Locked in Wonderland

Chapter Forty-one

Two weeks after Wonderland

The lies were difficult at first. They became easier each time I repeated them. I met a man. Yes, I should know better at my age than to get so wrapped up in someone. Anyone would think I was a teenager, right? I know it’s quite the coincidence that I lost my phone at the same time.

I’d even bought a new phone to make that part convincing, an expense I could have done without, given Nico had been right about them cleaning out my bank accounts. Thankfully, I had one account with a different bank that they hadn’t been able to touch.

Yes, it was irresponsible not to let work know where I was. But I think that’s really a symptom of me having been unhappy there for quite some time. Who wants to spend their life being the least welcome person in every restaurant they walk into?

That I’d made no real effort to get my job back gave the lie just enough truth to be convincing.

What was he like?

The first time someone had asked, I’d pictured Warren. Then I’d promptly described Nico.

I’d told myself it was simply easier, that things had become so muddled between Warren and Victor that I couldn’t always tell where one persona ended and the other began.

It was a pathetic excuse when most of the differences between them came down to hairstyle, clothes, and mannerisms. None of that changed the color of his eyes or his build.

I stuck to Warren’s name, though, preferring that over having to say Nico, even if doing so left a faint burn of mortification.

The cut on my face and the black eye had proved harder to explain away. Understandably, people put two and two together and came up with domestic abuse.

Instead, I claimed I’d gotten into a fight. What was one more wildly out-of-character lie on top of everything else? No one challenged me on it or outright called me a liar.

I’d moved in with my friend Hannah only a few days after my return, putting my furniture into storage. Sleeping alone in a house where Kellan Hart might somehow find me had proved impossible. Even the tiniest creak had turned into evidence of him coming for me.

Being unemployed provided the perfect excuse. Hannah didn’t mind. Having recently split up with her boyfriend, she welcomed both the company and the extra money toward groceries.

The hardest lie of all was explaining why my all-consuming relationship, the one that I’d apparently poured my entire being into, to the exclusion of my friends and family, had come to such an abrupt end.

“He left,” I kept saying. “He decided it was best for both of us.” The problem was that it sat too close to the truth. Every time I said it, it cut like a razor blade.

The nights weren’t much easier. I’d expected nightmares about Wonderland, and the first few nights certainly obliged on that score.

But then they gave way to dreams about Nico.

It was bad enough that he consumed most of my waking thoughts, without taking center stage when I closed my eyes.

Some were intensely sexual, leaving me hard and aching when I woke.

Others explored the rare moments of tenderness he’d shown me aboard the boat.

The worst ones simply left me sad or angry.

I assumed they were about him walking away. I couldn’t always remember.

The sound of Hannah letting herself in after her shift at the hospital broke me from my thoughts. She kicked off her shoes on the way in and flopped onto the sofa, forcing me to snatch my feet out of the way before she landed on them. I could hardly complain. It was her sofa.

“Did you get any job hunting done?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied. “I circled a few things in the newspaper.”

Thankfully, she didn’t ask what. Instead, she leaned forward to inspect the cover of the book resting on my lap. “Wow. Since when have you been into psychology?”

“It’s not really psychology. It’s―”

“Stockholm Syndrome,” she read aloud. “It’s in the title. I can read, you know.”

“I know.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“It’s just... an interesting subject.”

The way I’d said it didn’t even convince me.

She leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “And what made you read it?”

I looked down at the cover. “Something someone said.”

Six weeks after Wonderland

A few things had changed over the past month. I’d stopped constantly looking over my shoulder, deciding that if anyone intended to make a move on me, they’d have done it by now.

I’d found a job as a warehouse picker. It wasn’t exactly my dream career, but it paid the bills while I figured out what I actually wanted to do with my life. Whether that meant going back to environmental health or trying something completely different, I still hadn’t decided.

The physical work had its benefits. By the end of each shift, I was exhausted enough to sleep, and canceling my gym membership had saved some money.

Hannah had asked if I wanted to move in permanently, and I’d said yes.

