Chapter Eleven – Thea
I don’t get much sleep, mostly because I’m too busy thinking of Max. Mostly of Max, and maybe a little of Silus.
Okay, a lot of Silus and a little of Max. What can I say? I guess Silus has the kind of face and the kind of body that make my hormones crazy even though I can name a million and one reasons my body shouldn’t be affected by him at all.
When morning comes, Silus lets me use the bathroom and cooks me some scrambled eggs. Unlike last night, he doesn’t eat with me, which I’m okay with. The less time I spend with him, the better. The more I look at that face, the more attracted to him I am—a bad thing. A very, very bad thing.
Also, can I just say I hate how comfortable the bed was? And how nice the new sheets felt on my skin? Fucking silk. Not once in my life have I ever slept on silk anything. A silk pillowcase does wonders to keep my head cool at night, and I bet it’s great for my hair, too. Kidnapping aside, I could get used to it.
Now, what’s absolutely crazy to me is the clothes Silus had delivered. Only some of them arrived so far, according to him, but they all fit. Jeans, a pair of leggings, flowery blouses. Not the kind of wardrobe I would have if I could pick my own clothes, but not ugly. Just too rich-looking for my blood.
I dress in the jeans and one of the blouses—a short-sleeved, light pink shirt with a few buttons in the chest area. It’s not tight, but the way it hangs off my body is, I hate to say, super cute.
Say it with me: I will not let Silus’s preference of clothing influence my own tastes. I might be forced to wear the clothes, to sleep in the bed and sheets he bought, to eat his damn food and other things I prefer not to remember—his cum—but I won’t let him change who I am.
Fuck that guy.
I don’t know what time it is when Silus tells me we’re going to see Max. I’m excited until we get inside his car—one of his men is driving, and we get to sit in the backseat like we’re so important we need to be chauffeured around. That’s when Silus pulls out a small black sack and informs me I need to place it over my head during the drive.
“What?” I hiss out the word, well aware we’re not having this conversation alone. Just a few feet away, one of his men sits in the driver’s seat, watching us through the rear-view mirror. “I’m not putting that on.”
“If you wish to see your brother, you will,” Silus says, still offering it to me.
I glare at him. If looks could kill… well, he would’ve been a goner way before this. Unfortunately, as much as I want to argue with him, as much as I want to tell him no and refuse to put it on, I know he won’t let up, and my need to see Max pushes down my pride.
With a frown, I snatch the mask out of his hand and pull it over my head, and then I cross my arms over my chest just so he can see how pissed off this makes me. This guy… oh, this guy is going to drive me crazy. He’ll be the death of me.
The car starts to move, and we’re on our way.
Silus puts an arm around me, and he pulls me toward him as he whispers, “It’s not so bad, love. Think of it as an insurance policy. You tell me you’ll be good, that you won’t run, but it’s true we don’t know each other very well. You could be lying. Some people are good at it. This way, if you happen to get out, you won’t know exactly where I’m keeping your brother.”
“Whatever” is all I say, because if I say what’s really on my mind, I might make Silus change his mind about letting me see Max.
He chuckles, but he doesn’t pull his arm off me, which means I spend the car ride to wherever Max is not only with a black sack on my head, but also curled against Silus’s body. If the circumstances were wildly different, the latter wouldn’t be so bad.
Without being able to see, I don’t know how far we drive. I can sort of feel when we make a right or left turn, but that’s it. Not really helpful when you can’t see the total distance driven. The windows are all rolled up too, so I can’t even hear any sounds from the city around us. I’m given absolutely no clues.
Whatever. Just as well. I’m under no illusions that, if I were to somehow escape, that I’d be able to find Max and ditch the city without being found first. Silus has countless men, not to mention his brother and all his eyes on the street. Half the damn city would be looking for me if he put out the word, and since I’m no international spy, I’d be caught in a heartbeat.
