Page 39 of Vega

I moved aside as it shattered against the wall.

Then she grabbed the books next.

“Sonnet,” I warned as she launched one.

It struck my chest. Another missed my head.

She swept the snacks, toiletries, and water bottles from the dresser, sending everything across the floor. Then she jumped out of the bed, grabbed the wooden chair near the window and shoved it toward me.

I caught it before it hit my legs. “Are you finished?”

“Fuck you!”

She reached for the framed picture on the wall.

“Breaking everything in here will only leave you trapped in a useless room,” I argued.

She threw the picture anyway.

Glass broke across the floor.

I looked at the damage, then back at her. “Now you’re going to listen.”

“I’m not listening to shit!”

“You’ll remain inside this room unless I tell you otherwise. You’ll eat. You’ll stop trying to fight me, and you won’t approach any exterior door in this house.”

She stood on the opposite side of the bed, breathing hard. “What happens if I refuse?”

I stepped around the broken chair, and she held her ground.

That surprised me.

I stopped close enough for her to understand the difference in our size. She had plenty of fight in her, but I could overpower her easily.

“You’ll discover that I’m far more impatient and violent than you are.”

The threat sounded believable because it usually was. I had ended men for less than what she had already done to me. But I knew I would never hurt her, and already knowing that shocked me.

Sonnet stared at me for several seconds. Her shoulders gradually lowered, but her eyes remained alert. “When are you going to kill me?”

The way she was calm when she asked me that stole my attention. “Why do you think I’m going to kill you?”

She said nothing.

Instead, her gaze moved toward the covered window.

I took another step. “If you think you’re about to die, why aren’t you crying?”

Her attention returned to me. “Because death is nothing compared to the shit I’ve already been through.”

She said it without drama. No trembling lips. No attempt to make me feel sorry for her. She sounded certain, as though she had compared the options and decided dying didn’t deserve the energy fear required.

The answer disturbed me. It also made me want to know every person responsible for making her feel like that. I stared at her face, trying to decide what kind of life could make a twenty-three-year-old woman speak about death like it was a vacation.

Then my attention dropped to the thin blouse stretched across her breasts and the curve of her body beneath her work pants.

My dick hardened.