Page 40 of Bound By Blood and Lies

“That’s my father,” he says in a shaky voice. “And what? You just want me to wait?”

“I’m just asking you to let me do this properly.”

Felix turns back toward me, with fury still burning bright in his eyes.Then he nods once and the knot in my chest tightens as I process what we have learnt.

I still don’t know where Fae is.

But for the first time since she disappeared…

I know who does.

CHAPTER 12

FAE

Consciousness returns slowly.At first, I don’t move.I simply exist in that quiet, drifting space between sleep and waking. My body feels warm. The mattress beneath me is so soft it sinks under my weight in a way that makes my muscles loosen. Silk slides against my skin when I shift and the pillow cradles my head like a cloud. I breathe in deeply, catching the faint scent of lavender instead of rust and damp concrete. It feels… good. For the first time in weeks my body isn’t bracing for pain.

My shoulders sink deeper into the mattress, and I pull the blanket closer, enjoying the simple, quiet luxury of being warm. I go to stretch but something bites me. It slices clean through the soft haze of sleep, dragging me out of that fragile pocket of comfort. My body jerks awake as thereality of my situation crashes over me so fast it steals the air from my lungs and the room slams into focus all at once.

Light spills down from an enormous chandelier overhead, catching on every polished surface until the whole space glows. The ceiling stretches high above me carved with delicate moulding that feels more like the inside of a palace than a bedroom. Cream panelling lines the walls, broken only by tallmirrors and gilded furniture. Everything is perfect. The kind of perfection that only exists where money flows freely. The bed beneath me is enormous, a towering headboard upholstered in thick, padded velvet that swallows the wall behind it. Silk sheets spill across the mattress and pool around my legs like liquid. The contrast between where I was and where I am now is so jarring my mind struggles to reconcile it.

But none of it matters because there’s a cuff around my wrist.

I simply stare at it, my mind struggling to reconcile the cold weight of steel against my skin with the softness still wrapped around the rest of my body. The metal catches the warm light, glinting faintly against the silk. My gaze follows the chain slowly as it runs across the bed before disappearing into the headboard.

“No,” I whisper.

I jerk backwards on instinct and the cuff pulls at my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm as it digs into my skin and I cry out. Adrenaline floods my body like fire as I sit upright trying to untangle the silk sheets around my legs.

“Fuck,” I spit at the cuff attached to my ankle too.

The metal is a mirror image of the cuff around my wrist, and when I try to stand my legs buckle beneath me. I take a steadying breath as my last memories force their way back in. Fisher’s face hits me first, twisted with the same sick satisfaction he always carried as Robyn’s knife drove into him again and again. And then the door. Standing there like salvation itself when freedom was only inches from our fingertips.

We were so fucking close.

My gaze drops to my body and confusion flickers through the panic. The white dress is gone and my stomach revolts. Someone changed my clothes when I was unconscious. Someone touched me, cleaned me and then dressed me like a doll and left me here. There isn’t a single smear of blood left on my skin. My handlifts to my neck and I wince when my fingers brush the tender puncture there.

“The boss,” I breathe.

Saying it sends a cold ripple through my chest before my heart begins to pound harder against my ribs. The silence in the room suddenly feels too loud as it presses in from every polished wall and velvet surface. My gaze drifts back to the bed, to the untouched pillows and the smooth stretch of silk beside me.

“Robyn?” I squeak out, but silence is the only thing that answers me.

“Robyn?” I call again, louder.

Still nothing.

My body breaks into a cold sweat as my eyes search the enormous bed again, then the floor, then every corner of the room as if she might suddenly appear if I just look hard enough. The chains rattle with every step I take, but it’s almost drowned out by the frantic thud of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. I can’t be separated from her. I just can’t. I only just got her back.

“Robyn!” I scream and my voice echoes off the high ceiling before I collapse into a heap on the floor.

I close my eyes and force a slow breath into my lungs, reaching for the training drilled into me back at university. Panic wastes oxygen. People think Swallows only exist to open their legs or pull a trigger when someone important wants a problem erased, but the truth is we’re trained for far more than that. The men we are forced to deal with don’t always respect the boundaries they’re given. Some of them try to take what isn’t offered. Some of them try to take us. So we learn how to survive it and stay calm when fear tries to hollow you out. I count the inhale slowly, letting the air settle deep in my chest until the violent hammering of my heart begins to ease.

One problem at a time.

My gaze drops back to the cuff around my wrist and I twist it, studying the mechanism with more attention. It’s solid steel; the kind designed by someone who never expected it to be broken. Brute force isn’t going to help me here. The locking system is small and precise and the cuff around my ankle is an exact match. The chain between them is thinner though, and when I shift my arm I notice it gives slightly more than I expected. My mind latches onto it as a possibility, a weak link I might be able to exploit, before a dry scoff slips out of me. Right. Because I’m definitely going to stumble across a pair of bolt cutters in a room like this.

When I pull myself cautiously off the floor, the chain drags after me with a soft scrape across the carpet. I move slowly through the room as I test its limits. Whoever set this up wasn’t interested in pinning me to the bed; the length gives me enough freedom to cross most of the space before it finally pulls tight around my ankle, stopping me roughly five feet from the door. From here it looks perfectly ordinary.Dark polished wood set neatly into the panelled wall, a brass handle catching the light with a reinforced lock sitting just beneath it.I take one more step towards it and the chain snaps taut, jerking me to a stop.