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“Good morning, dear,” she chimes.
“Hi Mary,” I murmur, my eyes casting down to the carpet beside the bed.
“Oh, finally someone calls me Mary! Maybe you can convince everyone else to as well.”
She moves to the other side of the room, and I track her movements out of the corner of my eye. She’s left the door wide open again, and my body twitches to make a run for it. What’s the worst that can happen? They catch me and bring me back here?Or they kill you.She moves into the closet and returns with a short cotton dress as well as a matching set of bra and panties.
“You’re going to have breakfast in the main dining room this morning. When you’re ready, pop out the door and turn left, follow the hallway all the way along and the dining room is at the end.”
Before I can ask any other questions, she disappears out the door, leaving it open as she leaves. I stare after her for long moments. If I’m a prisoner, why are they letting me out of this room? A prisoner is confined to a small space, a cell of some sort, but they’ve just given me freedom to roam the house, and I don’t know what to make of that.
When I finally regain the use of my limbs, I cross to the bathroom and turn the water on in the shower as hot as it will go. I’ve always enjoyed a hot shower, but I’ve never needed one like I do right now. Every part of me feels filthy, even if I haven’t been anywhere the least bit unclean.
I take my time in the shower, only the slightest bit nervous about being naked in a foreign place when I hadn’t had a chance to find all the hidden cameras. But at this point, I have bigger problems than someone seeing my tits.
Once I’ve scrubbed every inch of my body until my skin stings, I shut the water off and wrap a soft, fluffy towel around myself. I go through my normal motions, using the skincare someone has taken the time to collect and place in the exact same order I have mine, right down to the position of the headband I sometimes use to hold my hair back while I do my makeup.
I dry my hair but don’t bother to style it before heading back into the bedroom and pulling the clothes Mary left for me on. The only room I didn’t visit last night was the closet, and something pulls me toward it, like an invisible magnet dragging me along until I’m standing in the doorway. At first, the materialistic part of me is in awe of the rows of designer clothing in front of me, but then reality hits me so hard that the wind is knocked right out of my lungs. If all these clothes are my size, which on first inspection they are, whoever took me intends to keep me for a while… a long while.
Backing out of the closet slowly before I can fall down a rabbit hole I’m not sure I’ll drag myself back out of, I turn and stare at the open door. Maybe I should just hang out in here and skip breakfast. It’s probably the safer option. But if someone has gone to all this trouble to get me here, are they really just going to let me sit in my room and sulk?
I take tentative steps toward the open door, my heart pounding in my chest when my head sticks out into the hallway, and I look side to side. There isn’t a sound in the house, and maybe that’s just as disconcerting as the room that's eerily similar to my bedroom at the estate. My bare feet carry me across the deep pile carpet, my toes sinking into the softness and grounding me. Fear bleeds into my veins, I’ve never been that great at the unexpected, but this feels much more ominous than anything else I’ve ever faced.
The closer I get to what I assume is the dining room, the more the pit of my stomach aches with anxiety. The unknown has never felt more terrifying than it does right now. Each step is slow and calculated, barely trusting my body to remain upright as I near what could be my own demise.
My steps falter just outside the door, my eyes darting down the hallways on either side of me. Should I make a run for it? I’m already out of my room. I’ve got to be closer to the exit than I was before. Maybe I can make it. Maybe I can escape.
But the rational part of my mind reminds me I have no shoes on. I don’t have my purse or my phone. Even if I make it out the door, which is unlikely, the chance of me actually getting home is so slim my heart aches for the life I’ve taken for granted all these years. All the times I ran away from the protection my family insisted I have played back in my mind. Every lecture about staying with my security team for my own safety is like a sitcom rerun. I did this to myself. I have no one else to blame but my own stupid self for putting myself in this position, and now I have to live with the consequences.
I step forward into the dining room. A long oak table stretches from one side of the room to the other, and a man stands at the window across from me. His back is muscular and wide, and familiar tattoos wind around his bare arms up to the black T-shirt obstructing my view of the rest. The man from the bar. The one in the shadows.
Slowly, so fucking slowly, he turns around and I get my first glance at the man who has torn me from my life, and my mouth drops open in surprise when my eyes lock with his familiar green ones.
“Welcome home, my little Snowflake.”
10
Elijah
Each emotion that passes through her eyes has the corners of my lips quirking up into a smile. It’s sick to get such pleasure from her pain, but I can’t help it when it comes to Snow. Recognition comes first, then confusion, and then the anger burns to life in the pools of blue. The look of thunder that crosses her face makes me choke on a groan. I have a feeling a fired-up Snow is a fun Snow.
“Elijah? What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Do my brothers know where I am? Didn’t you get the hint not to fuck with us when Wynter shot you?” She crosses the room, rounding the table until she comes toe to toe with me, her neck craned back to look up at me.
“Why don’t we have a seat?” I gesture to the two plates full of food, one at the head of the table and the other to the left. My hand twitches to touch her, the pull almost too great for me to fight, but I quickly shove my hand back into my pocket.
“If you think I’m eating anything on that plate, you’re fucking insane.” She stamps her foot like an angry toddler, and I allow a chuckle to slip from my throat.
“You’re going to do as you’re told if you want any answers.” I shrug, stepping around her and taking my seat at the head of the table. If she wants answers badly enough, she’s going to sit her pretty ass down and eat the damn breakfast Mrs. Chambers prepared for us. I won’t have her going without food, so if she decides not to eat, I will be forced to make her.
I train my eyes on my plate, picking up my knife and fork as I survey the bacon and eggs covering the plate. Mrs. Chambers makes a mean breakfast. It was one of the only good parts of my childhood. Every time my father or uncles hurt me, she was there to clean my wounds and make sure I was fed. Even when they locked me in a closet for a week after I refused to kill someone when I was ten, she always made sure I had food, even if she was risking her own life by giving it to me.
A few minutes pass, and I start to think she’s not going to sit down, but then she appears in my peripheral vision, and she drops into the chair beside me. “Okay, I’m sitting. Now answer my questions.”
“Uh, uh, uh. The proviso was not you sitting, it was you eating some breakfast. It’s not good for you to skip meals.”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t normally eat so much in the morning. Usually just a smoothie or some fruit.”
I nod. “I’ll make sure Mrs. Chambers knows for tomorrow morning. But today, you’re going to eat what’s on your plate if you want to get the answers to your questions.” She’ll likely get them regardless, seeing as I need to have her call Storm soon if I don’t want the whole Saint James family burning my house to the ground, but she doesn’t need to know that.
