I flip the page and find Connor, her father captured in harsh, angular lines. He looks exactly like what he is: utterly ruthless.
I wonder what it says about Emma that she draws her father this way, with such unflinching honesty.
The next page makes me stop.
It’s me.
Or rather, it’s a caricature of me.
I’m drawn with reasonable accuracy; she got the scar through my eyebrow right, the shape of my jaw, even the way my hair falls across my forehead.
But she’s added ridiculous devil horns curling up from my temples and a villainous mustache that looks like it belongs in a silent film.
I stare at it for a long moment, then I feel a laugh bubbling up in my chest.
She drewdevilhornson me.
And a stupid mustache.
I can picture it perfectly: Emma sitting at this desk, furious at herself for drawing me too realistically, grabbing the pencil and defacing the sketch in petty rebellion.
The image is so perfectly Emma that I have to press my hand over my mouth to smother the laugh before it escapes.
It’s childish but somehow endearing in a way I should not find endearing.
I flip the page, still smiling, expecting to find more sketches of the gardens or maybe more defaced drawings of me.
Instead, I find another portrait.
It’s me again, but this version is different.
I’m drawn in harsh, unflattering lines, the same as her father’s portrait.
My eyes are cold and my mouth is set in a cruel line. I look like exactly what I am: a man who kidnaps women and holds them prisoner and makes them suffer to hurt their fathers.
I look like a monster.
The smile dies on my face.
This is how she really sees me.
Not the man who trades verbal barbs with her or makes sure she’s eating or brings her the books she asks for.
This version—cold and cruel and utterly without redemption.
I should be fine with that.
I want her to see me as a monster.
It makes everything simpler, cleaner.
She’s not a person I’m holding captive, she’s just leverage against Connor.
A tool.
A means to an end.
Except I don’t like it.