Page 10 of Beautiful Ruins
There was no peeling paint, and no mould creeping up the corners.I didn’t hear the rattle of pipes threatening to die mid-shower.
Which somehow made it worse.Because rooms like this weren’t meant for people like me.
Nice rooms were for people who had somewhere to go back to.People who belonged to someone—or were owned by something more permanent than bad luck.Places like this were where you kept what you valued.
Still… it was warm.
Warm in a way I hadn’t felt in years.Warmth that came from heating that actually worked, from walls thick enough to keep the cold out instead of pretending to.I lay there for a moment longer than I meant to, breathing it in, letting my body remember what it felt like not to be braced against the chill.
Whatever waited for me next—interrogation, threats, worse—this was still a hundred times better than waking up shivering in a place with no heat and no hot water, counting coins and hoping the landlord didn’t notice I was late on my rent again.
I pushed myself upright slowly, testing my body.
The restraints were gone.
That realization landed softly but solidly.My wrists were free.My ankles too.No bite of rope or plastic zip ties.Just a dull ache at the base of my skull and the lingering fog of whatever he’d injected me with, dull behind my eyes like sleep hadn’t quite finished with me yet.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood.
The floor was warm beneath my bare feet.
That almost undid me.
I wobbled, catching myself on the edge of the mattress, forcing my legs to remember how to hold me up.
I took a breath.Then another.
For a moment—just one—I let myself pretend this was a fairytale.That I’d woken up in a castle instead of a cage.That princes didn’t always come emerge from the shadows and have blood on their hands.
And then I straightened my spine.Because a girl like me could never attract a Prince Charming.
I tried the door, even though I already knew the outcome.
The handle didn’t budge.It was solid and unyielding.The kind of door built to keep people in—or out—depending on who held the keys.I pressed my forehead briefly against the cool wood, breathing through my nose, then gave the handle one last, pointless jiggle.
“Kidnapping,” I whispered into the room.
“Hospitality,” a voice clarified smoothly behind me.
I spun.
He stood in a doorway I hadn’t noticed—because of course I was too drowsy to notice such an important point—leaning against the frame like he’d always been there.As though he hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere to remind me how vulnerable I was.Arms crossed.Shoulder braced casually.Dark eyes fixed on me with open interest, not an ounce of apology in them.
His beautiful, sharp features and calm set my nerves buzzing.
He’d showered.His hair was still damp, dark strands curling slightly at the ends, water clinging to him like he hadn’t fully shaken it off yet.He’d rolled his sleeves to his elbows, exposing forearms mapped with ink and old scars—layers of story written over damage.
I found myself staring, wondering whether the scars came from a single violent moment or a lifetime of them, whether one night had ruined him or many small wars had slowly claimed his skin.The flesh there was rougher, tougher, not quite healed so much as resigned—leathered by trauma, reshaped by survival.
The tattoos did their best to hide it.Dark lines and deliberate patterns, carefully placed, as if art could negotiate with damage.In some places, it almost worked.Almost.
But there were tells.Along the inside of his forearms, where the skin looked pulled tight and uneven.At the side of his neck, where ink thinned and the texture changed beneath it.Across his hands, where the scars refused to be disguised at all—scrambled, raw-looking, impossible to soften.
This wasn’t decoration.It was evidence.And yet… I almost stumbled at the sight of him.
Fantastic.Even post-kidnapping, he was unfairly attractive.
“You drugged me,” I reminded him.“Dragged me out of a basement.And locked me in your house.”
