Chapter Thirty
With a dry throat and pounding head, Grace forced herself still and kept her eyes closed. Don’t panic. The walls hummed around her as if she were sitting in the center of a power plant, but she couldn’t hear her abductors or anyone moving or talking around her.
Carefully, she tested her arms and legs. They were bound. Not tightly, but enough that she couldn’t fight or run away. She squinted her eyes, carefully opening them—and met the gaze of an older man.
Grace jerked back but couldn’t escape.
“Easy,” he said without getting up from his chair. “Easy. Calm down.”
She searched her surroundings. Tied up and placed on a cot on her side, Grace twisted around and saw nowhere to go.
The small room was almost like a storage closet, except hundreds of wires ran along the walls.
Grace turned toward the man again. Older with graying hair, he was half the size of the man and woman who had taken her.
“Good,” he said. “Stay calm. I won’t hurt you.”
“What do you want?” She memorized his hairstyle and the scar on his right cheek. He wore a crisp white button-down shirt, loosened at the collar, and loafers without socks like he would rather be on a sailboat than wherever they were.
“You’re here for your own protection.”
She shook her head. “I want to go home.”
“Your husband is a very dangerous man.”
“We’re not married anymore. I don’t know anything about him. I promise. I haven’t seen him in years. I don’t know—”
“Many of our associates are dangerous men,” her captor continued. “You’re safer with me.”
Their associates? Her stomach turned. He worked with Dominic? Her mind raced to understand what was happening. “You’re not going to hurt me?”
“No. I’ll give you back to your husband, and everything will be fine.”
Her heart seized. “I don’t want to.”
He looked at her curiously but lifted his shoulders. “This is where we stay until I hear otherwise.”
He returned to his phone and ignored her until he brought her food. He untied her hands and feet and gestured behind her. “If you need the facilities, otherwise, good night.”
Her meal consisted of several granola bars and bottled water. Hours ticked by, and eventually, unable to fight it any longer, Grace fell asleep on the cot.
She woke up to footsteps on the cement floor.
“Darling.”
Wide awake but frozen in place, Grace prayed this was still somehow her nightmare.
“I know you’re awake, Grace.”
She opened her eyes, and there he was. Still handsome as ever with slicked-back dark hair and impeccable clothes. Clean-shaven and sporting a familiar cologne that made bile rise into the back of her throat, he smiled at her. “Nice to see you again.”
“What do you want?” This was so much more than prohibiting her from speaking to the investigators and attorneys.
Maybe he was after revenge. She’d taken so much of his money in the divorce.
Most of it ended up with charities, but he didn’t need it or care what she’d been given in the divorce. He would relish stripping it away.
“You look good for a dead woman.” His nose wrinkled. “Even in these circumstances. In those clothes.”
She gathered her knees to her chest. No one knew where she was. He could do anything to her, and no one would stop him.
“Stand up,” he ordered.
Shaking her head, she couldn’t swallow. Her throat dried like the moisture had evaporated from the room. Her eyes itched even as tears burned, but she didn’t want to give him the pleasure of crying.
Dominic grabbed her hair and yanked her up until she was on her feet.
She stumbled but kept her footing. “What do you want?”
“In truth, I didn’t want this for you, but here we are.”
“I want to go home—”
His backhand slapped with an unexpected crack. The pain flared. She should have expected it. Her tongue probed her stinging cheek. Her tears fell. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
“I’ll decide where home is.” His anger vibrated.
“It’s your fault you’re here. Do you know that?
I reminded you who you belong to, told you to keep your mouth shut.
” His irate frown pulled down. “I honestly thought you would, but you could never follow directions the first time. They were right to take you.”
He paced the small space.
“I’ve known where you were every single day.
” He steepled his fingers and let his greasy grin surface.
“You were more tenacious than I expected. I have to give you that. Entertaining, especially when I was in prison. I should thank you for the diversions, but little did you know how much you helped me.”
She watched him stalk around her and didn’t know what he wanted. Should she defend herself? Explain?
“The mishmash of LLCs and VPNs you used to hide from me is literally the only reason you’re still alive.” He cocked his head, studying her. “Honestly, you’re far smarter than I gave you credit for.”
It sounded like he might need her in some way. She could use that to her advantage if only she could ignore her fear. “I’m sorry.”
She could tell he hadn’t expected that. His lips pressed together, and Dominic let the silence hang as though there were more she should say.
“I’ve had time to think while everything played out around me,” she said.
“About?”
“Death do us part,” she repeated the words he’d mailed to her.
His cold demeanor remained unaffected.
“You would never hurt me,” she lied, but knew he had always believed that to be true.
Dominic never thought that sharp words, psychological coercion, or physical pain hurt when it came from him.
He was missing a part of his brain that made sense of reality.
“Everything I’ve been through, running from what I didn’t know, wouldn’t have happened if I were with you. ”
His disgust snarled. “You weren’t alone, though. Were you?”
Her heart stuttered.
“I had a conversation with Callum Hale.” Disdain dripped as he spat the words.
Grace might be sick. “That’s my brother’s doing. I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to control them.”
“He’s always wanted you. That was clear from the first day I met him.”
