One she’d given to a giddy and distracted Brooke, hugging her so hard the petite thing squealed. And then left with a grin, waving as the ladies cheered and some of the men cried.
“She looks too clean and too healthy.” It had to be said. And it seemed a fair question for the maker of rules and giver of pajamas. “What happens when she tells someone we’re here?”
It wasn’t unkind, but it was unsettling. “No one ever tells. Not when they see what the world is really like out there.”
“As if you’d know.” The captain had been running his kingdom. She’d been the one on the outside.
“Then tell me about it tonight.”
Oh, she’d tell him, tell him all the ugly. “You won’t like anything I have to say.”
But he did listen to her say it. How she had tried for the first two years to find a town with a doctor who needed an assistant. How the men just acted like beasts. The times she’d been caught, the ways she’d escaped. The lives she’d taken with surgical precision, because everyone underestimated a pretty, young redhead.
“And John, tell me about him.”
“Found him lost on the side of the road. Thirsty. It’s easier to avoid the dogs in a larger party, so I gave him some water. He thought we should fuck in all the downtime. One knee to the crotch ended that. And then we discussed the map, always trying to get us closer to City. I would never have come this w
ay if I’d known you were here.” And that map had been fucking expensive. Whatever the captain did to keep knowledge of his creepy oasis out of the mouths of City, it worked.
“I’ll answer that unspoken question.” The man looking too goddamn proud of himself. “We watch the roads. Kill those who don’t pass muster. Stage the bodies along the way. We knew you were coming about twenty miles up. I watched you myself, carrying that ridiculous backpack of textbooks. Had the lights turned on for you and everything.”
A welcome home? To know it had all been staged was so unsettling. “And because there was a woman in that party of two, you didn’t just approach or attack.”
“Transition is easier if you come to us.”
“Was John in on it all along?”
“No. He tried to sell you fair and square.” The man looked down at his nails. Nails far cleaner than they had been that first night. “And fair and square, I cut out his tongue. I don’t mind the occasional over-exaggeration, but repetitive lying is against ship’s rules.”
For some reason, that sparked an unwanted yet comforting sense of justice. “Because he bragged to the men about what a great ride I’d been?”
“That’s not all he said…”
“How many tickets buys his freedom?”
“One-hundred thousand.” The captain held up his hands at her gape. “Now, before you start screaming, hear me out. The men never save enough. They spend it all coming upstairs. No one leaves the ship, not when the life I offer here is better than anything they’d find out there.”
He knew just how to chill her, how to work her nerves. “Brooke left this morning.”
Nodding, he concurred. “And Brooke will be back. The lights will be on for her when she comes home. A clean room and a hearty meal. A shoulder to cry on.”
Brooke wouldn’t be back. Not when all she worked for was the ability to get off this horrible ship. “You really do underestimate us, don’t you?”
His voice grew soft when he said, “You never ask me personal questions. What are you afraid to learn, Eugenia?”
Rising to the challenge, a red eyebrow cocked, an unfriendly tone to her query. “Personally, I’d like to know—how long do you think it’s going to take me to find a way off this boat?”
“Redheaded siren.” He grinned, leaning back to sip his wine. “We both know you’re never getting off my boat. You have it good here, and eventually, you’ll accept that.”
“I really do hate you.” With every last fiber of her being.
“You hate being wrong. You’re terrible at accepting change. You led a spoiled, tunnel-vision life, where you worked hard and achieved remarkable things. Where you could only imagine one version of yourself, and anything different was inconceivable.”
This was how she knew he was insane. “Yeah, a whore is a great job when I could have been a surgeon. You got me. The complete loss of equality has been just dandy. Oh, the violence? Peachy! Sexual assault… it’s exactly what every girl dreams of.”
“You’re cute when you're angry.” The way he said it, his eyes aglow… was dangerous.
“I’m always angry.”