16. Anastasia
Kenna is untraceable. Impossible. The only way I can get a moment with her is if she comes out of her shadowed seclusion to seek meout. I don’t like the lack of control. The waiting. I’ve tried to ask around the manor for her, but all I receive are bored shrugs, scared glances when they hear her name, or grunts that mean “piss off, little girl.”I hate most of the brute statues roaming around here.
I’m about to try the gym when Alistair calls my name from inside his study. I need to pass it to get to the stairs. I shiver at the slow, enticing way he speaks it, as if he’s a snake charmer and I’m the cobra charmed to obey him.
When I slip inside it’s an effort to keep my mouth from dropping open. I find Kenna at least. She’s perched on Alistair’s desk, and his hand is on her leg absentmindedly while he looks over a piece of paper. He sets it down when I enter, and those deep blue eyes never fail to cut through me.
My anxiety explodes like an ant’s nest across my skin. I consider Kenna’s presence, their closeness, why he’s called me in here with her.
Has Kenna told him something? Is she a far more cunning spy than I thought and did she hear all my confessions to Silas in Lumina?
“I’m losing patience, dear,” Alistair says, taking off the small rectangular glasses he uses for reading. “By now I expected to have some hint that you’re moving forward and that you’ve arranged a meeting with Silas, even though I’d much rather have had one already.”
I observe his hand on Kenna. It seems relaxing for him, but not for her. She gives away nothing at all as her hands prop her up from behind and she keeps her back to me, staring off at the fire. It doesn’t feel like enough to make any firm assumptions.
“He’s a powerful and highly cautious man—it was always going to take time to win him over,” I say.
“And are you?”
“I think so.”
Alistair sighs—the kind bearing disappointment. “I don’t like uncertainty in those who work for me, Ana. Are you close to achieving my job or not?”
“Yes,” I amend.
I feel like a solider in front of him. He’s strict and emotionless.
“Then I expect to hear from Silas Balenhaizer by week’s end.”
The “or else”is implied, and my confidence shrinks at the countdown he’s placed on me. Shit. Fuck. Shit.
I have Silas willing to comply and meet with Alistair if I can find out about Kenna’s desire to be here—and right now, she seems pretty damn comfortable. Was he hoping she was here against her will? Will he decide the alliance with me is off if she’s happy working for Alistair?
Shit.I don’t want to imagine she’s been here all this time against her will, but I also fear I’ve lost my only hope with Silas, and in turn failed for Alistair in this job, if she isn’t. SHIT.
“Then we should go to Lumina tonight,” I say, speaking partially to Kenna.
She doesn’t look at me, and Alistair answers for her, running a hand up her calf, and only then does her leg stop swinging. Her shoulders lock a near undetectable fraction.
“My Kenna has another job tonight. I think by now you’re capable on your own. She only accompanied you thus far to ensure your safety.”
So much SHIT.
All the strings of my plan are fraying in my fingertips, and I’m grappling with my composure in the hope I can salvage it.
“How can you be sure I’m safe in there now?”
“If you’re doing your job right, you will be. Tell me, has he fucked you yet?”
My mouth drops open, and I think my dignity falls out of it. “No.”
Another of those long, disapproving stares. “Kenna tells me he’s very keen. I hope you’re not holding out on him. A man like Silas won’t hold out long before someone else comes along.”
I’m surprised Kenna would report anything positive. Silas and I have barely touched. He certainly hasn’t made any moves to suggest he’s interested in me that way, and he point-blank, no guessing needed, shot a guy through the hand to declare his interest in Kenna.
Perhaps that’s why she told Alistair the lie. She’s not interested in Silas. Maybe she’s already taken by Alistair. My stomach plummets as I remember how old she was when she first came here. Did he wait? Or does he indulge in the same villainy he spreads, like the monsters he feeds in his work?
I think I’m going to be sick.
“I’d better go get ready,” I say.
Alistair nods, dismissing me. I flash one last look at Kenna, but she’s as good as stone, an unfeeling, immobile statue, and that disturbs me. So much I almost stay and try to insist again that I need her with me. But as Alistair looks at me, wondering why I’m still standing here, his dismissal turns to a warning, and I scurry out.
I rush to my room with a new urgency. Kenna doesn’t like me—she said Rhett deserved to die for leaving—but still, I can’t bear the thoughts that are wracking my mind right now. I need answers. I never expected to want to know the truth as much as Silas, but now each hour I don’t know her story feels heavier. So I dress quickly, and I head to Lumina Lounge.
When Silas looks up after his next pool shot, he doesn’t smile, but his eyes give away that he’s pleased to see me. Or at least I can pretend like it’s for me for a second before he straightens, surveying behind me, then plucks the cigarette from his mouth, casting the smoke over the balcony as he peers out in search of a particular stunning, prickly, black-haired woman.
The question bounces back to me in another glance, and I swear, it’s unnerving how much he speaks with his expressions alone.
“She’s not here, so you can save yourself searching the dark corners of the roof next,” I say.
His displeasure isn’t subtle as he passes off his pool cue, slipping that hand into his pocket as he stalks over. “Your company is divine, Anastasia, but I might find myself growing bored quickly.”
I don’t take it as an insult. Silas deals in thrills and madness, and he knows what I want. If Kenna won’t come back and she’s truly loyal to Alistair, I’m going to have to work harder to keep his interest.
