Page 17 of Beautiful Ruins
A desperate one.
I’d known it was shady as shit.I’d known better.But Nathan hadn’t answered his phone.He hadn’t come home.And despite everything—despite the lies, the half-truths, the habits he brushed off as nothing—I’d panicked.
He’d been the first good thing to happen to me in a long time.
Flawed.Messy.A shithead, honestly.He mooched off me, treated my tiny studio like a crash pad, and always seemed to be hiding something.But he made me laugh.Made me feel wanted.And when you’d been alone for long enough, that felt like enough.
So I’d gone looking for him.And now I was here.
Mixed up with a man whose name I barely knew, who commanded a small army like it was nothing, who lived behind gates and cameras and loyalty I couldn’t wrap my head around.I didn’t even know men like this existed.Not outside movies or news headlines that felt far away and unreal.
Compared to him, Nathan was a boy playing dress-up.
I wondered where he was now.If he’d gone back to my studio and found it empty.If he’d noticed my jacket gone, my shoes missing.
Would he come looking for me?
The thought almost made me laugh.Almost made me cry.
For a split second, I imagined him bursting through the gates, demanding answers, rescuing me like some sort of hero.And then I wanted to slap myself for even thinking it.
Nathan wasn’t a hero.
He never had been.He was a taker.A liar.A man who hoarded secrets the way other people collected excuses.When things got hard, he didn’t run toward the fire—he vanished.Slipped out the side door.Let someone else deal with the fallout.
Whatever story he told himself about my absence, it wouldn’t end with him searching the city or kicking down doors.It would end with him crashing in my tiny studio, convincing himself I’d left him, and staying there until the landlord finally lost patience and evicted his pathetic ass over the rent he’d never bothered to pay.
Realizing that hurt more than the locked doors ever could.
So I adjusted.
I stopped trying to convince him—my captor—all at once that he was wrong about me.Stopped laughing in disbelief when he accused me of things I barely understood.I answered what I could.Carefully.I stayed honest where it didn’t cost me anything and vague where it might.I let him believe he was peeling me back layer by layer, uncovering something calculated and destructive beneath the surface.
If he wanted a spy, fine.
I’d be the worst one he’d ever met.
Because as long as he was watching me—as long as I held his attention—he wasn’t killing me.And for now, that was enough.
The walk-in bathroomwas bigger than my entire studio apartment.Bigger than my kitchen, my bed, and my questionable life choices combined.Everything was done in soft neutrals—stone, glass, brushed metal—and even without an education in obscene wealth, I knew this place had been built with the kind of budget that didn’t blink at five figures for a faucet.
He hadn’t made a rule about showering.Which felt like an oversight on his part, but I wasn’t about to point that out.
I stepped inside and locked the door behind me, grateful it actuallyhada lock.Privacy felt like a luxury lately.Especially when your captor had a habit of appearing without warning, like an expensive, brooding ghost.
The shower warmed almost instantly.No waiting.No sputtering protest.Just heat.Real heat.The water slid over me in a steady, unapologetic stream, washing away sweat, grime, and the faint sense that I’d been operating in survival mode for far too long.I stood there longer than necessary, letting it soak into my shoulders, my spine, my thoughts.
There were bottles lined up on a stone ledge—shampoo, conditioner, body wash—all matching, all smugly minimalist.Something with pomegranate.I used it on my hair, then my body, lathering until the steam carried a scent that felt bright and foreign and indulgent.Clean.Expensive.Not me.
I didn’t want to leave the spray.It had been so long since I’d had a shower where I didn’t worry about the water turning cold, or someone pounding on the door, or the clock ticking down my comfort.Maybe I never had.When I finally stepped back, it felt like surrendering something.
Wrapped in a towel, I reached for my clothes—and froze.
They were gone.
Well.Not gone.Just sitting where I’d discarded them in a laundry basket in the corner, suddenly filthy by comparison.I stared at them, then at myself in the mirror, damp and bare and painfully aware of the problem.
I dried off quickly and slipped into the walk-in closet, hoping for a miracle.Instead, I found rows and rows of men’s suits.Dark, tailored, precise.The kind of wardrobe that suggested control issues and very good lawyers.Whoever they belonged to had opinions about power and presentation.
