Chapter 3 · The Golden Cage

Four tones down. Two to go.

I stood at the keypad in a wedding dress with no shoes on, my fingers shaking so hard I had to brace my wrist on the oak.

Every key beeps a different pitch. That's all my father's accountants ever taught me that was worth a damn. Hear a thing once, keep it forever. When the guard locked me in forty minutes ago, I'd counted six tones. I had four right. Maybe five.

I hit the next one.

The pad blinked red and let out a low buzz.

"Shit." I wiped my palm on the silk. "Come on. Come on."

Behind me, the storm hammered the glass wall like somebody wanted in. Forty floors up, the whole Atlantic was throwing itself at the building, and I could still hear my own heartbeat louder than all of it.

My bare thighs felt wrong. Cold. Naked in a way the dress couldn't fix. Lucian's hands had been all the way up my legs on that bridge, and I could still feel the exact places where he'd stopped being gentle. He'd taken the blade. He'd thrown it off the rail like it was trash.

I tried the code again. Different fifth digit.

Red. Buzz.

Then the wall screen above the bar flickered to life, and I forgot the keypad existed.

Mia.

My sister sat on the edge of a narrow bed in a gray room with no windows. Hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands. Her knees bounced the way they always did when she lied about being okay. A man in a black jacket stood by the door with a rifle slung across his chest, and he never looked away from her.

She was nineteen. Three weeks into freshman year. She'd texted me a photo of her architecture studio desk just last Tuesday.

"Mia." I went at the screen, put both hands flat on the glass. "Mia, look at me. Look up."

She couldn't hear me. Of course she couldn't. She just kept picking at her thumbnail, and one of the guards said something, and she flinched.

The footage had a timestamp in the corner. Live. Counting up.

"She ate dinner," Lucian said. "Pasta. Cried a little. Asked if you were hurt."

I didn't turn around. I didn't trust my face.

He was somewhere behind me, and I hadn't heard the door. Three biometric locks on an oak slab, and the man still moved like smoke.

"You can see everything from here," he said. "I wanted you to. So you don't waste another hour on that pad."

"You said she'd be safe."

"She is safe." A beat. "Because you're standing in my house."

I spun around.

He'd shed the tuxedo jacket. White shirt open at the collar, a dark smear across the cuff that was not wine. His sleeves were shoved to the elbow. Forearms corded, knuckles split, and that gun hanging easy at his side like another finger.

He looked at the keypad. Then at me.

"Four tones right," he said, soft. "Impressive."

My stomach dropped through the floor. He'd been watching. Of course he had. A camera in the corner, a little black dot I'd been too busy to see.

"You're a bastard."

"Yes."

"I'll get out."

"No." He took one step. "You won't."

I went for him anyway. Stupid. I knew it was stupid when I did it, but my body had been caged for two hours and my sister was on a screen, and I swung. Open palm, aimed at his jaw.

He caught my wrist before I got halfway.

Not hard. That was what scared me. He caught it like he was stopping a glass from tipping.

"There she is," he murmured.

I threw my knee up. He turned his hip, took it on the thigh, and kept walking me backward. My heels weren't even on. My bare feet slid on the cold floor, and the sound of his breath was suddenly very close.

"Let go."

"Make me."

My back hit marble. The accent wall by the entry. Veined stone, cold enough to bite through the silk, and I gasped. He caught my other wrist and pinned both of them above my head with one hand.

One hand. My whole fight, held in one hand.

He smelled like gun oil and rain and something burned. His thigh pressed between mine, and the dress bunched up under it, and I hated that my pulse jumped at the pressure.

"Look at the screen," he said.

"I don't want to."

"Look."

I looked. Mia had her face in her hands now.

His mouth moved near my ear. "One word from me and that door opens. One more word and the man holding that rifle stops being polite. You understand how this works, Bianca? Every time you run, she pays the toll."

"Don't you touch her."

"Then stop making me."

He lifted his gun with his free hand, not even looking, and fired.

The sound slammed through the room. White flash. A crack like the glass had split. I screamed, and my skull hit the marble, and sparks showered off the wall beside the entry door.

When I could see again, the keypad was gone. Just a black crater, twisted wire, a curl of smoke. The little red light was dead.

"Now there's no code to guess," Lucian said.

My ears were ringing. His hand was still locked around my wrists. His chest was rising and falling against mine, hard, and his eyes were black in the half light.

I'd bitten my lip when my head hit the stone. I tasted copper. A warm drop slid down my chin.

He noticed.

He let go of my wrists, and I should've shoved him, kicked him, anything. I didn't move. His thumb came up and dragged slowly across my lower lip, pulling the blood with it. Rough pad. Callus. He studied the red on his skin like it belonged to him.

"Hurts?" he asked.

"Go to hell."

"Already live there." He smeared the blood across his own thumb, then back to my mouth, gentler this time. "Good. Hold onto that. Hold onto being angry. You'll need it."

His other hand slid down my ribs. Slow. Over the boning of the bodice. Down to the small of my back, where the zipper sat against my spine.

I felt the tab catch between his fingers.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer right away. He just held my eyes, and that gun was still warm against my hip, and the zipper ticked down one slow tooth.

"Contract says three hundred sixty-five nights, little bird." His voice dropped. "Strip that dress off. Right now."