by Skye Warren
Chapter Eighteen
The first time I came to Gabriel’s house, right after the auction, it felt like the Labyrinth. A maze, one in which I could wander for days and never find the center. I don’t think it was a coincidence that I felt completely lost at the time, wandering through the maze of Tanglewood’s underworld.
Now I know the halls well enough to make my way around, but there’s space missing. The distance between rooms doesn’t fit how big the walls should be. The third floor feels miles above the first. There are gaps in what I can see, and it’s enough to send a shiver down my spine.
I roam the hallways, my gaze flicking up to the corners. I’m looking for the glare of a tiny camera. The black wire of an audio device. My paranoia has reached untenable levels. My insides feel shaky and upside down. I won’t be able to hide the voices from Gabriel much longer. He already suspects. And now that I know about the price on my head, I’m about to fall apart.
The only sound is the soft slap of my feet on the hardwood, the swish of my dress around my knees. There haven’t been any voices today. Why do they come when I sleep? Are they part of my dreams?
I desperately want to believe that, but there’s something too real about them. The timbre of the voice, as if I’ve heard the words spoken aloud. As real as a memory.
Except those can be wrong, too.
I pass by the library with the wooden chess set silhouetted by the dark fireplace. There’s a sense of peace in that room that tempts me. I want to curl up in the large armchair with a book about ancient Roman symbolism. The words would transport me away from this house as surely as whatever strange thrall holds Penny—a separate reality, a safer one.
I’m too far gone to pretend. The voice is real. I need to know how.
I need to know why.
My step slows as I reach Gabriel’s office. The door stands slightly ajar, a half-inch view of a massive oak desk and maroon-leather swivel chair behind it. He doesn’t keep his door shut or locked, which should be a comfort. Wouldn’t a man with something to hide keep this hidden?
Unless he knows I won’t be able to do anything, no matter what I find.
I hate these thoughts, these doubts. A man who worried about the fate of a little girl, one he didn’t even know, one who gave years of his life to protect her, one who’s haunted by the memory of her, wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. Then again, that could be a lie.
He was willing to keep the bounty a secret.
My hand nudges the door open, revealing an opulent rug and a painting of intense red trees. It’s all very ordinary for an expensively decorated study. A little too ordinary for a man like Gabriel Miller.
Stop being suspicious. I can’t make the feeling go away.
When I step fully into the study, I’m surprised at how bright it is inside. Light streams in almost sideways, casting a yellow glow around me, rays pressing through the thin green fabric of my sundress.
The desk is almost completely empty, as if the room isn’t used, even though I’ve seen Gabriel here. I’ve heard him on the phone. The room even smells like him, the faint scent of man and musk.
Only one envelope sits on the desk.
I cross the room and pick it up as if in a trance. There’s one word scrawled across the white vellum. Avery. And I recognize the handwriting. It’s from my father. This must be the last letter he sent. The one I refused to read.
There are a hundred reasons to be angry with my father.
And only one reason to open the letter—hope. The hope of a daughter who never quite gives up on her daddy, who wants family and protection and love even if she knows the man can’t give it to her.
With a shaking hand I open the shallow top drawer of the desk. Scattered pens and paperclips litter the cherrywood, along with a silver letter opener. I draw a straight cut through the seam and unfold the sheet inside.
My dearest daughter,
I don’t know if you will read this. The last two returned to me, unopened. I know you’re angry, and I know you have a right to be. I never wanted you to know about the deal I made with Gabriel Miller. It was a moment of dark desperation, and I will regret it for the rest of my days, however few they may be.
You don’t have to forgive me. I can’t even ask for it, but I implore you to hear me out. You aren’t safe. There are men in this city who want revenge on me. Men like Gabriel Miller. I know you believe that’s over now, but I believe the worst is yet to come.
He may want you, and he may keep you.
He may even love you, in the only way he is able. That’s the greatest danger of all.
I still have my sources in this city, and they tell me there is a bounty on your head. Has he told you this? If not, how can you trust him? I send this in the form of a letter, knowing that his hubris will mean you get it, even if it exposes him for the monster he is.
With love,
Your father
My fist crushes the thick paper before I can even process what it says. A price on my head. First Justin, now my father. Even with their claims it would be hard to believe, except for the shooting at the restaurant.
I’m still stunned by the idea, hurt by it, terrified of it.
That’s why it takes me a moment to register the whisper in my ear.
There are monsters under your bed, but you and I know the truth. They aren’t all bad, are they? Some of them care for you. They care for you more than anyone.
I whirl, knocking the swivel chair with my knee. It rolls away, loud in the empty room. The silent room. There’s no one here with me. And I can’t blame the dreams this time.
Rage and fear collide inside me, leaving me shaken.
My mind is playing tricks on me. Or someone else is doing it.
At my mother’s house there were secret rooms built into the design, something easier to do back when an architect could be bribed. Despite the old-world design, Gabriel’s house is modern—with all the amenities and security that money can buy. How could whole rooms have gone unexplored? How could secret speakers have gone unnoticed?
