Chapter 2 The Gilded Cage #2
“Everything can be claimed.” His gaze dropped over my face again. “Some things must be claimed, or they are destroyed.”
My pulse pounded in my throat so hard I was sure he could feel it from where he stood. My skin prickled. My palms ached from how hard I was digging my nails in.
“Your men know I’m not really engaged to you,” I said, forcing my voice not to shake. “They’re not idiots.”
“They are idiots.” He snorted softly. “Big, useful idiots with guns, but idiots. They know what I tell them to know. Right now, they know you are my woman. That is enough.”
“Enough for what?”
He leaned in, just a fraction. Enough that his breath slid across my cheek. Warm. Cinnamon edged with whiskey.
“Enough that no one touches you without losing fingers.” His eyes hardened. “Enough that no one shoots you in back of head and leaves you in alley because you saw something you should not.”
The image slammed into me. Me, in the snow. Blood soaking my costume. My eyes empty.
I swallowed. My throat hurt.
“This is kidnapping,” I whispered. “You can call it whatever the hell you want; it doesn’t change the fact you took me.”
“I saved you.”
“No.” My voice cracked. “You moved me from one kind of danger to another. If you have enemies or if anyone finds out I could be a target.”
“But now you are target with very dangerous shield. Before, you were nothing. See difference?”
“You’re insane.”
“Probably.” His gaze dropped, scanning my face, my throat. Stopped somewhere south. “But I am rich and powerful, and people call me brutal.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “You’re not even trying to pretend you’re a good guy.”
“Good guy?” He tilted his head like I’d spoken another language. “Kotyonok, I shot man in front of you tonight. Three bullets. Center mass. I do not pretend to be good. I pretend to be efficient.”
His phone buzzed. He ignored it.
“What happens now?” I asked.
He pushed off the wall, giving me back an inch of air. My lungs dragged it in greedily.
“Now you shower,” he said. “Natasha will burn that costume if she finds it. She has taste.” He walked to a sleek panel by the door and tapped something.
I heard locks click. “You rest. You do not touch doors, balconies, windows, or anything with wires. You do not look for phones or codes or ways to run.”
Every thing he listed had already been on my mental to-do list.
“My life is not Netflix series about dumb girl outsmarting mafia boss,” he added. “If you try something, I will know. If I know, I will not be friendly about it.”
“This is you being friendly?”
“For me, yes.” He checked his watch like this conversation was a small delay between more important crimes. “Tomorrow, we talk rules. For now, eat, shower, sleep.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You are shaking.” He rolled his wrist, glanced back at me. “Adrenaline. Shock. Fear. Body burns calories. You need food.”
“You’re not my mom.”
“Thank God.” His mouth curled. “I like you too much for that.”
The casual admission did something terrible to my insides.
“Kitchen,” he said. “Sandwich. Juice. Natasha left them. She thinks I do not know she worries I will starve. She is wrong, but I let her mother me.”
“You have a Natasha.”
“You have Natasha now too.” The faintest shrug. “She will not like it. She will get over it.”
“I want to go home.”
“You do not have home.” The words were flat. Not unkind. Just factual. “You have student debt, shit job, cheap apartment with neighbors who do not know your name. You have treadmill, not home. This” – he gestured around us – “is home until I say otherwise.”
A lump built in my throat. Thick. Ugly.
“How do you know about my job?”
His gaze met mine again. “I make call in car. My men call their men. Ten minutes, I can buy your life story. This is world you live in now. Information is easy. Keeping you alive will be hard.”
The honesty knocked the wind out of my lungs more than the threat.
He walked to the door. It recognized him and unlocked with a soft click.
He stepped into the hall, then paused. Looked back at me over his shoulder.
“There are cameras everywhere,” he said. “Except one small blind spot in hallway. You already noticed. Clever girl.”
Ice threaded down my spine.
“I see everything, Daniela.” He let my full name roll off his tongue like something he might enjoy later. “Remember that.”
He closed the door behind him.
Locks engaged. A soft mechanical snick that landed like a verdict.
I stood in the middle of the prettiest room I’d ever seen. Wrapped in a killer’s coat. My bell collar still jingling faintly when I breathed.
Outside, snow drifted past the floor-to-ceiling windows. White and pure and silent, frosting the city in temporary innocence.
Inside, I sank down on the edge of the massive bed. The mattress cradled me like it had been designed for my exact weight. It was like lying on a cloud.
A very expensive cloud in a cage I hadn’t chosen.
Very slowly, so the cameras would see nothing but compliance, I reached up. Fingertips brushed the metal bell at my throat.
It chimed.
Soft. Bright. Wrong.
The city glittered. Christmas lights blinked. Somewhere people sang carols and wrapped presents and debated eggnog.
I watched it all through bulletproof glass.
And realized with sick, crawling certainty that the world I’d known had ended in a tree lot.
This was my new one.
Marble. Glass. Cameras. A white Christmas tree that looked like it had been murdered and resurrected by an interior designer.
And a man upstairs who owned the building. The cops. The men who’d wanted to put a bullet in my skull.
And now, apparently, me.
I lay back on the cloud and stared up at the ceiling, wide awake.
Already counting the ways to break out of a gilded cage.
Already wondering if I wanted to escape it or sink deeper into it.