by Stella Hart
The perfect festival hostess…
It was just like the idea I had right before I nearly slipped over that cliff all those weeks ago, only with a slight twist in that the sucking up didn’t only apply to Elias. It now extended to every single man in Crown and Dagger. By the time I was done, every man here would want me and vote for me.
After what might’ve been one hour or three—I had no way of knowing—I heard something from outside the coffin. Pounding footsteps. Voices echoing through the cave.
My heart simultaneously lifted and sank.
Elias had arrived.
15
Tatum
“What the fuck is going on?”
I heard Elias shout at his father, and then I heard hushed mutters. Tobias was no doubt telling him everything about my recapture, giving themselves something to chuckle about later on.
“This is completely fucking unacceptable,” I heard Elias say a moment later. Okay, so he wasn’t laughing. “She isn’t yours to punish. She isn’t yours to decide what to do with.”
“Well, if you’d bothered showing up before now, you could’ve done what you wanted,” Tobias said, his voice smooth yet deadly.
“I was fucking drugged! I only just woke up a few minutes ago, and I can still barely keep my eyes open,” Elias snarled. “Now get Tatum the fuck out of that coffin so I can punish her myself!”
There was another mutter. The lid swung open. Elias was standing right above me, his face twisted with fury. “Get up,” he commanded.
I did as he said, silently and obediently. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the coffin, and then he dragged me out of the chamber. Tobias and the guards followed us.
We headed into the mansion, up to the third floor. Elias muttered threats in my ear the whole way, and when we reached a red door at the end of the hall, he held me in the rough grip of one hand and opened the door with the other.
The room beyond was similar to the playroom at the Finishing School, only ten times bigger. It had dark red walls with crosses and racks filled with whips, paddles, ropes and chains.
He slammed the door behind us with a loud promise to punish me so hard I wouldn’t be able to sit down for three days afterwards. I didn’t fight it. I simply closed my eyes and waited.
For nothing.
Confused, I opened my eyes again to see Elias standing there staring at me. He didn’t look mad. He just looked… confused. Vulnerable. “Why?” he said, shaking his head slightly.
I knitted my brows. “Why what? Aren’t you going to punish me?” I mumbled.
“No. I only said that to get everyone off my back. I might need you to scream every so often in case they’re listening outside. Hopefully they don’t look at the surveillance cameras.” He glanced at a flashing red light above us.
I stared at him, flabbergasted. “So you aren’t angry about what I did?”
He sighed and rubbed his chin. Tiredness was etched into every feature. He looked five years older, but it actually suited him. “I’m not angry at you, Tatum. Not anymore. I haven’t been for a while.”
“What?” That was all I could manage to get out. I had no idea what the hell was going on.
He stepped closer, eyes narrowing. “I know you think I’m loyal to my family, but I’m not blind. I’ve had some suspicions for a while, as much as I’ve tried to push them aside. When I woke up this morning to hear you’d tried to leave, I knew once and for all that they weren’t just suspicions. Something is going on, and I need you to say it. Tell me why you tried to run. Again.”
Comprehension slowly dawned on me. I knew what this was now. Another game. Another ploy. He wanted to trick me into thinking he cared about my welfare, only to use it against me later.
I wouldn’t let myself get sucked in. Not again.
Just because I’d started falling for him didn’t mean he felt the same way about me. He might have been nicer lately, but that wasn’t love. It was just lust. A desire for power and control. At the heart of things, he was still my captor. The sort of captor who liked to play fucked up games with me and mess with my head.
After all, he’d done it before.
I bowed my head. “I didn’t run. It was a mistake.”
He snorted. “A mistake? So what… you accidentally drugged me, stole my card and let yourself out? All so you could go hiking in the woods? Come on, Tatum.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I swallowed hard. “I meant… I thought I wanted to go home. But I was wrong. I changed my mind. I want to be here with you, Master.”
“Bullshit. Tell me the truth.”
“I did.” I cowered, suddenly afraid he might hurt me if I didn’t say what he wanted. “Please…”
“Tatum. Look at me. Now.”
I kept my head down. Goosebumps broke out across my arms.
Elias tilted my chin up, forcing me to look right into his eyes. “Are you really here willingly?” he asked. He looked stricken as he spoke. I almost believed it wasn’t part of an act to break me further. Almost. “Did you really sell yourself here?”
I shook my head in disbelief. “How stupid do you think I am?” I said softly. All I could think of was the time he pretended to be surprised when I told him I was a captive. Back then, I thought I had a chance at help, but it was just a game to him. He went and laughed about it with his father afterwards, laughed about how dumb I was for thinking he might actually be unaware. That he might actually help me. “You think I’ll fall for that again?”
“Fall for what?”
“Forget it,” I muttered. “Yes, I’m here willingly. I signed the contract. Now just punish me for what I did and let me go back to my room. Please.”
“You’re not getting out of this fucking room until you tell me the truth.”
