Page 92 of Captive Ruin

“Did you… kill him because of me?” I know he did. How can I live with that? I didn’t want him dead, I wanted him gone.

“No.”

That’s a lie. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I killed him because he disobeyed me,” Van Wyk replies, and his voice has gone cold again.

Yeah, like that’s a reasonable excuse.

“I’ve disobeyed you,” I murmur. “Am I next?”

He leans back, hand dropping away, looking down at me.

“No, Little Stray, of course not. I’d never harm you.”

And then he smiles.

It’s soul-chilling, realizing that this is his element. In the darkness, surrounded by corpses, a bleeding and traumatized woman on her knees before him. Now is when he smiles.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Twenty-Two

Amelia

“Your cheek’s not broken,” Van Wyk tells me. “I’ll get you an ice pack.”

He pushes himself up, heading for my kitchen.

“Second drawer of the freezer,” I say automatically, the words coming out hollow and numb.

“I know.”

Of course he knows. He seems to know everything.

My gaze falls on the dead bodies lying just a few feet away, and a wealth of tumultuous emotion rises up within me. Horror. Fear. Anxiety over what he’s done, and what it might mean, and most perversely… gratitude. I don’t know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t come, but I can guess that it wouldn’t have ended well for me or Lucy.

“Shouldn’t we… call the police?” I ask quietly, looking around at the destruction, the death.

“No need,” he says from the kitchen.

No need? “You killed two men, Van Wyk. We need to tell the police. I can explain how they broke in, and—”

“Amelia.” He cuts across me as he walks back in with an ice pack wrapped in a kitchen cloth. “These men are not good men. We don’t need to worry about them being missed.” He pauses beside me, looking around as if noticing for the first time where I’m sitting. How close to the bodies I am. “Come on,” he says, bending to offer me an arm. “Let’s do this in the bedroom.”

I let him pull me to my feet, leaning on him as my legs tremble with adrenaline.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asks.

“No. Just my cheek.” And my pride. My privacy. I feel… violated. Not just me, but my apartment, my gallery. “The gallery was burned down tonight,” I tell him, my throat closing up at the memory. Tears prickle my eyes. I’ve lost everything, in one night. I still haven’t had a moment to process it. “I think it may have been these men.”

Van Wyk clenches his jaw. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been here.”

“It’s not your fault. It is, once again, Serranto’s.” Even dead, he’s still making my life hell.

“Yet I feel guilty. It’s on me for not being… clearer.”

I’m not sure what he means by that, but my reply dies on my lips as he helps me through into the bedroom. It’s been trashed. The bed’s a mess, the dresser smashed, my clothes spread everywhere.