Chapter 21 – ELLIE
ELLIE
I stand in the kitchen for five minutes after they leave, counting the seconds.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
Four Mississippi.
Five.
Start over.
The compulsion does nothing to calm the itch crawling under my skin, the need to do something instead of standing here like a good little pet waiting for her owners to return.
I rinse the dishes and stack them in the dishwasher with more care than necessary. The collar reminds me it exists every time I bend. My fingers trace its edge while I work, feeling for weaknesses. There aren't any.
Of course there aren't. Kade would never half-ass something like this. Or anything, actually. Part of me wants to ask if he even made the collar himself.
He always did have a knack for metalworking.
Finally bored to the point of tears, I start exploring.
The living room's first. I run my hands along the baseboards, checking for the telltale glint of camera lenses.
Nothing. The entertainment center is clean too, no obvious recording devices hidden in the DVD player or behind the TV.
Either Cyrus is better at this than I thought, or he's fucking with me by not installing surveillance at all.
I'm betting on the former.
The dining room yields nothing. Neither does the half-bath off the main hallway. I move systematically through each space, noting furniture and potential hiding spots.
The Kings have done well for themselves. Everything's quality without being flashy. Comfortable. Like they actually live here instead of just using it as a base of operations.
Upstairs, I avoid their bedrooms out of some misguided sense of privacy that's fucking hilarious considering they literally own me for the next twelve months. But my feet carry me to the third floor anyway, where a door at the end of the hallway practically screams "forbidden."
I turn the handle.
Locked.
Of course.
My fingers itch to pick it, muscle memory from all those afternoons Kade spent teaching me to defeat various locks with bobby pins and paperclips. But that feels like crossing a line I'm not ready to cross yet. Day one of captivity, and I'm already testing boundaries like a feral cat in a new home.
Fitting.
I head back downstairs, the house creaking around me in ways that feel sinister.
Every shadow could hide a camera. Every corner could be watched.
I'm in a fishbowl, and I'm sure Cyrus is sitting in some control room somewhere, watching me wander through his digital surveillance like I'm performance art.
Shit, maybe he even watched me last night.
Or watched Kade walk away from me.
The paranoia tastes familiar. Lived with it for years under Todd's roof, where security cameras tracked my every movement and his goons reported back if I so much as sneezed wrong. This should feel the same.
It doesn't.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. The new one Tank gave me, already loaded with all their numbers and probably more tracking software than the NSA uses on foreign spies.
KADE
Bored yet?
My fingers hover over the keyboard. He's testing me. Seeing if I'll respond like a good girl or ignore him out of spite. Then I remember his rule about texting back right away and decide I don't feel like having my exploration interrupted just yet.
ELLIE
Riveted. Your interior decorating choices are fascinating.
Three dots appear immediately.
KADE
Sarcasm noted. Don't break anything.
ELLIE
No promises.
I pocket the phone before he can respond, a small victory in a war I'm definitely losing. Kade is watching. He knows I'm wandering through the house instead of staying in my designated pink prison.
The back door calls to me like a siren song.
It's unlocked and I step out onto a deck that overlooks a surprisingly nice backyard. There's even a grill that's seen recent use based on the faint smell of charcoal. Patio furniture that doesn't look like it was stolen from someone's curb on trash day.
They escaped the trailer park the way we all swore we would, except they think I took the easy route while they clawed their way out with their bare hands.
The thought tastes bitter.
I sit on the porch steps, letting the morning sun warm my face. The neighborhood's quiet this time of day, just the distant sound of a lawnmower and someone's dog barking.
Normal. Suburban. Nothing like the constant chaos of Creekside Estates where sirens were the soundtrack to our childhood and someone was always screaming about something.
Usually at one of us.
My fingers find the collar again, a new compulsion settling in, tracing the delicate yet unwavering metal that feels seamless. Testing.
Always testing.
It won't come off, that's for damn sure. And the thought doesn't bother me like it probably should. Instead, it makes my thighs clench with heat.
The Kings may be fucked up, but so am I.
The sun climbs higher, and sweat starts to bead on my skin. The house stays silent behind me, no sign of Tank despite Jinx's assurance that he'd come back eventually.
Maybe he's avoiding me on purpose because he hates me so much, he can't even stand to be under the same roof.
