Chapter 33 #2
Vanguard fills the frame.
He’s changed since last night—showered, dressed in a fresh T-shirt and jeans, looking almost normal if you don’t look too closely. But I do look. I can’t help it.
And what I see makes my blood run cold.
Because it’s him and yet there’s nothing there at all.
Just empty space where he used to be.
“You’re awake,” he says flatly. “Good. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Am I your prisoner?”
“If you want to call it that. I prefer captive.”
I swallow hard. That’s much worse.
He jerks his chin at me. “Your ears are a lot better. Sorry about that.”
I reach up and gently touch my lobes. They’re crusted over where the earrings once were and they throb a little. I still can’t believe he ripped them out and then swallowed them. I can’t believe any of this.
“Let me go,” I say quietly.
“No,” he says, rubbing his hand over his chin. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Nate—”
“You don’t get to call me that anymore.” He steps into the room, closing the door behind him. The lock engages with a soft click. “Right now, to you, I’m the asset. The target. The subject of your surveillance.”
“That’s not—”
“So who do you work for?”
The question is direct. He’s interrogating me.
I say nothing.
His jaw tightens. “Who do you work for?”
Silence fills the room.
“What’s your mission?”
I hold his gaze and give him nothing.
“What have you reported back about me?”
The silence stretches. I watch something build behind his eyes—frustration bleeding into rage.
“You think staying quiet is going to help you?” He takes a step closer. “You think I won’t find ways to make you talk?”
I keep my voice flat, bury my emotions back into that box.
“I think you can try.”
His nostrils flare.
“Fine.” He’s in my space now, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “Let’s try something else. What was real? Between us. Montana. The torch. Any of it?”
This one I want to answer. God, I want to answer it so badly my chest aches. But I can’t. Because if I start talking—if I give him even one thread—he’ll pull until everything unravels.
So I stay silent. It’s the only way I know how to do this. I’ve been through worse before and I have to be as hard as steel if I’m going to survive.
He stares at me, waiting for nothing, and something cracks in his expression.
“Nothing?” His voice drops to something desperate. Dangerous. “You’ve got nothing to say about any of it?”
I force myself to hold his gaze. To give him nothing but empty stillness.
“You fucking—” He grabs my chin, wrenching my face toward his, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“Look at me. Look at me and tell me it was all fake. Tell me every time you touched me, every time you moaned my name, every time you looked at me like I was something other than a goddamn target—tell me that was all performance.”
His face is inches from mine. I can see the dark grey flecks in his eyes, the way his pulse hammers at his throat. The rage and the hurt and underneath it all, something despairing. Something begging me to give him something to hold onto.
But I can’t.
My silence is its own kind of answer.
His grip tightens. “Say something.”
I don’t.
For a long, terrible moment, I think he’s going to hit me. His whole body is vibrating with the effort of holding back, muscles coiled, breathing ragged.
Then his gaze drops to my mouth.
And I feel it—that sick, electric pull between us that hasn’t gone away despite everything. My body responds before my brain can stop it, heat pulsing between my legs, breath catching in my throat.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
“Jesus Christ.” His voice is thick with some emotion I can’t name. “You still want me. Even now. Even like this.”
I don’t deny it. What would be the point? He can tell.
His thumb drags across my lower lip, rough and slow. Not tender. Possessive. Like he’s reminding both of us who’s in control.
“That’s fucked up, little killer,” he murmurs. “That’s really, really fucked up.”
Then he releases me so abruptly I stumble.
He’s across the room before I can catch my breath, putting distance between us like I’m diseased. He has no idea that I actually am.
“You’re going to eat,” he says, not looking at me. His voice has gone hard again, all that heat packed back down into ice. “And then you’re going to sleep. And tomorrow, we’re going to try this again.”
“And if I refuse?”
He turns. The smile he gives me doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Then I stop asking nicely.”
He brings food an hour later.
Rice, vegetables, and chicken. Healthy and balanced, like a power bowl from Pret-A-Manger, the kind of thing you’d feed someone you wanted to keep functional.
I don’t touch it.
He stands in the doorway, watching me not eat, and I can see the irritation lining his brow.
“Starving yourself isn’t going to help,” he says.
“Neither is eating.”
“Eat the fucking food, Mia.”
I give him a steady look. “No.”
He crosses the room in three strides. Before I can react, he’s got the bowl in one hand and my jaw in the other, forcing my mouth open.
“I said eat.”
I jerk away, but his grip is iron. He shoves a forkful of rice and vegetables against my lips, and I have a choice to swallow or choke.
I swallow.
“Good girl.” The words drip with condescension. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
Get fucked.
Humiliation burns through me, hot and sharp. I want to spit it back in his face. I want to claw his eyes out. I want to—
He forces another bite into my mouth.
“You don’t get to starve yourself,” he says, almost conversationally. “You don’t get to hurt yourself on my watch. That’s not how this works.”
On his watch. Like I’m a prisoner he’s obligated to keep alive. Which, I suppose, is exactly what I am.
He did say captive, after all.
He feeds me half the bowl before he’s satisfied. His fingers are sticky with sauce when he pulls back, and he wipes them on his jeans without looking at me.
“Now it’s time to shower,” he says.
“What?”
“You’re covered in dried blood and warehouse grime. You need to shower.”
“I’ll pass.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
We stare at each other. The air between us crackles.
“You want me to strip down while you watch?” I ask, putting acid into every word. “Is that what this is?”
On his face, for just a second, I see the man from Montana—the one who looked at me like I hung the stars.
Then it’s gone.
“Five minutes,” he says. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
I don’t move.
“Now, Mia.”
I turn and head into the bathroom, breathing a quick sigh of relief as the door closes shut.
My hands are shaking as I strip off the tank top, the bra, the knickers.
I can feel him on the other side of that door, listening, and I hate how much it affects me.
Hate that even now, even like this, some twisted part of me wants him to walk in.
The water is steaming. I stand under it and let it scald me, hot on my bruised skin, washing away blood and sweat and the last remnants of who I was before he said hello, Mia and my world collapsed.
When I come out wrapped in a towel, there are clean clothes on the bed. His clothes. A T-shirt that will drown me, sweatpants I’ll have to roll at the waist. No knickers.
He’s not in the room.
I dress quickly, surrounded by the smell of him, his detergent and something woodsy and underneath it all, that scent that’s all Nate. The shirt hangs to mid-thigh. The pants pool around my ankles.
The door opens.
He freezes when he sees me in his clothes. Something raw and hungry flashes across his face before he shuts it down.
“Get some sleep,” he says roughly. “We’ll continue this in the morning.”
“Continue what? You asking questions I’m not going to answer?”
He’s across the room before I can blink, hand fisting in the collar of the too-big shirt, hauling me up onto my toes.
“You think this is a game?” His voice is low and lethal. “You think I’m playing with you?”
“I think you don’t know what you want.”
“I know exactly what I want.” His grip tightens. “I want answers. I want the truth. I want to know if any of it—” He stops. His jaw works. “I want you to talk to me, for fuck’s sake.”
“Then you’re going to be disappointed.”
For one endless moment, I think he’s going to kiss me. Or strangle me. The line between the two has never felt thinner.
But he just shoves me back onto the bed and stalks to the door.
“You’ll break eventually,” he says without turning around. “Everyone does.”
The door slams.
The lock clicks.
I curl up on sheets that smell like fabric softener and stare at the ceiling, counting my heartbeats, wondering how many I have left.