“Alistair wants a meeting by the end of the week,” I say.
Silas sits, always in the same place. “I like you, Ana. I admire your confidence and will to do what it takes to get your boyfriend back. But it is not my problem. I’ve considered what you proposed, what I could gain out of all of this, and you’re right—it would be legendary. But it is also putting everything on the line for a chance. An alliance with an inexperienced princess, for all intents and purposes, and her band of vigilantes. I’m happy with my lot.”
“You’re content,” I counter, growing panicked and angry.
“I have everything I need.”
“You’ll always want more. Always be in the shadow of your father.”
“You have no idea how I feel when it comes to that. Perhaps I don’t mind at all.”
My teeth clench. I can’t fucking lose this.
“So you’d do it all for a woman you don’t know. Who doesn’t want you.”
“Careful.”
“That’s what you are, all you’ll ever be—careful.”
Silas stands, towering over me, and yeah, I’ll admit, I’m fucking terrified. But I can’t back down now.
He approaches me, and I can’t move. I square my shoulders as if through bravery, tracking his eyes, but really, I’m rooted with the thought that one upturned palm could have someone placing a gun into it. I don’t think he’s above killing me with the right motivation.
“It’s been an honor hosting you, Miss Kinsley. Now I advise you to leave, as your membership seems to have expired.”
Silas all but banishes me from his club with a slow drag of his cigarette, blowing out the smoke into the air above me. Then he turns, stubbing it out in the black ashtray before heading over to the pool table again.
“That’s it then? You just give up?”
His dark eyes cut into me, and it’s the first time I’ve felt the tension of the whole room thicken, with a few of his men even shifting on their feet. I guess people don’t tend to get to leave this place if they dare defy his clear dismissal.
“I don’t give up, because I never enter into things I can’t win,” he says, so low and cold.
“What about Kenna?”
“If her relationship with Lanshall is genuine, I won’t pursue someone who’s taken.”
“I can’t find that out without you,” I say.
Irritation flexes his eyes. “Speak clearly, Ana, before you find out how little patience I have.”
“I-I don’t know if her loyalty is true. But she’s been there since she was only fifteen. I’ve not seen her in all the three months I’ve been there, yet today she was sitting on his desk while he?—”
I falter at his white-knuckle grip on the back of the sofa.
“They might be intimate, but I don’t know how long for. I don’t know how she ended up there, but it can’t be good, can it? It can’t be innocent or coincidence. What if she was sold to him? Even if she believes she’s loyal to him, she’s been groomed since she was just a fucking child.”
Silas closes his eyes and his head bows, almost shakes. I’m sure he’s millimeters of pressure away from ripping the couch. His men are restless, either ready to sprint at any command or bolt from Silas’s trembling explosion.
He straightens, and his walk to the pool table is chillingly calm. He takes a sip of his drink, then it goes crashing into the wall.
“I know you have a plan, someone you want back, Ana, but I don’t know if I can wait that long when I have the means to storm in there and take her, kicking and screaming, and Alistair wouldn’t dare face me to get her back.”
“Please,” I say gently, approaching the storm everyone is braced to bolt from. “We can have everything we want and more if we just work together. I’ve been three agonizing months without Rhett, believing he was dead. I can hardly look at myself in the mirror since I took the hand of the vile monster who tortured and captured the only man I’ve ever loved. I did it for Rhett. I had to be sure he was gone for good, and if he was, that I had the patience to get this right. To hurt Alistair worse than he hurt me.”
My breath comes harder. My throat is so bone-dry it’s painful to squeeze any words out, but I can’t stop.
“Now I know he’s been alive all this time, and I can’t fathom what Alistair has been doing to him. If I knew where he was, I’d be tempted to rage there right now and get him back too. But it would never fix the fact that the monster who caused his pain is still out there. As long as he gets to keep going, he wins. Maybe Kenna doesn’t want to be saved because she doesn’t know she needs to be. She doesn’t believe anyone is coming after her after all this time. If you take her, the man who broke her still has his empire.”
“Then I’ll burn it to the fucking ground for her,” he snaps.
“I’m begging you,” I say. “Do this with me. For both of them. We can save them and have our revenge on Lanshall in ways that’d make him beg for death. To watch as you take it all.”
“I told you not to fucking beg.”
Silas paces, occasionally fixing his frightening, calculating stare on me as he does. Deliberating my fate. Rhett’s fate. He could abandon me completely and still get what he wants. Focus his efforts only on getting Kenna out, even if she doesn’t want to leave.
And I would understand. Love is crazy. It makes people do wild things they never would have thought themselves capable of in the name of someone else. But while most harbor their obsession, whether root or full bloom, Silas wears his for the world to see.
I find myself wanting to be as bold and reckless in my love for Rhett. To make the world know nothing could get in the way of him being mine.
“All right, Kinsley. We’ll try this your way.”
My relief strains to burst, but it’s held in the painful bubble of my chest as he lights another cigarette and approaches me with eyes primed to strike.
“I’m sure learning what Kaiser did was frightening to you. Then you dove deeper and discovered Lanshall and Forthson are terrifying. You’ve reached the very bottom now, princess, where everything above is like fucking paradise.”