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“Charlotte.” The hardness to Jacob’s bark silenced my rambling. “Wallace didn’t lock you in there.”
My brows lifted, and the little voice that I had ignored since waking up in the cell, telling me that Wallace may not have been responsible, began shouting, wanting to be acknowledged. “He…he didn’t?”
“No. He was acting on my orders to drug you, but it was me who carried you in there, and it was me who locked the door,” Jacob replied calmly as he hammered an invisible nail straight through my heart. “You tried to leave me, angel. Why?”
My mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out; my brain not comprehending Jacob’s revelation. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”
From the other side of the door, a heavy sigh filtered through. “You tried to run away. Tell me why you tried to leave me.”
Anger ignited under my skin at the image of me over his knee flashing in my mind’s eye. “Because you hurt me, Jacob! You humiliated me and hurt me!”
“You had to learn, angel. I’d asked you not to curse when we had dinner the other night, but you didn’t listen. I needed to teach you a lesson so you remember that I don’t appreciate cursing.” Dumbfounded, I could only gape at the door. The man was a maniac. “But you didn’t have to run in the middle of the night, Charlotte,” Jacob continued, disappointment lacing his voice. “We could have spoken about it in the morning and come to a compromise like we did about you wanting to go to college. Do you have any idea how devastated I was, watching you from our balcony as you climbed into the boat? And do you know how dangerous it would have been had you attempted to cross to the mainland without any knowledge of how to drive a boat? Angel, you could have seriously hurt yourself.”
His soothing tone did nothing to cool the searing rage thumping through me. “I don’t give a damn, Jacob! I would rather die trying to get away from you than stay on this island with a man who wants to control me!”
“You don’t mean that, you’re just upset.”
I slammed my fist against the door. “Stop telling me how I feel!” Silence greeted me as angry tears slid down my cheeks like a waterfall. Minutes, perhaps even an hour, passed before I could rein my emotions in to ask feebly, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, angel. I’m still here.”
I swallowed the painful lump clogging my throat. “Please, can you let me out? I won’t try to leave again.”
A gentle thump landed against the door, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Jacob had rested his forehead against it as he delivered his next words. “I can’t let you out, angel. I can’t risk you running again.”
I sniveled, my entire body slumping. “Please, Jacob.”
“It’s killing me, sweetheart. I don’t want to leave you locked in there,” he replied, his voice sounding like he was holding back his own tears. “But I can’t lose you, Charlotte. You mean so much to me; I’d rather keep you locked in here than not have you at all.”
My eyes squeezed closed as resignation settled in my bones, yet I couldn’t just give up. I stepped up against the door, resting my palms against the cool metal, and whispering, “I’ll do anything you want, Jacob. Just let me out of here.”
From behind the door, he shuffled, and I held my breath in anticipation. Several beats passed, hope blooming in my chest when the clicking of a lock sounded. But when the hatch by my feet fell open, hope deflated like a popped balloon.
I stepped back, a crease forming between my brows as a tray holding a bottle of water and a bowl of pea soup was pushed through before the hatch snapped shut again.
“I’m sorry, angel. Not today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, please eat your lunch; I don’t want you to go hungry.”
A broken sob fell from my lips as Jacob’s footsteps padded away. A tsunami of emotions crashed into me, and unable to stop myself, I grabbed the bowl of soup and threw it against the wall, the plastic bowl clattering to the floor and green soup smearing the walls.
Like earlier, my legs gave up on me, and I fell to the stone floor, the pain in my heart worse than the pain in my ass.
Chapter 15
Jacob didn’t return to my cell for the rest of the day. Well, I assumed it was daytime after he told me to eat my pea soup for lunch, which, after several hours, had dried into a dark green stain over the wall.
My emotions were on a very unpleasant rollercoaster ride. One minute, I would furiously pace the length of the cell—which I could cross in just ten steps—muttering about how much I hated Jacob, despised my parents, and detested this life I’d been born into. The next minute, I would lie on the cot bed, curled into a fetal position, sobbing until my body ached.
Other times, I sat with my back against the door, staring at my dirty feet, and asking myself questions I still had no answers to. Would I be here for the rest of my life? What if I never saw the sun again or felt the sea breeze against my skin? How was I going to shower or change my clothes? What if my feet got infected because I never cleaned them?
The questions were endless, just like my time in the cell.
When there were no more tears left to fall, and exhaustion riddled my body, I lay on the cot bed and stared up at the ceiling, berating myself for stupidly thinking I could escape Du Pont Island.
If I hadn’t attempted to flee, I’d probably have spent the day in the studio, carrying on with my charcoal drawing, or maybe even taking a walk along the beach, listening to the waves crashing against the shoreline.
Granted, with a sore ass from the lesson Jacob thought he had to teach me, but it would have beaten facing the grey walls for hours on end.
With nothing in my heart but sorrow, sleep claimed me, and I drifted off into a deep sleep, no doubt assisted by whatever drugs still lingered in my bloodstream from Wallace’s poisoned hot chocolate.