My head spun. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He used to shout at me and punish me in order to make me ‘admit’ to one particular thing, and now he was trying to force me in the opposite direction. Trying to force me to say something else entirely.
Such a sick, twisted game. When would it end? Would he keep going until I blindly repeated every single thing he asked me to say, even if one statement completely contradicted the previous statement he demanded from me? Did he want me that broken? That soulless? Or was he simply hoping I would say something that he would consider a lie, just so he could punish me harder than ever?
I gritted my teeth and steeled myself. “That is the truth.”
“No.” He roughly pushed me down to my knees, and I yelped. “You’re mine. That means you need to submit to me. Properly. You need to trust me and tell me the truth. No more fucking lies,” he said, glaring down at me. His pupils were dilated, and his eyes looked more dangerous than ever. “Do it.”
“I did. I’ve already submitted to you,” I whispered. “I’ve told you everything you wanted to hear. I’ve been telling you for weeks. Months.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face. “That’s the fucking problem. I thought what I wanted to hear was actually the truth,” he said. “But it’s not the truth, is it?”
I looked up at him. Looked at his perfect, deceitful face. I was falling for this man, and yet I’d never hated him more. How was that possible? To love and hate someone at the same time? It didn’t make any damn sense, and yet here I was, swinging between the two intoxicating emotions.
I guess that old saying was true: there’s a thin line between love and hate. Both stemmed from passion somewhere along the line, and they were both capable of sending us all downhill again and again.
“It is,” I finally bit out. “I’m not lying.”
He crouched down to my level, eyes flickering with irritation. “I’m asking you to trust me.”
Another warning bell jangled in my mind. Don’t fall for it.
I gave Elias a sweet, shy smile. “I do trust you, Master,” I whispered. “And that’s why I finally told you the truth all those weeks ago. I sold myself here. That’s it. The truth.”
He sho
ok his head and muttered. “Jesus Christ.” He dragged me to my feet. “Come on.”
I thought he was taking me over to an X-framed cross to whip me, but instead, he pulled me toward the door and yanked it open. “Pretend you can’t walk,” he hissed in my ear. “Or my father will make things worse for you.”
Ha. I could believe that, at least…
I feigned a pained expression and a limp. Tobias sneered at me, and Elias scooped me into his arms. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson, little slut,” he snarled down at me. “I doubt you’ll be able to walk properly for a week.”
Tobias looked pleased, and he nodded at his son before striding away.
Elias carried me all the way back to my room on the second floor. When we were inside, he locked the door behind us and deposited me on the bed.
“Get some rest,” he commanded. “You need it. But we aren’t done with this conversation. I don’t care how long it takes; I’m getting the truth out of you one way or another.”
“I already told you the truth,” I repeated.
His eyes narrowed as he shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”
I suddenly felt ill, like I’d been drugged again, although I knew I hadn’t. I clutched my stomach and curled up in a ball on the bed, my head pounding. Shit. I’d probably caught a chill after spending the night out in the forest. Or maybe it was the stress. Either way, I was exhausted. My limbs felt like soggy noodles.
“I know you don’t believe me, Tatum, but I want to take care of you,” Elias said, sitting down.
I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. He lay down beside me, wrapped me in his arms and kept talking, muttering all sorts of sweet little lies in my ears. He said that he cared for me. That he wanted to protect me. That if I just admitted the truth and placed my faith in him, he’d find some way to help me.
Yeah, right.
I might be falling in love with him, but I would never fall for his games again.
16
Elias
Tatum dozed fitfully, her hair messily splayed out on the pillow behind her, limbs twitching every moment or so. She looked pale. Exhausted. Scared even in her sleep.
I couldn’t blame her. She should be scared. I wasn’t too proud and insecure in my masculinity to admit that I was too.
After I woke up to all the furor about Tatum going missing, the first thing that struck me was fear. I worried something terrible had happened to her. A kidnapping, or a horrible accident. But then one of the security guards told me she’d actually tried to leave the Lodge by herself and been ‘caught’ in a nearby town.
While I was still passed out, they’d gone and watched the recent surveillance footage from her suite. From what they managed to glean, she’d drugged her wine glass while she was in the closet before dinner—I barely even noticed she took it with her when she got changed—and then switched it with mine when my back was turned.
No wonder I felt so drained. Allergy meds had a way of wiping a person the fuck out if they took too many.
I was supposed to be angry at her for violating the terms of her contract by trying to leave. I was supposed to punish her. But why the fuck would I do that? After this most recent attempt, I could no longer deny that something heinous was happening here.
The first few times she acted out and tried to run, I thought it was because of me. She hated me, after all. Hated my whole family. Besides, it was in her contract that she was supposed to fight me.
Allegedly.
At the time, I didn’t care. I hated her too, and I wanted her to fight me. But now I saw something different. I saw a girl who desperately wanted to leave; not just me, but this whole place. I saw a girl who wasn’t acting or playing along with any contract clauses. She was genuinely terrified. She genuinely thought of herself as a captive.
Because she was. She had to be.