That really fucking hurts.
I check my phone. 10:17 AM. Seven hours until my curfew. Seven hours to sit here like a good girl and contemplate my life choices.
Or.
The thought forms before I can stop it, dangerous and stupid and destined to get me in trouble.
Or I could test whether Kade was bullshitting about knowing my every move.
My eyes scan the backyard, looking for obvious cameras. Nothing in the trees. Nothing on the fence. Either they're as well hidden as the ones inside, or only the house is outfitted.
Only one way to find out.
I head back inside to put on a hoodie and grab some cash. The window in my room opens easily, no alarm, no obvious sensors. Just a straight drop to the roof of the first-floor porch, then an easy climb down the support column.
I've done this before. Spent three years sneaking out of Todd's mansion before his security caught me and he made it clear what would happen if I tried again.
But this isn't Todd's house. These aren't Todd's rules.
These are four boys who used to climb through my window at 2 AM to bring me stolen snacks and horror movies I wasn't allowed to watch. They taught me how to break in and out of places. Showed me every trick they knew.
The irony of using their lessons to escape them isn't lost on me.
I swing my leg over the windowsill, testing my weight on the porch roof. It holds. I shimmy down the column with ease, dropping the last few feet to the grass with barely a sound.
No alarms. No shouting. No immediate consequences.
My heart goes haywire as I straighten, brushing grass off my sweatpants. I'm outside. Technically breaking the rules already, and Kade's not storming out here to drag me back inside.
Either the cameras don't exist, or he's letting me think I've won. Giving me just enough rope to hang myself before he yanks it tight.
I walk toward the front of the house, trying to look casual instead of like I'm fleeing a crime scene.
The street's quiet, lined with those perfect trees that probably get maintained by some neighborhood association that fines you if your lawn's an inch too long.
A couple jogs past in matching athleisure, barely sparing me a glance.
Normal. I look normal. Just another college girl out for a walk, not a captive testing her boundaries.
My phone stays silent in my pocket. No texts. No calls. No angry demands to get my ass back inside.
The validation feels dangerous and a little bit intoxicating. Like maybe I've actually found a crack in their control.
Three blocks down sits a small ice cream shop wedged between a yoga studio and a coffee roaster. The kind of place that makes everything by hand and charges eight dollars for a single scoop. I've passed it a hundred times driving to campus and never stopped.
Today, I stop.
The bell chimes as I push through the door, and the blast of unnecessarily violent AC slaps me like a dick in the face.
A bored employee behind the counter grudgingly looks up from her phone, supremely uninterested in my existence.
Or the pretty silver collar that's not-quite hidden beneath my hoodie.
"What can I get you?"
I scan the flavors, all artisanal and pretentious. Lavender honey. Balsamic strawberry. Brown butter bourbon.
Nothing as simple as chocolate or vanilla.
"Rose cardamom," I say, because fuck it. If I'm going to break rules, might as well commit to some weird ass flavor I'd usually never try.
The ice cream's bright pink.
Perfect.
I pay with cash and take my cone outside. There's a bench across the street, shaded by an oak tree that's probably older than the neighborhood itself.
The ice cream tastes like actual flowers. The kind that probably shouldn't be edible. I eat it anyway, watching cars drift past, trying to remember what normal feels like. What it felt like before Todd.
Before my boys became Kings.
Simpler times. Stupider times. Times when I didn't understand that love could turn into ownership so easily.
My phone buzzes.
KADE
Enjoying your walk?
Ice floods my veins.
He knows.
And of course he fucking knows. Probably watched me climb out the window on a hundred different camera angles while laughing at my audacity.
I grab my pink pill case, shake out a couple of pills, and swallow them dry.
ELLIE
Ice cream's good. Want me to bring you some?
The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. He's choosing his words carefully, which is somehow worse than immediate rage.
KADE
No. But you're going to pay for this later.
Maybe he expects that to scare me. To make me throw the ice cream away and sprint back to the house, lock myself in my pink cage, and beg for his forgiveness.
Instead, it turns me on, and I take another deliberate lick of rose cardamom bullshit just in case he's watching me here, too.
ELLIE
Looking forward to it.
I'm playing with fire. I've always been drawn to it.