Chapter 24
ANNIE
I woke up reaching for heat that wasn’t there.
The bed was cold, and empty at my side. I’d spent ten minutes lying still, listening for any signs Cipher was coming, but all I heard was the silence of the underground. Eventually, I’d crept into his bathroom, feeling like an intruder in a temple, and showered.
To my surprise, there had been clothes waiting. And shoes. Actual shoes. After being barefoot and dragged through the sky, the sensation of arch support felt like a luxury.
I hadn’t stayed in his room long. A henchman had been stationed at the end of the hall and he’d escorted me up a level to my room.
Breakfast had arrived on a tray shortly after, along with a tablet containing a map of “permitted zones” and a single, verbal instruction delivered by the henchman: Be in your quarters by seven p.m., ready for public appearances.
My shift as a “plaything” apparently had a start time.
Now, standing in the bathroom of my new quarters, I traced the reflection in the mirror.
Cipher hadn’t cut me. Not really. But the knife had dragged, sharp enough to score bright red lines across the tops of my breasts and down my sternum. There were more on my sides and ass. They stood out against my skin like a warning label.
Property of Cipher.
They looked oddly beautiful.
I pressed my finger against the longest, deepest mark, right over my hip. A sharp, stinging heat shot though the mark, distinct and biting. It was a different language than the dull ache on my hips where his fingers had dug in to hold me in place.
I dropped my hand, a flush rising on my neck as I placed what I was feeling. Disappointment.
God, that was pathetic. I was standing here disappointed that the man who kidnapped me hadn’t woken me up with his hands on me. I’d dreamed of him, of the weight of him pressing me into the mattress as he slid into me.
Waking up alone felt like a rejection.
I turned away from the mirror, needing to engage the part of my brain that wasn’t currently melting over a knife-wielding maniac.
The familiar anxiety was starting to itch beneath my skin.
I needed a schedule. I could handle being a pseudo-prisoner, mostly, but I couldn’t handle the lack of logistics.
Where were we going tonight? What was the itinerary?
I couldn’t prepare for a hunt if I didn’t know the terrain.
Rules and schedules were my safety net, and right now, I was free-falling.
I needed to find Cipher and ask him what the plan was.
I opened the door and the henchman stationed outside turned to look at me.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Twenty-Two tilted his head, likely listening to a voice in his ear that I couldn’t hear. “The boss is occupied.”
“I didn’t ask if he was busy,” I said. “I asked where he is. I need to speak with him regarding logistics.”
Rules. Logistics. The universal language of bureaucracy. Even Villains had to respect administration.
Twenty-Two touched two fingers to his ear. A moment of silence passed before he dropped his hand. “Primary Lab. I’ll escort you.”
The walk was short but disorienting. The corridors of the Labyrinth all looked the same. When the blast doors to the lab slid open, the smell hit me first: hot metal and the tang of solder.
Cipher was standing at a workbench, his back to me. He was wearing jeans, the dark, well-worn denim clinging to his thighs, and a black t-shirt that stretched tight across the expanse of his shoulders.
It was jarringly normal. I’d seen him naked and I’d seen him armored, but seeing him in street clothes still felt like walking in on a secret.
It made him look human, like someone you could run into at a coffee shop, rather than a Super-powered terrorist who had tied me up and edged me to insanity only hours ago.
I stopped, my shoes scuffing against the floor.
“What do you need?” His voice was flat and he didn’t look up.
I crossed my arms, trying to shield myself from the chill coming off him. “I wanted the itinerary. If I’m going to be dragged around as a prop, I need to know the schedule for the next few days. Times, locations, expected dress code.”
“I’ll have the data forwarded to your tablet,” he said, twisting a delicate wire. “You can review it in your quarters.”
I stood there, feeling the blood heat in my cheeks at the dismissal. My body was still humming from what he’d done to me, my skin felt too tight, my nerves exposed, and he hadn’t even bothered to look up when speaking to me.
“Is there anything else?” he asked, his tone indicating there better not be.
I should have left and gone back to my room to organize my life into neat, manageable columns. But the image of the red room and the absolute focus he’d had on me last night flashed behind my eyes.
“Soooo,” I said. “You have a sex dungeon.”
Cipher’s hands stilled. Slowly, he set the pliers down on the workbench and turned his head to look at me.
