Chapter 3 #2
He added more wood to the fire. I watched his hands while he worked—large, scarred, marked by old breaks or fights he’d survived.
Pale lines across knuckles and fingers told the story of violence long before tonight.
A tremor slipped through those hands when he reached for another log.
Quick, subtle, nearly invisible. Someone still stabilizing from adrenaline.
Someone not as empty as he wanted to be.
Our gazes met across the firelight. His didn’t show anything. Mine probably showed too much. I looked away first. I pulled against the ropes again, testing give, hunting for weak points. Pain flared under the bindings. I bit down on the sound rising in my throat.
He saw anyway.
His attention dropped to my wrists, lingered on raw skin, then shifted to the flames. His jaw flexed again, tension visible in the shape of his shoulders.
“You’ll tear your skin,” he said. The warning came low, without heat, without interest—practical, not sympathetic. “Nothing to gain by fighting the rope.”
“Then untie me.” My voice came steadier than I expected. “If you care about my skin.”
He didn’t respond. He stared into the fire until whatever slipped through him earlier disappeared. The tremor in his hands stopped, controlled by force. When he turned away again, he carried a box from the far stack and opened it on the table.
Freeze-dried meals. Camping supplies. Enough food to last weeks. Maybe longer.
My stomach tightened. He hadn’t dragged me here to kill me immediately. He had a plan—one I didn’t understand yet, one that didn’t end quickly. Waiting for orders? Waiting for permission? Waiting for something worse?
I shifted again to ease pressure on my wrists. The movement pulled his attention despite how hard he fought it. His focus moved down my face, over my chest, to my tied hands, then rose back up.
“Cold?” The question sounded like a slip, like he’d spoken without thinking. A flash of annoyance crossed his expression right after, as if he regretted revealing anything.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted blankets, warmth, anything that made me feel less like prey held in stasis. But answering yes meant admitting need, and need meant weakness he could use.
“No.”
We both knew I lied. He didn’t challenge me. His hands tightened around the box before he set it down. A muscle jumped along his jaw again. He turned away.
The storm hammered the cabin from every side, wind slicing across the walls hard enough to rattle fixtures.
Snow built against the shutters, burying us deeper by the hour.
Rescue existed in theory only. No one knew I’d left the gallery late.
No one knew I came home at all. A missing-person report—if someone filed one—would start too late to save me from this room.
The fire popped behind me. Gabriel’s attention snapped toward the sound, then back to me. On some level, he tracked everything I did. On another level, I tracked everything he did. A standoff disguised inside silence.
He returned to the door and checked it again.
Bolt set. Hinges secure. The lock would hold against a person, a snowdrift, or both.
I cataloged that information with everything else—three windows, boarded from the inside; no phone; no radio; no easy weapon within reach; fire poker too far; kitchen knives further; not enough slack in the rope to even lean forward.
The space became a cage the moment I looked at it through tactical eyes.
He stepped away from the door and scanned the room again. When his gaze landed on me, something in him paused. He looked at me like he hadn’t expected me to still be breathing, like my continued presence complicated a job that shouldn’t have complications.
Then he moved to the window. He stood there, facing the storm, shoulders broad enough to block most of the gray light that seeped through the shutter cracks. I didn’t know whether he watched the snow or watched my reflection in the glass.
I slumped as far as the chair allowed. Exhaustion settled across my limbs, heavy and unforgiving. My head throbbed with rhythm. My wrists burned. Fear clawed at my ribs. Anger burned beneath it—hotter, sharper, cleaner. And under that, a quieter thing I hated as much as the ropes.
Curiosity.
Gabriel Russo took everything from me. He killed my father, my mother, my brother. He dragged me away from the only life I had left. Yet here I sat in front of a fire he built, inside a shelter he checked, breathing air he ensured stayed warm enough to keep me alive.
I needed to know why. Understanding him—even a piece of him—might be the difference between living and dying.
So I watched him, memorized him, studied the cracks under the armor. Maxwell Grant didn’t raise meek children. He raised survivors—whether he meant to or not. And survival demanded answers.
Gabriel turned from the window. His gaze locked on mine without hesitation. I didn’t look away. Neither did he.
Outside, the storm raged. Inside, we stared at each other, two people bound together by a night that already couldn’t be undone.
I didn’t know how the next hour would go. I didn’t know if I’d live long enough to see morning.
But I remained alive.
And as long as I stayed alive, the game wasn’t over.