with you, Adam.” He definitely wasn’t my master anymore. “You never had me.”
Something in his expression fractured. “I know,” he said, his voice rasping like it pained him to speak, to acknowledge the truth.
He didn’t need to know I was lying, that I’d never been intimate with Reuben, not in the way that still made me a virgin.
I stared at him. “Then why do you still act like I belong to you?” The silence pressed in, broken only by the faint hum of the city’s traffic far below.
I wondered abstractedly if Adam’s human ears could hear any of it.
I didn’t move, didn’t soften. “You want forgiveness,” I said, my voice flat. “You won’t get it.”
He looked at me, unreadable again. “I never stopped seeing you as mine,” he said finally, the words low, raw. “I fought with everything at my disposal to stop what they were doing to you.”
I shook my head, my jaw clenched. “You still funded it.” He didn’t deny it, and I pressed on.
“You made all of it possible—the cells, the pain, the degradation my kind suffered. All of it, tied to you.” My throat tightened, bleak, dark rage intensifying within.
But I didn’t blink. “That makes you worse than any of them.” A beat passed.
My final blow. “I’ll never forgive you for that. ”
“I killed for you,” he reminded bleakly. “Those three scientists—“
“Were some of the many who hurt me, disrespected me,” I cut in.
He reached out, then dropped his arm as I stepped back, away from him. I shook my head. “I’ll never see you as anything more than what you are.” My voice dropped to a whisper, full of steel. “A black-hearted human monster.”