Chapter 8 — The Perimeter #2
A sad, cynical smile touched Elena's thin lips.
“The Las Vegas police dine at Mr. Vance's restaurants, miss. The chief of police plays golf with him on Sundays. You're young. You don't understand how this city works. The concrete here is mixed with favors and silence.”
Elena turned back to the cart, signaling the end of the conversation.
“Eat the fruit. The melon is excellent today.”
Maya felt the floor disappear beneath her feet again. The hope that had flickered for a brief second when she saw the service elevator was snuffed out like a candle in a gale.
Elena wasn't an ally. She was part of the furniture. Part of the cage's mechanism. She was as much a prisoner as Maya, just with a longer leash and a better salary.
“You have no heart,” Maya whispered.
Elena didn't respond. She simply pushed the empty cart back to the service elevator, punched a code into the panel, and the doors closed, taking away Maya's only connection to the outside world.
Maya stood alone in the kitchen, staring at the perfect breakfast. The beauty of the sliced fruit seemed obscene. She grabbed a porcelain plate and hurled it at the floor.
Crash.
The sound of porcelain shattering was satisfying but brief. The shards scattered across the black stone floor like broken teeth.
“Clean it up yourself, Elena,” she said to the empty room.
But the anger didn't dispel the claustrophobia. If anything, it made it worse. The air conditioning seemed to be sucking all the oxygen from the room. The glass walls seemed to be closing in, inch by inch.
She needed air. Real air. Air that hadn't been filtered and processed by machines paid for by Ethan Vance.
Maya ran to the living room, searching for the terrace door. There was a huge, heavy sliding glass door. She flipped the lock. This one, miraculously, opened.
The heat hit her like a physical punch.
Las Vegas at midday was an oven. The temperature had to be pushing a hundred and eight degrees. The air was dry, instantly sucking the moisture from her skin.
Maya stepped out onto the pool deck. The space was impressive. An infinity pool stretched to the edge of the building, the turquoise water seeming to spill over the city below. There were white lounge chairs, closed umbrellas, and palm trees in giant pots struggling to survive the merciless sun.
The silence out here wasn't absolute. There was the distant hum of traffic, the sound of wind beating against the building's glass, the noise of a helicopter passing far off. But it was all remote, disconnected.
Maya walked to the edge. A chest-high tempered glass parapet kept anyone from falling.
She rested her hands on the hot glass. It burned her palms, but she didn't pull away. The pain was real. The pain kept her focused.
She looked down. Fifty floors. The cars were ants. The people were invisible bacteria. Vertigo made her head spin, a seductive gravitational pull whispering promises of an end.
If she jumped...
The thought emerged, sharp and cold amid the scorching heat.
If she could climb over the glass... it would be quick.
It would be a final declaration of autonomy.
You can't have me, Ethan. No one can have me.
She imagined the fall. The wind. The impact.
And then, nothing. The end of the debt. The end of the shame of being sold by the man she loved. The end of the fear.
She looked up at the sky. It was a hard blue, cloudless, indifferent.
A tear rolled down, evaporating almost instantly on her hot cheek.
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse.
If she jumped, Ethan would win. He would be the tragic victim, the billionaire who tried to help a troubled girl who couldn't handle the pressure. Kyle would go free. Her parents would cry over a closed casket.
And she would be just a stain on the sidewalk.
The anger that had been bubbling beneath the surface transformed into something harder. Hatred. Pure, distilled hatred.
She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her broken. She wasn't going to be the “damaged statue” he'd described.
Maya filled her lungs with the hot, dry desert air. She gripped the edge of the glass hard enough to turn her fingertips white.
And she screamed.
It wasn't a cry for help. It wasn't a “help me.” It was a primal, guttural scream, a sound of pure frustration and fury that tore through her throat. She screamed at the sun, at the city, at Kyle, at Ethan, at the universe that had let this happen.
“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The sound was lost in the wind. No one down below looked up. The city continued to pulse, indifferent to the woman screaming at the top of the ivory tower.
But Maya heard. And that was enough.
She gasped, her throat aching, her chest heaving. Sweat ran down her back, soaking the silk tank top. She felt dizzy but alive. Alive in a violent way.
She turned, ready to go back into the air conditioning, ready to plan, ready to survive the one hundred and eighty days on pure spite alone if she had to.
And then she saw him.
Ethan was standing in the open glass door.
He still wore the linen pants and white shirt, but now he had on soft leather loafers. He was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his broad chest, watching her with an unreadable expression behind dark sunglasses.
Maya's heart skipped a beat. How long had he been there? Had he seen her leaning over the parapet? Had he seen her contemplating the abyss?
He uncrossed his arms and slowly removed his sunglasses, revealing those dark eyes that seemed to see everything.
“Finished?” he asked. His voice wasn't angry. It wasn't worried. It was calm, deathly calm.
Maya wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, refusing to appear intimidated, though her legs were trembling.
“Finished with what?” she challenged, her voice hoarse from screaming.
“Testing the bars,” Ethan said, walking into the sun, ignoring the heat as if he were immune to the elements. “The elevator. The fire exit. Elena. The parapet.”
He knew everything. Of course he did.
He stopped two steps away from her. The heat from his body competed with the sun.
“I needed to know,” Maya said, holding his gaze. “I needed to see the size of my cell.”
“And what's the verdict?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.
“It's small,” she said. “And lonely.”
Ethan looked at the horizon, at the vast, empty desert beyond the city.
“Loneliness is the price of safety, Maya. The world out there…” he pointed to the dizzying drop, “…is chaos. Up here, you have order.”
“I have tyranny,” she corrected.
He turned his gaze back to her. A slight smile, almost imperceptible, touched the corner of his mouth.
“Call it what you want. But you're still alive. You didn't jump.”
Maya felt a chill. He knew. He had seen the moment of hesitation.
“I wasn't going to jump,” she lied, lifting her chin. “I'm not going to make things easy for you.”
Ethan took a step forward, invading her personal space, forcing her to look up. He raised his hand and, with his thumb, wiped away a drop of sweat running down her temple. The touch was cold against her feverish skin.
“Good,” he said. “Because I hate waste. And losing you on the first day would be a terrible waste.”
He stepped away, returning to the shade of the room.
“Come inside. It's too hot for such fragile things to be in the sun. Lunch will be served in thirty minutes. And Maya?”
He stopped at the door, looking at her over his shoulder.
“Next time you scream… make sure it's my name you're screaming. I'm the only one who can hear you.”
He went inside, leaving her alone in the suffocating heat, with the absolute certainty that there was no way out, except through him.