“I don’t know the Healys,” I said. “We’re barely related. My dad might’ve talked to them sometimes, and they’re my mom’s cousins, but she’s been gone for years and I never see them.” I felt desperate and stupid, and he looked more bored than anything else.
“I believe you,” he said. “It doesn’t change anything.” He took a deep breath like he was smelling the coffee, then took a long sip. Silence fell over us, and I studied him, trying to understand this monster. He murdered my father in cold blood—and now he looked like he was savoring his morning hot beverage.
I expected a shithole filled with drugs and body parts in the freezer. Instead, there was a mohair throw blanket over an Eames chair, and I was pretty sure I saw a big bottle of kombucha in the door of the refrigerator.
“You haven’t answered my question yet,” I said.
He smiled a little. “I think they’d kill you,” he said. “Don Valentino doesn’t like loose ends. Your father was a loose end. And you’d be one too, especially considering you met the Don’s son.”
“I don’t care about that,” I said, feeling desperate. “Please, you could let me go—”
“Let me stop you there,” he said, putting his mug down. He shifted toward me and stood. I marveled at his height and his size, and despite the fact that he was a brutal monster, he still looked like an underwear model.
I hated him suddenly, with an intensity that threatened to drown me.
He came toward me and leaned over the counter.
“I might not want to kill you. I don’t even want to hurt you. Frankly, I wish you weren’t here. But I will do as the Don instructs me, up to a point at least. If they come for your life, I won’t stop them. I’m not your friend, and I’m not going to help you.”
“I know you’re not my friend,” I said, feeling a spike of rage. I thought of my house—all my things, my past and my future, all of it was gone. I’d had a wad of cash under my mattress, tips from countless hours of boring waitressing worth a few thousand at least, burned to a crisp. My high school diploma, my yearbook, my laptop and my cellphone, all my clothes, my shoebox with notes from old high school boyfriends, the collage of pictures my best friend, Kate, made when we were in ninth grade, my SAT prep book marked up in highlighter and never put to use, my collection of Supernatural DVDs, the scarf my mother sent me from Ireland, all the birthday cards I’d accumulated from friends, from my grandparents, from my dad back when he gave a shit, all of it gone.
My entire life gone, because of this bastard. And he had the gall to suggest I might think he was my friend.
He wasn’t a friend. He was my kidnapper, and I wanted him dead.
He tilted his head and smiled at me. It was almost charming, if it didn’t make me sick.
“Good,” he said. “If you want to get through this alive, then you need to play it smart and listen to what I tell you. I don’t care either way whether you live or you die, but your death is slightly more inconvenient, and despite what you may think, I’m not a monster.”
I laughed at that. It was a demon saying he wasn’t evil. It was a stainless-steel pot saying it wasn’t silver. This man was a monster, all right, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
“So I should keep quiet and play the obedient captive, is that right?”
“More or less,” he said, and a little smile played at his lips. “Unless you want to be more than a captive. I don’t take women against their will, but if you came on your own power—”
I moved my hand back and slapped him across the face.
It made a resounding clap of skin against skin. His head barely turned, and his cheek turned slightly pink. His eyes narrowed, and he touched his face with his fingertips, like he was more surprised than hurt. I stared in shock, my mouth hanging open.
It just happened. I didn’t think about it. The idea of sleeping with him flashed into my brain, and it made me react with violence. I felt sick, my stomach churning, and I hated him, hated him so much, and even more for suggesting that I’d ever touch him like a lover.
His face remained almost impassive. It was strange and disconcerting, the way he looked with me with those beautiful, expressionless eyes. “If you do that again,” he said softly, “then I will put you in handcuffs for the rest of your time here. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” I said, and slowly lowered my arm down to my side, trembling with adrenaline and terror. I hit the monster, and I baited him, like I wanted him to hit back.