She couldn’t see her feet, but she knew it wasn’t their weight—or her inability to summon her muscles into compliance—that kept them from responding. They were bound beneath the blankets that covered her—the too-charming, pink-and-white checkered comforter—one tied to each post at the end of the bed. Her shoulders ached, her back too, as her hands were stretched up and to her sides. She could see that he’d fashioned strips of torn bedsheets as makeshift ropes to secure her wrists to the canopy bed she lay upon. Several strenuous tugs made it clear that the bindings were sturdy.
Still, she kicked and thrashed anyway. Not caring that it was pointless. Not caring that she was alone and trapped and wearing out her precious reserve of energy.
If she could have, she would’ve screamed too. But the gag across her mouth muffled her voice, making it feel like a hoarse murmur. The anemic sound was lost in the uneven grumbling and humming of the chain saw outside.
The exertion exhausted Violet, and she collapsed, spent, her heart racing out of control as she tried to forget who he was . . . Caine. Tried to forget the things he’d done and the girls he’d killed.
And then she remembered what Rafe had told her about those girls—about Caine himself.
That he wanted them to love him.
Violet settled back, trying to allay her fears. Trying to calculate and plan.
She needed to get out of here. She needed to find a way to make him trust her.
To make him believe she could love him.
It was the only way.
He didn’t visit during the day, she noted. It wasn’t until the sun fell that he ventured into her room, creeping silently.
She knew now that this wasn’t the house Rafe had told her about, the house in the city with a dungeon in its basement. She knew he was keeping her some other place.
She silently thanked her father for teaching her to use the sun as an indicator of time during their treks through the woods. She knew how to mark the passage of hours in the day, and even through the thin gingham curtains, she’d been able to track the shift from morning to afternoon to dusk.
Dusk had been easy, though. That’s when he came.
He carried another tray of dinner, another bowl of pharmaceutical-grade soup. The last thing Violet wanted to do was to eat the soup, though. Not that soup. Yet her stomach growled in protest. She needed the food, she knew. Eventually she’d have to give in; it would do her no good to starve to death. Then she’d never be able to escape.
But it would do her even less good to sleep if this was the only chance she had to gain his trust.
She kept her gaze on him as he switched the overhead light on. Just as she had the night he’d come into her home and attacked her, she couldn’t help noting his golden looks, and she wondered what had made him so dark and sadistic on the inside. She wondered if he even realized that’s what he was, or if he somehow deluded himself into thinking this was okay. That everything he did was okay.
He smiled sheepishly as he came to her side of the bed, and she struggled not to recoil from the imprints that clung to him. “Are you thirsty?”
Against her better judgment, Violet nodded eagerly. The water could easily be drugged too; she wasn’t stupid. But she was so, so thirsty. More so, even, than she was hungry.
“No screaming,” he warned, his eyes narrowing, his hands poised at either side of the gag. She noticed it then, the bandage on his right hand, much smaller than she’d imagined he would need after seeing all the blood at her house. She’d barely nicked him, it seemed.
Her heart beat an erratic rhythm and her chest constricted, but Violet nodded again, this time forcing herself to keep eye contact with him. She needed to make him believe she could love him.
When the rag fell from her lips, she sighed. “Thank you,” she croaked aridly. She tried to smile, but her lips were cracked—the skin too dry, too brittle—making her wince instead.
He frowned as he reached behind him, searching the bedside table. He turned to look, and then balled his fist. Violet could read frustration in every tensed muscle of his body. “I’m sorry,” he ground out. “I should’ve had something for your lips. It’s just . . . this isn’t the right place . . .” He banged his fist on the table and the dishes rattled noisily.
Beside him, Violet jumped too. “It’s . . . okay . . .” She didn’t want to cry, but she was so vulnerable, trapped here with a madman.
He nodded, accepting her acquiescence, and he settled down again, smiling once more. His mood shifts were erratic, not at all subtle, and Violet worried she wasn’t sharp enough to keep up with them.
“Here,” he offered, lifting a glass of water to her lips.
Like the night before, she gulped at it, desperate for as much water as she could get. But he held back, drizzling it slowly, doling out a little at a time.
When he pulled it away, she strained to follow, but the strip of sheet wound around her neck tethered her. Her head snapped, a brutal reminder that she had only so much leeway.
She bit back the desperation that threatened to overwhelm her. “Wh-what’s . . . your name?” Her pulse pounded in the base of her throat and her skin tingled all over. She had no idea what she was doing, if she was saying the wrong things or not. It felt like a dangerous game.
His sharp intake of breath was jarring, and she held her own, worried she’d played him wrong. He glanced down at his hands, a frown on his face as he studied the fists lying in his lap. He’s been quiet for too long, she thought. I pushed him too soon.