I could feel it in my bones. All the suspicions I had over the last few weeks, all the things I tried to convince myself were just overreactions and conspiracy theories… they weren’t unfounded. Why else would Tatum keep behaving like this?
Acting out and pretending to fight back was one thing. But going to all the effort of obtaining allergy meds and sneakily drugging me with them just so she could steal my keycard and run away was another thing entirely. That wasn’t fucking acting. There was nothing pretend about it. She clearly wanted to escape, and she’d do anything to make it happen.
I reached out and stroked her hair, twisting my lips in fury. The thought of her being here against her will made my guts churn and my blood boil. I hated myself for not seeing it till now. It all made so much sense, especially considering the cliff incident on the island, and yet I’d been so blind to it in the past. I treated her like shit when she tried to tell me the truth. I broke her down so much that she was too scared to even say it anymore.
I knew I wasn’t overthinking things this time. When I asked her if she was here willingly just an hour ago, I saw a momentary flare of fear and indecision in her eyes. The restless panic of a wild bird trapped inside a house. That look alone confirmed everything for me. She was scared and she knew she didn’t belong here, but she didn’t want to tell me the truth because she was afraid I was playing her. Of course she’d think that, after the way I’d treated her in the past. After the way I punished her for telling me what was very likely the actual honest truth.
I drew my hand away from her like it was scalded. I didn’t deserve to touch her.
With a heavy sigh, I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. So many questions had been thrown up by all this shit. How did Tatum come to be here if it wasn’t willingly? Was it really her parents, like she tried to tell me all those months ago? And my father… what was his role in this?
Obviously he’d fucking lied to me about everything. But why? People didn’t just do things for no reason. There was always some kind of motivation, so something made him do this to Tatum. To me as well. His reasoning might be fucked up and downright evil, but I still wanted to know what the hell it was and how the hell he thought I wouldn’t find out.
There was also the question of the Lodge in general. Was Tatum the only captive? Or were they all captives?
The thought alone made me want to vomit.
I exhaled deeply and shook my head. I knew I couldn’t just wait until I reached the third level of Crown and Dagger to get to the bottom of Tatum’s captivity. I had to do something now. Had to find out once and for all if I was right so that I could form a solid plan to fix things for her.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get the truth out of her again anytime soon. She was far too petrified. That meant taking matters into my own hands and trying to figure out a way to prove she didn’t belong here all by myself. Without that proof in my possession to show her I was genuine, she’d never let me help her. She’d think it was all part of some sick game.
I looked back over at her beautiful face, my lips set in a grim line. How many times had I ignored her? Disregarded her and treated her like she was nothing? Hurt her?
I kept trying to tell myself it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know. I thought she wanted this, thought she sold herself here for this very reason. To be a slave. To earn money for her family. To punish herself for what she’d done in the past.
At the same time, I knew it was my fault. I should’ve fucking listened to her. Should’ve realized the very first time she acted out and told me she didn’t belong here that something wasn’t right. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to punish her for what she’d done to Ben. I wanted a slave to fulfil my every dark desire. So I ignored her. I refused to listen when it was clear she wasn’t lying, and I tried my best to break her instead.
But she was never really broken. I was.
Monster.
My father was an even fouler monster. There was no way he was innocent in any of this, and it made me wonder what the fuck else he’d lied to me about. Like my biological parentage, for instance. All the shit with Camille Gorham and her disappear
ance was playing on my mind on an endless loop now. Was she like Tatum too? Was she kidnapped by my father and kept here just like her? Forced to donate her eggs so my parents could have a child?
Something else struck me a second later.
Not long ago, Tatum claimed to have seen two pregnant women somewhere upstairs. I blew her off at the time, figuring they were just the wives of guests, but now that I was actually thinking about it properly… how in the hell did that make any sense? What kind of pregnant women wanted to hang out here? Sure, the Lodge was the height of luxury and placed absolutely anything a person could desire right at their feet, but it still wasn’t exactly the kind of place a pregnant woman would want to spend time at.
So who were those women? Was there some innocent explanation for their presence like I originally thought, or were there actually other women here who were similar to Camille Gorham? Forced to donate their eggs to rich men’s wives or act as surrogates?
Christ.
How fucking deep did this rabbit hole go?
I pulled my cell out and headed through Tatum’s bathroom and into her closet. Then I called my father. He answered on the third ring. “What’s wrong?”
I tried to make myself sound as nonchalant as possible. “Nothing. Just had a question.”
“Well, I’m at one of the bars on the first floor, near the old State Room. Just come down here if you want to chat.”
“Can’t. I’m still with Tatum. Anyway, she mentioned seeing something the other week. I just want to know if she’s full of shit or not, like she usually is.” I feigned a derisive chuckle. I couldn’t let him know I was onto him yet.
Curiosity crept into his tone. “What did she claim to see?”
“Some pregnant women in a medical wing on the third floor. What’s that about?”
He paused, a little too long. “Oh, them. They’re the wives of Ron DuPont and Glenn Covington. They’re staying here right now.”
