Page 19 of Captive Promise

But then a slow smile curves across his lips. He looks…pleased.

“No,” he says quietly. “I don’t suppose it does.” He inclines his head toward me. “Sleep well, Katerina.” He pauses as if remembering something. “I want to assure you that you’re safe here. Whatever else you believe about me before this is over—and you’ll believe a great many things—believe that. No harm comes to you under this roof. You have my word, even if that doesn’t mean much to you right now.”

Then he’s gone, the door drawn shut behind him, and a beat later I hear the soft snick of a lock turning from the outside.

I’m left standing there with my heart going like I sprinted up the stairs. I hate him.

I hate this fucking house.

And I hate that I spent part of that entire exchange noticing his forearms.

When I finally move, it’s on autopilot.

I shower until my skin goes pink, find soft pajamas in a drawer in exactly my size, and put them on because the alternative is sleeping naked in a stranger’s house and that is not happening.

I devour the sandwiches and fruit, pretending they don’t taste as good as they do.

Then I climb into a bed that’s somehow softer than my own and wait for sleep that doesn’t come.

I lie there for hours.

Every time I close my eyes my brain just starts the morning over again from the top—the call, Nikolai yelling, Seraphina giggling on that screen, the way my knees went out from under me on the steps.

Maybe Nikolai was right.

Maybe I made the worst mistake of my life and won’t know it until it’s too late.

I don’t cry. I won’t give this house that.

But a few hours later, I finally let myself admit the thing I’ve been dodging since the phone rang.

I’m afraid.

4

NICO

She’s awake the next morning by six.

I know because I’m already in my study with coffee and the morning’s reports when the feed shows her door opening and out she comes into the hall in a pair of leggings and a fresh shirt, hair still damp, glancing around the hallway.

I should let her have the illusion of privacy, but I don’t.

I’ve spent two years learning her from a distance and now she’s under my roof, breathing my air, and the idea of looking away from a single minute of it is frankly absurd.

I’ve waited too long. I’ll ration my self-denial some other lifetime.

So I watch and she does exactly what I knew she would. She explores.

What makes me set down my coffee and smile is how she does it.

She’s not acting like a frightened guest wandering a strange house. No, she walks the ground floor room by room, leaving nothing behind her.

She counts doors and looks at the windows.

She finds the keypads and doesn’t touch them, because touching them would tell me she’s thinking about them, and my Katerina would rather I underestimate her.

It’s beautiful to watch, and it tells me something I already suspected and now know for certain.