Lap of Luxury (Love Don't Cost a Thing)

Damir gets up and starts pacing up and down. “Misha the white knight just had to protect the poor little girl, did he? Always so fucking noble. I suspected Mikhail hates me as much as he hated our father, and now I know he does.”

“Well, if you’re going to act just like your father,” I point out, shrugging.

“How dare he think that,” Damir seethes, “when I killed our father for him.”

“You what?”

He turns to the railing and grips it with his hands, as if he’s trying to strangle it to death.

I hesitate, and then get up and go to his side. Damir is glaring at the horizon. “What are you talking about, Damir?”

“Did you ever see Mikhail without his shirt on?”

“Of course I haven’t. I told you, there’s was nothing like that between us.”

He glances down at me, and then turns and rests his hip on the railings and folds his arms. With the sun limning his black-shirted shoulders and glinting on the dark hair of his arms, he looks like a villain brought out into the light.

“If you had, you would have seen an ugly great scar on his chest, right over his heart. Our father did that to him when he was twenty-one. He stabbed his own son with a kitchen knife. If I hadn’t shown up, Mikhail would have died. I saved him, the ungrateful bastard.”

I picture it, the young Damir struggling with his father to save his brother’s life. He must have loved Mikhail, once. “So you killed a tyrant and became the tyrant.”

“I don’t lose any sleep. Not over the things I’ve done.”

I watch him go back to the table and sit down. “What do you lose sleep over?”

“People who haven’t been made to pay. But I’m working on it.”

I sit down as well and reach for my glass of juice. Curious, that Damir is so into justice. His idea of justice, at least. While I’m lost in thought, Damir moves his plate aside and opens his laptop.

A few minutes later, he frowns. “That’s strange.”

“What’s strange?”

He turns the laptop toward me. It shows a browser search for London woman missing July. “No one’s reported you missing.”

I run my eyes down the results. A lost and found teenager. A British woman who disappeared in Thailand was and later found drowned. Some other hits for women missing in other years.

I sit back and bury my face in my juice. “Oh. Okay.”

“Why aren’t you surprised?” Damir asks, his eyes narrowed.

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you be glad? Stop asking stupid questions,” I retort, glaring out across the sea. Damir’s eyebrows lift, and I kick myself for letting the news get to my like that.

“Why hasn’t anyone reported you missing, Bethany?”

Because nobody’s noticed that I’m gone. Tinder dates are hardly going to come looking for me.

“Bethany. Answer the question. It’s been four days, and—”

“I’m going back to the cabin. It’s hot.” I stand up, but Damir catches my wrist and holds me in place.

“No, you don’t. Where are your parents? Why have your friends not noticed you’re gone?”

Of all the things that might have made me cry since being kidnapped, I wasn’t expecting it to be this. I blink furiously. “Mind your own damn business.”

“No, I won’t. Tell me why no one’s reported you missing.”

I twist in his grasp, trying to free myself, but I only make the raw skin on my wrist burn. “Because I haven’t got anyone to report me missing, okay? Now fucking let me go!”