When Silus pulls his arm away and lets me have enough room to breathe, I assume we’re here. I hear him get out, and he helps me out of the car, helping me duck to avoid hitting my head as I get out. With the mask still on, Silus takes my hand in his and leads me. It sounds as though we walk through a creaky doorway, and then, finally, he tells me I can take off the sack.
It’s only after he releases my hand that I pull the hood off my face, and the moment I do, I drop it to the ground.
Max is chained to the concrete floor, his small figure slumped over, less than fifteen feet away. We’re in a large, empty space—an old, abandoned warehouse, maybe? The blue sky peeks in through holes in the metal roof, giving the area enough light.
The moment he realizes it’s me, my brother’s expression lightens up, and I say his name, “Max!” I race over to him, fall to my knees and hug him, my heart suddenly beating so fast I can feel it.
“Thea,” Max says. He can’t really hug me back thanks to the cuffs keeping his arms stretched out. “Are you all right?”
I pull away from him and study his face. He’s got a cracked, bruised lip, but besides that, he seems okay. “It’s not me I’m worried about. How are you?”
Max tries to shrug, but he can’t, not really. “Been better,” he deadpans, and then he adds in a more serious, hushed voice, “I guess you were right about it being a bad idea to kidnap a mafia boss, huh?” Trying to make a joke at a time like this. God, I could strangle him.
Since he’s already told me I was right and he was wrong, all I can do is sigh.
He glances around me, probably at Silus, who stands back, watching us like the hawk he is, my ever-present guardian. “What’s that about? Did Silus…”
The last thing I’m going to tell Max is that Silus wants every part of me—and that he already made me get on my knees for him—so I say, “He’s keeping me in a room in his place. He says he’ll let me go if… if I’m good.”
“Thea, you don’t really believe that, do you? He’s a liar. He’s—”
I lower my voice to a whisper, “I don’t think he is, actually.” Max gives me a knowing look after that, causing me to snap, “What?” The longer that look lasts, the more pissed off I get at my dear brother.
Max’s eyes take in my clean hair before they drop to study my new blouse; basically everything on me points to the fact that he knows what’s going on between Silus and me. He’s not stupid. “I hope you’re not doing anything for me,” he finally says. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. You… you should do whatever you can to get out of there—”
Behind me, I hear Silus chuckle, but I pointedly ignore him as I tell Max, “No, Max. I can’t. I have to stay for you. If I don’t… he might kill you, and I can’t let that happen.” Being my brother, I know he’s ready to argue with me, so I throw my arms around his neck and hug him as I whisper, “I got this. Trust me.”
Before Max can respond, I pull away from him and stand, turning toward Silus. I take a few steps toward the man before I stop and say, “You can’t keep him here.” I say it loud enough for both men in the large warehouse to hear me. My voice echoes in the space, bouncing off the walls before reverberating back to me.
Silus is amused. “And where should I keep him, then?”
“Let’s bring him with us—”
Barking out a laugh, he says, “No. Having you both captive in the same place? I don’t think so. I don’t trust you two not to scheme, much the way you did before you kidnapped me.” He sticks his hands in his pants’ pockets, cocking his head at me, as if he’s waiting for a rebuttal.
I don’t have a well-formulated one, though. All I can say is, again, “You can’t keep him here” and all I can do is point a finger back at my brother, who is still very much chained up, his arms pulled uncomfortably in both directions away from his body.
“Thea, I can do whatever I want.”
The breath that escapes me right then is erratic and hard, but I manage to gather myself as I move closer to Silus. Close enough that I have to bend my head back to gaze up at him and bat my eyelashes as I murmur, “Then don’t bring him with us, but put him somewhere else. Somewhere with a bed and a toilet. Somewhere he’s not chained to the ground like an animal. Please, Silus?” I make sure to lay the sugar on thick.
I’ve never used my feminine wiles before, never flirted with a man to get him to do what I want—and honestly, I don’t know if it’s working. Silus’s expression doesn’t change. Seconds tick by, but I don’t look away. Neither of us do. It’s like we’re both waging a war with only our eyes. May the best win.
