I stared at him as my frustration and fear swirled through me. By the time I spoke, the fear had won out and my voice was nothing more than a breath leaving my lips. “Yes.”
He moved to cross his arms back over his chest, and thought for a second. “This is a starter room, Blackbird. When I think you’re ready, you’ll be allowed to move out and have free rein of the entire upstairs of my home. There is a kitchen up here, other bedrooms that you can choose from since no one else is here, and plenty of windows. Once I completely trust you, you will be allowed anywhere in this house, and out of it as long as I’ve approved where you’re going.”
“Out?” I whispered. “You would let me out?”
A wicked smirk pulled at his full lips. “Like I said, that will only be once I trust you. By that point, I won’t be worried about you trying to run.”
There would never come a time where I would want to stay.
“If we don’t ever get to that point, you won’t leave this level of the house,” he added quickly, diminishing my hopes of running from him. “Once you’re out of this room and have picked a new one, you’ll have a closet that we will fill. Until then, you’re only allowed the robes because you need to understand that you are mine and that means your body is mine. I want you comfortable in nothing around me.”
My head shook as he spoke. Again, something that would never happen.
“Your body is mine, but that doesn’t mean you’re here for sex, Blackbird. If you’d been bought by someone else, you might have ended up as a sex slave. Most of us don’t see the women we buy that way. You’ll help cook and clean, take care of the house . . .” He lifted a shoulder in an easy shrug. “You’ll take care of me and I’ll take care you.”
I blinked slowly, trying to process what he had told me. “I-I-I,” I stuttered, then stopped trying to speak, because I didn’t even understand how to phrase the question in my head. Instead, I said, “You said no one else was here.”
He nodded. “Yet.”
My eyebrows rose. “Yet? Who will be coming here?”
“You are only one of many women who will end up in this house.”
“How long do we each stay?” I asked, and embarrassed heat filled my cheeks when he barked out a laugh.
“Forever, Blackbird. My mentor has thirteen women in his home.”
Thirteen?
It felt like I had been punched. “Thirteen? I don’t—why? Why do you—why can’t I just go then? Who wants or can handle that many wives?”
“Wives?” he asked condescendingly. “No. Women. Life partners. I will never marry any of you. I will never enter into a relationship with any of you. As I said, I own you, just as I will own them. There is nothing more to it.”
Tears burned at my eyes, and my fingers automatically went to play with my ring before I remembered it wasn’t there. As I had so many times over the last week, I wondered how I had ended up here.
I was supposed to be getting married soon.
We wanted to have kids and move to a large plot of land where we could have horses, cows, and goats. And instead of a farm and the man of my dreams, I got the devil and twelve other women.
“You aren’t meant to have multiple life partners. There’s supposed to be one and that’s it,” I whispered, and clutched at my chest, trying in vain to pull the invisible weight from it. “A life partner is someone you love and want to spend the rest of your life with. Not someone you claim to own. You can’t force someone into that—or multiple people for that matter.”
One dark brow arched in response. In challenge.
I gripped at my chest harder, still searching for the weight pressing down, and tried to force my tears back.
And then it struck me. The man said if I ever gained his trust, I could leave.
I knew what I had to do. I had to do whatever it took to get out of here. To get out of this nightmare and back to my life with Kyle.
The man suddenly snatched my left hand from my chest and brought it closer to him, as if inspecting it.
I slowly looked up at him, but never asked what he was doing.
“What is your name?” he asked gruffly.
Was he testing me? I thought of the furious look on his face before, and said, “B-blackbird?” making it sound like a question.
An amused smile played at his lips for a second before it was gone. “No, what is your name?” he demanded.
“Briar Chapman.”
His eyes drifted to the side, away from me, and after a moment he dropped my hand. “Not anymore. Your last name is Holt, do you understand?” He didn’t wait for me to respond before he turned and left.
Once the door slammed shut and locked, I glanced at my hand.
What had he been looking at?
Chapter 10
Day 7 with Blackbird
Lucas
I stared at the screen of my computer as minutes came and went, unable to make myself do what I wanted—and knew I shouldn’t.
She’s just getting into your head. They probably all will. They’ll all lie.
I thought about the paper with the notes on it about Atlanta, and tried to tell myself that that was the truth. That everything Briar had said about parents and a fiancé had been a lie.
But I had seen the grief when she’d said his name. I had seen the faint tan line on her finger from a ring. And now I was about to break the rules and destroy myself to find out the truth about her when it was the last thing I should ever know.
I pulled up a news page and went to the list of breaking news links. My eyes darted down to the second one, and my hand tightened on the cursor.
Missing Georgia woman, ‘Briar Chapman’, details.
Just below that, another.
Georgia Governor, Judy Armstrong, speaks out about missing future daughter-in-law.
Forcing myself to breathe, I clicked on the top link and dropped my head to stare at the desk.
I was fucking shaking.
I tried to talk myself out of looking at the news story, but before I could click out of the web browser, I caught sight of the picture of a smiling blonde and felt the same pull I had every time I had looked at her this week.
Dread deepened as I read every word of the article. Certain parts stood out: hard worker, loved by all, weeks away from wedding, graduated summa cum laude from University of Georgia.
“Christ,” I hissed as I continued on, and found where they had interviewed Georgia Governor’s son, Kyle Armstrong . . . her fiancé.
Everyone was sure she wasn’t a runaway. Her fiancé explained that they’d been headed out to brunch with his parents when a friend had come asking for help, and Briar had gone into work at the last minute for said friend.
. . . never worked a Sunday . . . Armstrong thinks friend might be in danger, too . . . friend’s father brought in for questioning.
Friend’s father.
Her father.
Shit.
I shoved away from my desk and gripped at my hair. My breaths came out in hard rushes and sounded like I was in pain. I wanted to be. I wanted to be in the worst kind of pain, only to find something that hurt more.
They had grabbed the wrong girl.
Briar hadn’t been lying. She’d been taken by mistake.