by Lily White
Adeline is just waking up, her expression frantic as she pulls the sheets aside in search of God knows what. She cried all last night while I stood watching her.
It’s becoming a twisted experiment I’m conducting. I’ve watched her for years. I know what her sleep issues look like, but now that I can toy with them, I feel like I’m tearing her apart even more.
Good. She needs to be torn apart. Her bullshit sad girl routine is getting boring as fuck. Not once has she touched anything in the penthouse. She hasn’t opened the first drawer, ransacked the first cabinet. She hasn’t done anything but act like the beaten down wife of Grant Cabot.
Staying where she’s put. Doing as she’s told.
I hate it.
I’m taking advantage simply because I can. But I’m not enjoying it. Even a cat will walk away from the mouse it enjoyed batting around when the fuzzy little thing lies there limp and bleeding.
Dead prey is no fun.
And Adeline is dead in her behavior.
“What did you say to Adeline when you were at my place?”
He laughs. “As if you couldn’t watch on your cameras.”
Watch, yes. Listen, no. Not from where I was at the time their conversation happened.
“I told her the truth. You’re an asshole and fucked in the head. She either accepts it or she doesn’t.”
My gaze snaps up to him.
“Thanks for that.” And I mean it. Adeline needed to know.
Plus, I told him to tell her that. It’s all part of the plan. She won’t fight a hero, but she’ll sure as hell fight a villain. Once she starts fighting again, that is.
A shrug of his shoulders.
“She’ll figure it out eventually. All of it, Ari. I just wonder what she’ll do with that knowledge.”
Our stares lock. I catch what he’s implying but refuse to respond. Instead, I watch the cameras, tracking Adeline as she takes a shower, gets dressed and then goes into the kitchen to dig through the fridge. I stocked it with everything she used to eat when she was younger. I wonder if she’s noticed that yet.
She pulls out a tub of vegan yogurt, digs in a drawer for a spoon and then makes her way to the couch.
Just like always.
This is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
“What are you going to do when she hates you for killing her father?”
Lincoln’s voice drags my eyes back to him.
“I didn’t know her when I took that job.”
“You’re still the man who pulled the trigger,” he says as he reaches up to fold his arms back behind his head and stretch his legs over the floor.
“She’ll have no choice but to forgive me. I won’t give her another choice.”
His brow cocks.
Ignoring him, I look at the screen and still to see Adeline has gotten up from the couch to walk toward the piano. The tub of yogurt is in her hands, the spoon held in her mouth. She creeps across on hesitant feet, but reaches the keyboard of the piano and pauses.
I can’t figure out why she’s so afraid of looking at everything I left there for her. You would think the piano was trying to bite with the way she keeps distance between her body and the keyboard.
Pulling the spoon from her mouth, she drops it into the yogurt, places the tub on a nearby table and steps up to the piano to drag a fingertip across the keys.
My pulse picks up, eyes glued to every tiny move she makes.
Adeline pulls her hand away and glances down at the bench. Dragging it out, she lifts the seat to find all her old music. Her brows tug together, annoyance flickering across her face. I smile because it’s funny.
What else did she expect to find? She already knows I know everything about her.
Despite her annoyance, she grabs sheet music from the top, eyes the piano, the music, the piano again, and then she sits down, her hands hovering over the keyboard before she finally presses a key to play the first note.
I hit the volume button, music filling the silence in Lincoln’s living room.
Lincoln stares at me from where he sits, saying nothing for a few seconds before, “Is that the little psychopath finally coming out of her shell?”
Nodding my head, I keep watching her. She needs to be pushed more. Fought harder. She’s tipped a toe out from behind her battered curtain, but needs a good shove to get the rest of her soul out into the open.
I’ve been waiting for her to show me she’s ready for the shove. It’s a damn shame it’ll suck so much.
For her.
Not me.
I’ll enjoy it.
Closing the computer, I push to my feet. “Time to go.”
Lincoln eyes me warily. “You’re not going to give her even a second of coming out of her shell before attacking, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” I say as I shove the computer in my bag and zip it shut. Shouldering the strap, I turn back to him.
“Do you remember what Adeline was like when she was younger?”
He groans. “How the fuck could I forget? She was annoying as hell and ran headfirst into every stupid fucking thing a person can do to get themselves beat down or killed.”
Okay, he’s right, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
“Beyond that.”
A roll of his eyes tells me he won’t come to the answer I want.
“She’s a fighter. You and I both know it. Grant beat her down into submission the wrong way. He broke her and trapped her in a candy coated shell of compliance. Since I’ve had her, she’s refused to come out of it, and there’s no fun fighting a person who won’t fight back. But now, she’s showing herself again. I needed one sign. One. Which she’s just given me.”
“And you think her touching a piano is a sign she’ll fight back for once? Maybe she’s just bored.”
My lips curl. I know her a lot better than that.
“She’s healed. Physically, at least. Now I won’t feel so bad to bruise her ego and body in the way it should be done. I’ll draw her out.”
I’m across the room with my hand on the door when Lincoln speaks again.