Could everyone see what she and Callum hadn’t been able to? Why hadn’t she seen it? But no, Grace had fallen for Dominic during the onslaught of lavish attention. “I… I, uh, don’t know.”
“You didn’t then. You don’t now. You’re an idiot, Grace.”
Oh, thank God. He didn’t see the way she loved Callum. “Why did you talk to him?”
“He wants to find you. Everybody wants to find you.” He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “I’ll deal with them later. This is how everything will go.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“You come home. I’ll let you pick the place you want to stay. The penthouse in Las Vegas is easier. But New York works for me as well. Not DC. Not Miami.”
“Why?”
“You’ll continue to communicate with the family and friends who know about your situation.
Your life will continue exactly how it was, except you will stay in that one place.
No resurrecting your life. You will continue to work on your little hobby job.
” He paused. “I actually like some of your work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Dominic—”
“Las Vegas or New York? Which will it be?”
“I, uh…”
“Grace, choose. I don’t have to give you the option, darling, but I’m trying to be magnanimous here.”
“I would be… a prisoner?”
“You would be safe. You will have everything at your disposal. You can stay in contact with your family. Though if you say a word or stray from our agreement, I’ll kill you and bury you in the grave people already think you’re in.”
“New York.”
“Fine.” He turned for the door. “Time to go.”
Grace followed Dominic through a maze of humming hallways. His expensive shoes echoed on the polished floor. The building seemed alive around them. She hadn’t seen another person as they moved through the surreal labyrinth of matching walls and doors devoid of identifying characteristics.
“What is this place?” Its liminal space made her dizzy.
“A data center.”
A windowless behemoth of the internet and artificial intelligence.
She’d driven by the looming plain buildings that had popped up over northern Virginia.
Their nondescript security presence was uniform, with fences and guards and tiny parking lots.
From what she knew, few people actually worked inside the buildings that covered the size of several football fields. At least now she understood the hum.
And she knew they wouldn’t run into a soul.
How was she going to escape?
Maybe she could peel down the hall, run into a room with massive servers—or whatever was in data centers—and tear out wires and press buttons on a wild ride.
If she happened to shut down the internet for half of the United States or bring global banking to a halt, someone would know where to find her.
That was better than somehow stealing Dominic’s phone to call 911.
She wasn’t sure that a cell phone signal would transmit beyond the strumming sound of technology churning around her.
But for all she knew, any door she pulled open would lead to a broom closet, and Dominic would be pissed. For now, he only seemed aggravated that someone else had taken her. Not that she’d pretended to be dead to hide from him.
Her stomach turned at the thought of anything related to being his wife. “When we get,” she caught herself from saying New York, “home, I need to go shopping.”
“Obviously. I don’t understand what you’re wearing. Pick what you need, like always.”
Like always, as if they hadn’t been apart for years.
Even after his bank accounts were frozen, his residences were staffed, and his lifestyle remained. As a crypto broker, he had hidden money where laws hadn’t caught up yet. Untraceable. There was no telling how wealthy he really was.
The people who worked for him were discreet and wouldn’t breathe a word if Dominic’s dead wife was suddenly in need of a personal shopper.
He’d supply her with a fitness trainer, chef, stylist, and makeup artist by the end of the day now that he knew she’d chosen New York City.
None of them would care that she was supposed to be dead and never left his property.
If he got her there, she would never leave. She couldn’t do this again.
Grace turned and sprinted.
“Grace.”
She kept running. The corridors blurred into a disorienting emptiness.
“Grace!”
She cut down a hallway. Then another. A red light called to her like a homing beacon.
Dominic’s bellowing voice echoed around her, growing quieter, but she didn’t think for a second that she’d lost him.
If he had access to this building, he might know its blank walls and featureless paths.
Maybe he could pull up video footage and track her like a mouse through a maze, smiling and laughing at her ineptitude.
Her legs burned. Lightheaded, she needed to catch her breath. Don’t stop. She drew closer to the red light. An exit sign, maybe. She ached to slow down but couldn’t. She refused. Even as the sameness of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor twisted each stride into a dizzying trial.
Grace reached the end of the hallway. The exit sign directed her down another endless hall. She spotted another red sign and followed it until she reached a stairwell.
Stumbling down the stairs, she twisted around to the next flight, struggling to keep moving until the stencil-painted words first floor promised salvation.
The first floor was the same as the other. A liminal labyrinth, but with the slight difference of exits. She assumed the front entrance, at the top of the signage, was closest and took off.
Sweat poured down her back. Her aching arms pumped. The dozens of cat scratch scabs had their own pulses. Her exhausted body couldn’t handle any more of this—then she saw Dominic dead ahead, running from the opposite direction.
She’d never seen that man run after anything in his life.
The front entrance was between them, splitting the distance evenly.
“Grace, goddamn you, stop.”
Gritting her teeth, she called upon energy she didn’t have and poured herself into escape. The world around them slowed as if she were running on the bottom of the ocean floor, pushing through a wall of water she couldn’t see.
Grace reached the exit corridor first. His footsteps pounded behind, closing the distance, but she reached the front glass door—slamming into the glass at top speed and bouncing back like she’d run into a tree.
Dazed, unable to breathe, she lay on her back and stared at the featureless ceiling.
Dominic leaned over her face. “You stupid cunt.”