“Uh,” Max’s voice rises behind me, “are you two having strokes over there? Hello?” Leave it to my brother to break up the seriousness of the moment with an ill-timed comment. He should’ve kept his mouth shut; I’m doing this for him.
To my surprise, however, Silus is the one who speaks first, and what he says he says to me, not Max, “Fine. I will have him moved, but I am not moving him for his comfort. I’m moving him for yours.”
I’m so surprised at what I’m hearing that all I can do is blink. I’m so speechless I can’t even thank him for agreeing to move Max out of this old, dank warehouse.
“Come,” Silus says. “I’ll need to make arrangements.” He goes to pick up the sack off the floor, but he doesn’t hand it to me so I can put it back on. If he’s moving Max, it doesn’t matter if I know where we are.
As Silus and I leave the warehouse, Max shouts, “Thank you! I think?”
I’m still speechless even as we get inside the car and drive away. I want to ask Silus if he knows where he’s going to move my brother, if I’ll be able to visit him once he’s there, but I shouldn’t push my luck. It’s a miracle he agreed to move Max as it is.
For my comfort.
As we drive away from the warehouse, I glance at Silus next to me and find he’s already staring at me, like I’m some puzzle he can’t quite put together yet, and it’s bugging the crap out of him. The analogy could go both ways, though; the same thing could be said of him to me.
There is no logical reason why he should’ve given in to me, why Silus should have bowed to my demands and agreed to move my brother. He’s the one in charge here, not me.
I don’t say a word during the drive back, mostly because I don’t know what to say, but also partly because I don’t want to say anything more in front of his driver. I guess I should thank him, but I don’t want to do it with any other people listening.
So I wait until we’re back in Silus’s condo, until he’s about to lock me in my room so he can make whatever calls he has to in order to get the ball rolling on moving Max. Once I cross the threshold of the room, I spin to face him before he can shut the door on me and say, “Silus, thank you for moving Max. I really do appreciate it. I… I know you don’t have to, but—”
“I know,” he whispers, and then, right when I think we’re sharing a moment, he shuts the door in my face and locks me in.
Just as well. The privacy allows me the time to cool off, to shrug off the weird feelings that came over me when I heard Silus say he’s doing it for my comfort. I mean, what the hell was he trying to get at? Why should he care at all about my comfort? He freaking kidnapped me and is keeping me in this locked room unless I’m under his direct supervision.
I do a lot of pacing the rest of the day.
The room has no windows and I have no clock, so I don’t know what time it is when Silus comes in with two plates of food, but when he does he tells me Max is out of that warehouse already.
“My men are moving him as we speak,” Silus informs me. “He will have access to a bed and a toilet, along with a shower. Just like you. You’re both living in the lap of luxury, considering.”
All I can do is openly gape at him. “Luxury? Just ‘cause you got me silk sheets and I’m allowed to shower doesn’t make this a luxury—”
“Doesn’t it? Most kidnapping victims aren’t afforded those luxuries.”
“Most people don’t kidnap their kidnappers in response to being kidnapped,” I mutter. “And most people who are kidnapped to begin with aren’t mafia bosses, so…” I trail off, frowning to myself.
Silus is watching. The two plates of food are resting on the foot of my bed, untouched so far. “Where are you going with this?”
“I don’t know! I’m just saying, none of this is ordinary.”
“Clearly.”
“And you, you’re—”
He lifts his dark brows. “I’m what?” When I don’t go on, he says, “Please, tell me what I am, Thea, or what you believe me to be. I’m waiting with bated breath.” The corners of his mouth curl with the slightest hint of a smirk.
There are so many things I could say, so many things I shouldn’t say. In the end, I settle with, “You’re not what I thought you’d be.” I grab my plate after that and stuff my mouth full so I don’t have to say anything else.
Silus doesn’t push the issue, but based on the way his smirk only grows, I can tell he’s satisfied enough with my response.
Great. As if I need this guy to get a bigger ego.