Unless he’s the one who had them installed.
My hand closes around the silver hilt of the letter opener. I approach the painting, my eyes narrowed. Like the fake painting of my mother that came, the one that was replaced, this could have been smuggled in. An art dealer. An antiques store. There are a hundred ways someone with excessive money and power could attempt to gain entry into this house.
I pull my arm back and stab directly into a red tree, then slash diagonally across, revealing nothing but the hollow wood frame of the picture. That kind of violence should have shocked me back to reality, especially with the confirmation that it’s just an innocuous painting.
Instead the movement liberates me. I’m free to do anything, be anything. Even a monster, myself.
I lift the heavy painting from its hooks and toss it onto the rug with a thump. Taking hold of the letter opener again, I pull back and stab into the wood. My hand slides against the roughened splinters, making me cry out.
“Shit,” I whisper.
There’s barely a nick in the thick wood paneling. I’m a fly against concrete now.
Dropping the letter opener, I pick up a globe from the bookcase. It’s heavy, made from some kind of dark stone. I pull it back and slam it into the wall. The impact reverberates up my arm.
Pain barely registers, only a dim sensation.
“Good Lord,” comes a voice from behind me.
I turn and see Mrs. B watching me, her eyes wide pools of green.
Without answering I slam the globe again, and the metal frame breaks away from the sphere. A deep crack appears in the wood, almost to the ceiling. It’s impossible to grip such a heavy stone now, not with any surety, so I let it roll away.
“What are you doing?” she shrieks.
There’s a fire raging inside me, with every doubt and fear.
With every secret kindling to stoke it higher.
“Taking back my life,” I tell
her.
I don’t even hear what she says in return, but she leaves me to my destruction. Am I creating a new life for myself? Am I destroying the one that I have? Thinking of Penny, catatonic on the bed upstairs, I’m not sure they’re even so different.
Crossing behind the desk, I pull the rolling chair over to the wall. It’s the largest thing in the room, the biggest thing I might be able to lift. Even then I feel my muscles strain against the expensive chair made of wood and leather and metal. Made to last.
I’m tired of living in the dark. Tired of being blamed for the sins of men. Tired of being moved around the board like an unthinking figure made of marble, meant to touch and to hold and to own.
I raise the chair above my head and slam it against the crack.
Wood splinters into a million pieces, raining down on my head. Without waiting for the dust to clear, I pull the chair back and slam it hard again. I’m panting, raging, crying. Sobbing as I rip the lavish study apart with my bare hands.
Chapter Nineteen
“Avery.”
I think I went into a kind of fugue state with the chair, with the statue on the shelf, with a lamp in the corner. The study is in shambles, every cabinet ripped open, all four sides of the walls torn open.
Gabriel steps into the room, and I brace myself for his fury. I cringe away from his violence. Paranoia has its grip in me, deep enough to draw blood. Maybe that’s why I’m bleeding. I touch my cheek, unsurprised when it comes away smeared pink. Tears and blood, the pain a dull throb.
He steps over the remains of his swivel chair, past the innocent-looking globe lying on the floor. When he reaches me, he kneels and brushes the hair from my face.
His expression isn’t angry, though. It’s concerned.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he says, sounding more emotional than I’ve ever heard him. More moved. As if the prospect of me hurting myself hurts him instead.
“I want to,” I whisper, and that’s when I realize that it’s not him I suspect. It’s not his study I wanted to destroy. It’s my own mind I can’t trust. My own body I want to tear apart, flying shreds of wood and pieces of metal taking chunks of my skin.
He pulls a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabs it to my lip. “Do you need your freedom that much? That you’ll kill yourself trying to get out?”
I wince, only noticing the cut there for the first time. “I’m not trying to get out. I’m trying to stay in.”
And then I burst into tears.
He gathers me into his arms, murmuring words of comfort, words that mean nothing at all. His hold says everything, the tender way that he embraces me, the almost hesitant way that he strokes my hair. He doesn’t want to hurt me. How could I have doubted him?
“I’m sorry,” I sob, too breathless to explain what I mean.
“Don’t be. I hated that painting, too. Who paints red trees?”
I can’t even laugh, too broken by what I just did. Broken long before this. There are hidden wounds on me, inside me, like the one on my lip. Gabriel can see it, but I can’t. Not until he touches me there.
He reaches down to pick up a crumpled piece of paper. His large hand smooths it out. There’s only the sound of my uneven breathing as he reads it.
“Is it true?” I whisper, voice thick with tears. “Is there a price on my head?”
“Yes,” he says evenly, completely without emotion. I know what that means for a man like him. That he’s bracing for the worst. For me to turn away from him.
For me to suspect him, the way I have until now.
I sigh, pressing my face into his broad chest. “Thank you.”
He grows still. “Why?”
“For not telling me. I may not always prefer it, but I know you only kept it a secret so I wouldn’t be afraid. That’s why you kept telling me to stay here, but you didn’t want me to know the details.”