“Why do you care so much, Ari? Why are you investing all this energy into her? Especially when we both know how this will end. She’ll never forgive you.”
Shooting him a look, I refuse to reveal the plans I have for her. The final fuck you that will be delivered when all of this comes to its end. It wasn’t until last night that I thought of it, but now that the idea is in my head, I realize it’s the only thing that will free her entirely.
If I can give that to her, I will. Even if she can never forgive me for what I did the first night I saw her.
“You let me worry about that.”
I leave his place and drive to mine, my mind set on the task I want to accomplish and the best way to go about.
Pulling into the underground garage, I park, kill the engine and roll the tension from my shoulders.
One thing about Adeline I can never forget is that when she thinks she’s cornered, she comes out swinging.
It didn’t happen with Grant. He’d broken her too much before the night he beat her to a fucking pulp.
But it will happen with me.
I may be a bastard but I don’t beat women.
Piss them off, spank their ass, force their hand. All yes. But beat them? No.
Only a pussy does that.
And he’ll pay for being a pussy.
But that’s later, and this is now.
It’s time to fix what that bastard has broken.
Adeline
The boredom is getting to me. For the first week I was here, I didn’t feel like moving. I was in too much pain, my body still healing. I slept mostly with Ari watching, but then as the second week rolled on, my energy came back. The bruises are fading. My head doesn’t pound anymore when I turn it too fast.
I’m okay.
Yes, there’s still some discoloration, but the swelling is gone, the splits in my skin and lips have fully healed
, my bones don’t ache if I move.
And now I have too much energy. Cabin fever is setting in. My eyes moving a little too much over the instruments and photos, the cabinets and drawers.
There’s an entire story hidden here, and something inside me is still afraid to touch it, but something else wants to tear it all apart and learn what Ari has done to me.
I suppress the urge by focusing on other things first. The piano mostly. I haven’t played in so long, but the first few notes are a balm to my soul, and after playing through the first song, I choose another and another.
It doesn’t escape my attention that the music beneath the bench seat is all mine. Not copies, but what I used to own. I’d donated all of it when I moved in with Grant, so how Ari got ahold of it, I have no clue.
Yet, there it is, with all my handwritten notes.
It makes me wonder what else is hidden away.
Standing from the bench, my ears tingle at the sudden silence, caution hanging over me as I walk slowly to one of the photos on the wall. It’s my favorite, the shadow hovering over me. I’m always drawn back to it because it balances me in a way. Reminds me of all the fear I’ve faced and lived to tell about.
Back when I took the shot, that was the symbolism intended, that and what I see when I get stuck between sleep and being awake.
It emboldens me now, and I turn to stare at the built in bookshelves, my eyes scanning down to the cabinets that line the bottom.
Maybe one, I think. Nothing crazy. Just one.
It’s like creeping up on a skittish animal...or a wild boar. Anxiety wraps its fingers around my throat, and my hands start shaking. Settling myself on the floor in front of the cabinet farthest on the right, I blow out a breath, reach for the handle...then yank it open and flinch like something will shoot out at me.
Nothing happens, but you wouldn’t know that from the way my heart is knocking against my ribs.
Why am I so scared?
It pisses me off that Ari was right about this. I’m not who I used to be. Before Grant, I would have ripped everything apart by now. I wouldn’t be staring into a neatly organized cabinet terrified to take out the first box and see what’s inside.
So, fuck it.
Anger shoots my hand forward, and I grab the first box I see. It’s not big, about the size of the packaging for a phone. But it still takes me a second to work up the nerve to tear the lid off.
I freeze at the ticket stub that rests on top, a rock concert I went to when I was eighteen at a club not too far from here.
It was my first date with a guy named Tyler Dixon. I’d met him a few nights before at a bar I went to with another friend. I remember getting piss drunk at that concert. I was having a good time, and I thought Tyler was, too, but he said he was going to the bathroom and ditched me there.
“He was planning on taking you to a friend’s house after the concert.”
I scream and drop the stub. Shoving the box away as if that will hide the fact I’m snooping, I turn to find Ari leaning a shoulder against the wall.
My heart lurches at the sight of him. As usual his midnight black hair is a stylishly disheveled mess, his skin even more golden against the stark darkness of his clothes. He’s business casual today, a black button down shirt and dark slacks, but he still looks like he walked off the cover of some men’s fashion magazine.
And those eyes.
Fuck, his eyes.
They aren’t fair.
They see everything.
“How the hell do you do that?”
Amusement glimmers in his gaze. “Do what?”
“Move around without making a sound. I didn’t even hear the elevator.”
His cruel lips curl at the corners. “I never tell my secrets.”
My heart drops from my throat back into my chest where it belongs, and I reach for the box again, lift the stub and glance over at Ari.
“He ditched me that night. He wasn’t planning on taking me anywhere.”
Ari pushes away from the wall to walk over and crouch down behind me. His knees brush my arms, his chest touching the back of my head. Reaching around me, he doesn’t take the stub from me, but instead slides his hands over mine, holding the stub in place.