We got on well enough, and with me mostly working nights, we rarely got under each other’s feet. I’d also reached a conclusion. I’d read books, watched documentaries, and spent hours researching Stockholm syndrome, and none of it fit what had happened between Nico and me.

Stockholm syndrome was a psychological response in which a victim developed an emotional attachment to the person abusing or holding them captive. That had never been us. Our relationship might have begun in a morally gray place, but Nico had never been my captor.

He’d asked me to stay in his apartment instead of locking me inside it. When he could have left the shock collar around my neck and controlled every movement I made, he hadn’t. He’d taken it off instead.

Yes, there had been flashes of temper. Yes, he’d frustrated the hell out of me. But I’d never genuinely believed he was going to hurt me.

A better comparison would have been if I’d never escaped from Kellan Hart and somehow come to believe I had feelings for him. The very thought made my skin crawl.

I only wished I could tell Nico he’d been wrong.

Four months after Wonderland

“How did the date go?” Hannah called the moment she heard the front door open.

I shrugged off my jacket, hung it on the coat rack, and wandered into the living room before collapsing onto the sofa with a weary sigh. “Not good.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “What was wrong with this one?”

He wasn’t Nico. Given I’d never once spoken that name aloud around Hannah—or anyone else—it wasn’t an answer I could give. “I don’t know,” I said instead. “No spark, I guess.”

The television was on quietly in the background. I stared at the screen without taking in a thing, hoping she’d lose interest.

She didn’t.

“Maybe you should call him,” she said eventually.

“Call who?”

“Your ex.” Her lips curled into a knowing smile. “The man you can’t seem to get over.”

If only I could call him. I’d thought that more times than I cared to admit, occasionally comforting myself with the knowledge that even if I’d thought to ask for his number, he’d almost certainly have gotten rid of any phone Wonderland could use to reach him.

“I’m over him,” I lied, keeping my eyes on the television.

“Sure you are, sweetie.” She reached for the remote. “Just keep telling yourself that.”

Six months after Wonderland

“Jesus Christ!”

Hannah’s exclamation had me sitting up in bed and glaring at the closed door that separated us. “Some of us worked the night shift,” I shouted.

“Sorry. It’s just this shit on the news is crazy.”

I lay back down, closing my eyes and willing myself back to sleep.

“You just don’t think this sort of thing goes on in this day and age,” she continued.

“What sort of thing?” I shouted back sleepily, not really caring but feeling obliged to ask. Hannah had always tended toward the dramatic.

“Posing as a party place when really there’s all sorts of depravity lurking beneath the surface.”

My eyes snapped open. “What party place?” Say Ibiza. Say Magaluf. Say anywhere except the one place I’d finally stopped thinking about.

“Wonderland. You worked near there, right? Did you ever see any strange stuff?”

I swung my legs out of bed, grabbing a robe on the way out of the room. Hannah stood in the middle of the living room, eyes glued to the TV. She stepped aside to give me room when I appeared next to her, still belting my robe.

“Turn it up,” I demanded.

She shot me a funny look, but did as I asked. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I was. Then you woke me up.”

When that still wasn’t loud enough, I snatched the remote from her and cranked the volume even higher. The problem was that the two people talking in the studio told me absolutely nothing.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Apparently all sorts of shit.”

“Like what?”

“Kidnap. Torture. They found a guy there who’d been missing for ten years. His family thought he was dead. Can you believe that?”

I could believe it. Without Nico, that could easily have been me.

“He said he couldn’t leave,” Hannah continued, “that there was no way off the island. Did you know a dome surrounds the entire island?

“I knew that,” I said absently.

“Yeah. How?”

“I just… I don’t know. Someone must have told me.”

“Who?”

I ignored her as the report cut to footage filmed earlier that day.

It featured a far more rumpled version of Queenie and Henry than the one I’d known being led away in handcuffs.

I suspected Queenie would have hated the eyes of the world seeing her looking so disheveled far more than she hated being arrested.

Henry didn’t look much better. His shirt was buttoned wrong, one tail hanging out of his trousers as though he’d thrown it on in a rush.

“They’re the people behind it all,” Hannah said in a disgusted tone. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? If you met them at a party, you’d just think they were a nice couple.”

