The only measure comes from the meals delivered—a granola bar and juice box for what I assume is breakfast. A sandwich and water for lunch. Takeout and soda for dinner.
So this should be day three. Right?
As long as my initial sedation didn’t last longer than the assumed few hours—the same hours when some asshole, or assholes, bathed the burn from my skin while I was unconscious.
Footsteps echo outside the wooden door, the panic-inducing thud heavier and faster than usual.
My body locks tight. My breathing quickens.
The hinges squeal as the door swings wide, but again, there’s no outside sound. No traffic. No voices. Which means if I can’t hear the city… it sure as hell won’t hear me.
Sunlight floods the narrow staircase behind him. I’m underground. In a basement. A dungeon.
I turn my face away and blink against the brightness while the cloaked man before me drags his chair into the center of the light like a stage actor hitting his mark.
I haven’t been able to prove if it’s Bishop or Raffael’s cousin, Matthew, but it’s one of them. I swear they must take turns.
A paper bag is tossed toward my bars. A bottle of water skitters behind it.
Lunch.
Then the voice—that awful, robotic distortion—punishes my ears. “You know the drill. Tell me what I want to know.”
Frustration wraps its hands around my throat and squeezes.
It’s always the same demand. No deviation. Multiple times a day.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I rasp, my voice raw. “I’ve already told you everything.”
I can’t exactly admit to anything that confirms what I did to undermine the Cavallo Group. But if by chance I’m wrong in my abductor assumption, I can’t say anything else either. I won’t expose Raffael’s history. I don’t want to inform a stranger about the agreement and everything tied to it after I vowed to keep it secret.
Not yet, at least.
“Tell me what I want to know,” he repeats.
I scrunch my nose to fight the burn. How long can this go on? How many times do I have to repeat the same thing over and over again? At first I thought this would end soon. But now… what if it doesn’t? What if they stop feeding me? What if they leave me here to rot?
Quinn will blame herself. And after I was so horrible to her…
“I was at the marina with Raffael Cavallo for a business meeting,” I explain like I already have so many times before. “My father recently had a heart attack and appointed me interim CEO. There was a lot to discuss.”
“Tell me what I want to know.”
My pulse increases with the build of hysteria. “Whatdoyou want to know?” I raise to my knees, my bones eating into the cold concrete through my pants. “Ask me.Specifically. I don’t understand what you want from me.”
He stares at me, calm eyes dark through the slits of his balaclava. “Tell me what?—”
“Fuck you,” I snap, turning away from him and slumping back onto my ass. “I know nothing.” I drag my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
“Suit yourself.” He stands, his chair scraping across the floor, my pulse skyrocketing.
Dread seeps all the way to my bones. “What are you doing?” I shove to my feet, my joints aching from lack of exercise as he moves to the door. “Where are you going?”
He ignores me and enters the hall.
“Please don’t do this.” My voice cracks with desperation. “You have to let me go.”
He closes the door behind him. The lock clicks.