I lean back into him without really meaning to. I breathe him in because his scent is so familiar. I should hate him, but I can’t seem to conjure that feeling inside me. Even though I want to.
“Tyler Dixon and his friend had a home business you were almost part of. The game is to drug women, take them back to an apartment and film their rape. You would have been their newest star.”
I still in place, my mind racing to understand what he isn’t saying.
And then it connects, fear wrapping its cold arms around me as tightly as Ari holds me now.
“So, when I was ditched?”
He laughs softly, the deep baritone of it vibrating against my back.
“You made it home without incident. He didn’t.”
The stub falls from my fingers, and when I move to pull away from Ari, he locks his hands over my wrists before wrapping both our arms around me, my body tight to his.
A dip of his head, and his soft voice is against my ear. “What’s wrong?”
I try to swallow the knot in my throat. Fail. My body shivering despite his heat.
“What happened to Tyler?” I ask, not sure that I want the answer. And almost positive that I already know.
Ari spins my body around, shoving me back against the bookcase. My eyes lift to his, and I see an expression so utterly vacant of emotion that it scares me more than the night Grant had me cornered.
It’s one thing to have someone lose control, to see the truth of what they’re thinking and feeling written across their face. But to see nothing...
“I think you already know,” he says, his eyes studying my face.
You should fear the man that has you. He’s not right in the head...
Lincoln’s warning echoes in my thoughts, a whisper against my senses, a truth that is becoming clear.
His stare drops to my mouth, head tilting just a bit as he reaches to pull my bottom lip down with his thumb.
“You have an annoying habit of chewing your lip when you’re worried or thinking.”
The inside of my lip is raw, and the salt of his skin stings. I’ve been worried a lot, apparently.
Grey eyes lift to mine. “I don’t appreciate it when people break my things.”
I don’t think he’s talking about my lip.
More like he’s answering my question about what happened to Tyler.
Ari’s hands have killed. I know that now. I feel it. But is it wrong if he did it to protect me?
But you also have a fuck ton of answers displayed around you in this place. Some will piss you off. Some will make you think that maybe Ari is a good guy. He’s not...
Break my things. I brush aside the idea that Ari saved my life for my benefit. He did it for his.
His stare traps mine, cruel lips curling as if he can follow the direction of my thoughts.
“What will you do about it, Adeline?”
Another swipe of his thumb against my lip.
“If your previous behavior has anything to say about it, not a damn thing. And I still win.”
A sophisticated brow slowly arches above one grey eye, his lips stretching into such an arrogant smirk that it stabs like a knife to the gut, twisting so the pain is more violent.
“I have you trapped. Always have, really. The only difference is you know it now.”
Ari pushes to his feet and stares down at me. A subtle, dismissive shake of his head before he steps away to grab the bag he’d dropped near the doorway leading to the elevator. I watch him cross the living room to turn down the opposite hall to his bedroom, listen as the door unlocks, swings open, then closes again.
That’s when the tears start. I’m not just being held prisoner, I’m trapped by a man who kills.
My head falls back against the boo
kshelf, and I give myself a few minutes to feel the terror that realization evokes.
And sadly, I still don’t know the half of it.
Mentally, I start counting the number of my friends who disappeared. The strange coincidences and occurrences. The stuff that I used to lose all the time, placing it down somewhere and never finding it again.
My head rolls over the wood, and I stare down the line of cabinets, wondering if I might find all of it stuffed in boxes, bits and pieces of my life like a trail he’s followed for years.
Anger wells inside my heart. Pure. Violent. So damn hot that I can feel it on my skin, beneath my hair. My fingers curl into fists, and my teeth grind together.
How much of my life has he orchestrated? What paths did I run down that Ari had planned for me? Was I just a fucking puppet? My strings tied to the fingers of a stalker and murderer?
Pushing away from the bookshelf, I spin on it like the cabinets have personally offended me. Throwing them all open, I stare at the myriad of boxes and binders, notebooks I recognize as mine, photos, trinkets, little parts and pieces of my life that he’s collected and stored away.
Not giving a damn about the mess I make, I rip it all out, spread it across the floor, begin tearing open the boxes to find all the evidence of just how close he’s been.
I dump one small box to find all my old fake IDs, every one of them. The clatter of plastic against wood a hushed tone until the IDs lay flat with my photos staring up at me.
In another, I found neatly folded journal entries I’d made in the spiral notebooks I wrote in all the time. My private thoughts invaded. All the words scribbled out with hasty ink, the color smeared by the tears I’d shed writing them.
There are photos of me in random places, sometimes with a friend, most when I was by myself.
He’s stolen several articles of clothing, dumped them all in one box together with the panties he took from me on the night of Grant’s company event.
More concert ticket stubs and wristbands for bars come tumbling out of another box. And this is just the beginning of it.
I feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of crap he’s managed to take from me.
One box contains a wallet I don’t recognize, a fake diamond earring jammed into the leather, and I freeze when I remember where I’ve seen it before.