Something juddered in my chest as the pictures changed again to a shirtless Kellan Hart being led out in handcuffs.

“That’s the son,” Hannah explained. “Apparently he got wind of his parents being arrested and went into hiding. You’ll never believe what they found when they tracked him down.”

“A man on a leash being kept as a dog.”

Hannah’s mouth dropped open. “Yes! How do you know that?”

I shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

“No, seriously. Are you psychic?”

“He just looks the type.”

“It’s being shut down,” Hannah said.

“Huh?”

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Kellan, savoring every second of the furious expression on his face as his world collapsed around him. I took particular pleasure in knowing he had gone into hiding, glad he spent his last hours before arrest like the sniveling coward he truly was.

“Wonderland is being shut down,” Hannah repeated. “I doubt it’ll ever reopen.”

“Good.” To my frustration, the presenters moved on to another story. “What actually happened?” I asked. “Did someone escape and blow the entire thing wide open?”

Hannah gave me a strange look. “They said an insider came forward. Someone who knew so much that they couldn’t be ignored. For obvious reasons, they wouldn’t reveal his or her name. I guess they used to work there or something.”

“Or something,” I repeated, my lips curling into a smile. “That clever bastard.”

“Who?”

I spun on my heel and headed for the bedroom, my mind racing.

Normally, I did everything I could not to think about Nico.

This time I gave myself permission to think about nothing else.

I didn’t realize Hannah had followed me until she hissed out a curse as I threw off my robe and stepped into clean underwear.

“I could really have done without seeing that,” she said.

“Then don’t follow me into the bedroom when I’m getting dressed.”

“I thought you were going back to bed.”

I pulled on a pair of jeans. “No. I have things to do.”

“Who were you talking about when you called someone a clever bastard?”

“Nico.” I grabbed a T-shirt, tugging it over my head.

“Who the fuck is Nico?”

“The guy.”

“What guy?”

“The guy.”

“You said his name was Warren.”

I ran a brush through my hair. Not perfect, but it would do.

“I lied. I lied about a lot of things. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to.” I risked a glance at Hannah, only to find her gawping at me.

“Close your mouth. I saw a moth in here earlier. You’re going to end up eating it if you’re not careful. ”

“I’m wondering who took the real Lysander and replaced him with a clone.”

I turned to face her. “The real Lysander went through some shit.” I wrestled with my promise to Nico for a few seconds before deciding he’d clearly lied to me as well—about one very important thing. Or maybe it hadn’t been a lie at the time.

“I was in Wonderland,” I said. Hannah’s eyes widened. “I saw a lot of that stuff up close. Too close. Nico made me promise to keep my mouth shut. For my safety. But I’m assuming that with the Harts in custody, the threat level has gone down considerably.”

“They might release them.”

I shook my head. “No. Nico’s too thorough for that. He wouldn’t have gone against them if he didn’t know he could nail them.”

I sat on the end of my bed to pull on socks and shoes.

“And you’re getting dressed to do what?” Hannah asked.

“Think carefully about what you want, Lysander. If you decide that’s me… come and find me.”

I’d spent months trying to push those words out of my head. They’d sounded impossible when he said them.

Now they sounded like an invitation.

One I’d been too stupid to accept.

What if he’d gotten bored waiting?

“I need to find Nico,” I said. “I need to tell him that what happened between us had absolutely nothing to do with Stockholm syndrome.”

“What?”

“He said that.”

“Okay…”

“I know this is confusing,” I said.

“Just a bit.”

Hannah followed me back into the living room. The news had finished, and some hospital drama was on instead. I stood in the middle of the room, my heart pounding.

“So you’re going to call him?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t have his number.”

“But you know where he is?”

“No. I haven’t got a clue.”

Silence settled between us. Eventually, Hannah nodded. “You need a private detective.” It made sense. “It won’t be cheap.”

I slid the watch off my wrist. Nico’s watch. “I’ll sell this. And if that’s not enough, I’ll sell my car.”

“And if that’s still not enough?”

“I’ll rob a bank.”

Hannah snorted. “Christ. You really love him. I hope he feels the same.”

So did I. And that was assuming I could even find him.