His hands pull me closer, so tight I almost can’t breathe. “I don’t know how to make you stay. I don’t know how to keep you without breaking you.”
“Love me,” I whisper. “That’s what I need.”
One heartbeat passes. Another. His silence echoes around me. His body vibrates with tension. “Last week we found the man who shot up the Oak Room. He held out a little while but ultimately confessed. Unfortunately, he didn’t know anything about where Jonathan Scott was. We made quite sure he didn’t know before disposing of him.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice hoarse. I know what it must have cost him to do that. To torture a man. To kill one, even someone who deserves it.
“Don’t be. I enjoyed it.” He tightens his hold on me. “Your father is right about one thing. It isn’t a good thing that I want you. Nothing good comes from a man like me.”
I turn my face up to his, knowing that he’ll see my eyes red and puffy, that he’ll see the worst of me. His expression reveals a deep-seated pleasure, the kind that comes from physical sensation. God, he likes it. He loves me torn up and angry. He loves the real me, stripped down. Not like I was at the auction, naked and humiliated, freshly made-up and for sale. No, this is the real Avery James.
My palm cups his cheek, feeling the bristle of his hair, the tension of the muscles underneath. “I want you, Gabriel Miller. And maybe you’re the one who should be afraid of that.”
His laugh is a rumble that spreads through my body with me held in his lap. I feel it at the depths of my soul, his pleasure at my dark pronouncement. “Yes, little virgin. I am.”
I close my eyes. “I have a confession to make.”
“Did you perhaps grow angry with me? Or with your father? And maybe throw something? I don’t know what clues make me think that.” He examines the room in shambles. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
The corner of my lips turns up. “I hope you’ll forgive me for that, but it isn’t the only thing.”
He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Tell me the rest.”
A deep breath is the only strength I can find. “I’ve been hearing voices. It started after the fire. First they only came during the nightmares. But they started to feel more and more real. And the one I heard today? I wasn’t sleeping. Not just waking up. Completely awake.”
He looks grave. “Here? You hear them in my house?”
I nod, aware of what this means. Especially with the hollow walls exposed around us. I didn’t find a single speaker, a secret room with a stool and food wrappers. Nothing that would have explained the voices. And that leaves only one choice.
“I’m going crazy,” I whisper. “Like my father believed about my mother. But it wasn’t true for her. Or maybe it was. Maybe Jonathan Scott only made it worse. Maybe he played on her fears. I don’t know anything except what I hear.”
Gabriel carefully stands, supporting me with his hands, golden gaze examining the exposed walls with detached curiosity. “What do they say?”
“They talk about…” My cheeks flush with embarrassment. “They talk about the monster under my bed. Almost like the voice is the monster. That he has feelings, too. That he’s sad I’ve forgotten him.”
“And you don’t know who the voice belongs to?”
“I thought…for a while I thought they sounded like you. Now I don’t know. A man. Not a man I can remember, but someone who seems familiar. I know that sounds crazy.”
He takes a step toward the wall, peering into the hollow space. “Not crazy. It’s a puzzle. Like any puzzle, there’s a logical solution.”
“Apparently it’s not someone hiding in the walls.”
He meets my gaze with a faint smile. “No, not that. Come with me.”
Taking my hand, he leads me from the room and down the hall. We enter the kitchen, passing by a wide-eyed Mrs. B. I can only imagine what she thinks of my mental state. And she’s not wrong.
For a moment I think we’re going outside, onto the lawn. We turn to the right instead, where a man of military bearing stands beside a door. The same man who greeted me below the balcony the
other night. I might be embarrassed if I weren’t so upset.
He nods at Gabriel. “Sir.”
“West.” Gabriel greets him and pushes through the door, revealing an array of screens. Another man sits on a black leather chair, his silver hair short, his lined expression severe.
He stands as we enter, his build imposing but his posture deferent.
“Leave us,” Gabriel says.
And just like that the small room empties, the door closes. I know without asking that a nuclear explosion could occur and we would not be disturbed, based on Gabriel’s quietly spoken command. If those two men are knights in the medieval hierarchy, then Gabriel is clearly the king.
This war room would be the one with a map, little ceramic pieces placed to indicate walls and barricades. A large screen in the center shows the front lawn with its wide circular drive and row of walnut trees extending to the main road. A second screen almost as large shows the balcony behind the house, the marble chess set gleaming in the sunlight.
“Oh my God,” I say.
That means someone sees us play chess every night.
Someone saw us have sex on the balcony.
“You can’t be too careful,” Gabriel says mildly. “An ex-fiancé might show up anytime.”
I flinch. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I don’t blame you for my lapse in security. He never should have gotten through, at least not without me present.”
“Nothing happened. If there are cameras in there, then you know that.”
He nods. “I do.”
And he knows exactly what was said. “Every room?”
“Which do you want to see?”
“Penny’s room. Last night, right before you came home.”
Gabriel reaches down to the keyboard. He taps a few keys with ease, making it clear he’s familiar with the system. How many times has he watched it? How many times has he watched me?
