I’m barely holding on to my composure. I know if I strike him, he’ll respond, and I will lose. I’m not stupid. This is what he wants. The realization makes my eyes widen. He’s playing with his shiny new toy.
“Just kill me.” My muscles scream as I stiffen them, refusing to lash out. Although my body heats and adrenaline pumps faster at the thought of him doing it, I still tell him to just get it over with. I don’t want to be played with. “I’ll never give you anything.”
“Now what would that accomplish for me, songbird?”
I don’t want to cry and give him the satisfaction. I refuse to. My eyes are already burning from being so fucking weak. I won’t be weak. I won’t let him win.
Be smart. A million possibilities run through my head at what the smart choice would be in this moment, but the only situation I allow to rule my actions is to not give in. I’ll wait. I’ll survive day by day until my father comes. He will come. I know he will.
“I’ll fight you until the day I die,” I sneer at him with every ounce of conviction I can gather.
It only makes him smile. A wicked grin that sends a chill through my blood. “You’ll find comfort in thinking that… for a little while.” With a growing smile of triumph, he leaves me where I am. His shoes smack on the ground, and the sound grows quieter as he confidently strides to the door and turns the knob with ease.
How? He’s simply walking away, and the door opens for him. I don’t have time to consider anything. All I know at this moment is that the door is open. And whether or not he’s there, I need to try to run. He opens the door just enough to get through. But I still run to it. I do my damnedest to make it to the door before it shuts and like the merciless prick he is, he leaves it open.
My bare heels bash against the cement as I sprint toward the light, but just as I make it, my hopes are so easily dashed. Just as the hope that I’ll actually get out of here so easily burns into my chest, his tall broad frame fills the doorway, standing with a foreboding presence and taking a large step toward me.
A step so powerful and undeniably in control that I stagger backward, my foot scraping against the cement and throwing me off balance.
My ass hits the floor first and my head would have smacked against the concrete as well if Cross’s hand wasn’t wrapped firmly around my forearm. His fingers dig in and I let out a squeal of both surprise and pain.
“You’re smarter than this,” he hisses. The rage in his eyes swirls with darkness, but with it are golden flecks of intrigue and delight. “You won’t leave this room until I say so.”
I’m paralyzed by the certainty in his voice. The strength of his grip. The desire that drips from each of his words.
“You. Are. Mine. Aria.” He says each word lower and lower until I can barely hear him over the pounding of my heart. The concept of being owned by this man is a deadly concoction that sends a ripple of both fear and desire straight to my core.
Without warning, he releases me, and I fall to the ground, still shaken but staring up at him. “I’m not an object to own. No one owns me!” I scream at him even though I don’t believe my own words in this moment.
He merely smiles at me. As if it’s all a joke to him.
“Let me go,” I try to scream at him as if it’s a demand, but the words are a pitiful plea even to my own ears.
Still, I try to stand, to get back up as he smiles and closes the door, leaving me right where he wants me.
I swear I hear him answer me before the steel door closes with finality. I would swear on my life I heard him say, “Never.”
Chapter 9
Carter
* * *
Daniel is my only brother who doesn’t knock. He never has.
I know he isn’t going to this time either. His steps are hurried, angered and I have to suppress a sigh of irritation. I’m fucking tired and I don’t have time for his bullshit.
“This war between Talvery and the Romanos doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
Daniel’s always had a knack for speaking as he enters the room, regardless of whether or not my gaze is down on my desk, focused on a spreadsheet of product and how much is selling. Having high demand is good, but some of this doesn’t make sense. And it’s only on the border of our territory that touches the Romanos’ territory.