“It’s the Playroom,” he corrected. “And unless you’re offering to be useful, I’m busy.”
He turned back to his work, dismissing me again.
“I see,” I said, the words tasting bitter. “So that’s how this works. You can interrupt me whenever you want, break into my apartment, hijack my evening, kidnap me,” I ticked the items off on my fingers, “but I’m not allowed to ask a few questions because you’re busy?”
Cipher didn’t look up. Whatever he was working on made a soft click as he adjusted something. “I never interrupted you when you were busy. If I hadn’t come along, you would have been sitting on your couch drinking wine and staring at the wall,” he said, his voice maddeningly even.
He finally looked up, his silver eyes flashing. “You weren’t doing anything, Annie. You were just waiting.”
It was cruel because it was true. My life outside of work was a series of empty pauses, filled only with the anxiety of waiting for the next crisis. But hearing him say it, hearing him dismiss my entire existence as a void he was gracious enough to fill, made my hands curl into fists.
“My time isn’t less valuable just because I wasn’t plotting to destroy civilization,” I snapped.
“Value is determined by output. You were producing nothing.”
I stood there filled with a mix of rage and humiliation. A nasty, insidious thought intruded. Was this it?
He’d been a force of nature, invading my personal space, touching me whenever he got within five feet, looking at me like he wanted to consume me whole. The sexual tension had been a physical weight in every room we shared.
But now that he’d actually had me? Now that he’d tied me down, used me, and gotten off?
He was soldering a wire.
The insecurity hit me hard, a cold flush that started in my chest and spread to my fingertips.
Maybe I hadn’t lived up to the fantasy. Maybe the reality of Annie Bishop, nervous, rule-bound, human Annie, was boring compared to the chase.
I was just a woman he’d broken, and now that the pieces were on the floor, he didn’t care to look at them.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat.
“Can I go see it?”
Cipher set the soldering iron down, the tool sizzling in its stand. “See what?”
“The room. The Playroom.”
I don’t know why I asked. Maybe I wanted to stand in the space where I’d lost my mind and try to find it again. Or maybe I just wanted to see if he’d let me back in, or if that door was closed now, too.
He turned fully then, leaning his hip against the workbench. His gaze swept over me like he was assessing the flush on my cheeks and the way I was hugging myself.
“You want to go stare at the bed where I fucked you?” he asked.
“No.” The denial was sharp and immediate. My face burned, the heat spreading down my neck to where his marks still tingled under my shirt. “I don’t want to pine over the sheets, Cipher. I just want to see the room.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then back to my eyes, heavy and unrepentant. Then he shrugged, turning back to his work.
“Fine. Go look at it. Smell the sex on the sheets if that’s what you need to do.” He picked up a pair of wire cutters. “But once you’re done, go back to your quarters and stay there until seven. I have work to do and I don’t have the patience to hold your hand while you process your feelings.”
“Fine,” I managed, hating the way my voice shook.
I turned on my heel and walked out, the doors sliding shut behind me. I kept my back straight, refusing to let him see me crumble, but inside, I felt hollow.
Twenty-Two didn’t say a word as we walked to the elevator. He just waited for the doors to slide open, and gestured for me to enter.
The descent was short, just one floor down. I stood, trying to pretend I wasn’t feeling a mix of residual anger from the lab and a sickening, swooping anticipation for what I was about to see.
When the doors opened, the corridor looked identical to the one above.
“Second door on the left,” Twenty-Two said, remaining planted in the elevator.
The first door I passed was unmarked, but I slowed as I walked by. It was his bedroom. The place where I’d woken up alone this morning. I stared at the door for a second, wondering if I’d ever find myself in there again before I forced my feet to keep moving.
The second door was waiting.
The moment I stepped within range, the door slid open and I stepped across the threshold. The lights snapped on, a deep, saturated crimson.
Last night, I’d been blindfolded for the preamble. I hadn’t seen the room until I was too worked up to look at anything other than Cipher. Seeing it now, sober and standing on my own two feet, was disorienting. It felt like walking inside a beating heart.
I wandered past a rack of leather restraints that hung against the wall like silent sentinels and moved toward a dark wooden cabinet.
I tugged the handle and it opened smoothly, revealing velvet-lined drawers. I pulled the top one open. It contained knives. Dozens of them. They were arranged by size and shape, gleaming under the red lights. Scalpels, hunting knives, heavy tactical blades.