Page 25 of Captive Promise

I scowl at him. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting, Katerina.” The corner of his mouth moves into not quite a smile. He’s entirely too pleased with himself, and I hate that some idiot part of my brain still finds it as good-looking instead of infuriating.

Both things are apparently true at once now. I don’t love that about myself.

I stay close enough to watch his hands and focus hard on my coffee, like breakfast is the most interesting thing happening at this table.

“You said you move her.” I keep my voice light. Bored, almost. “How often?”

He leans back in his chair, and he looks amused, like he’s watching me pick up a script he already knows the ending to.

“You’ve decided to interrogate me over breakfast,” he remarks, his gaze on me. “Go on, then. I’ll even try to make it interesting for you.”

Fucking prick. “How often do you move her?”

His jaw ticks briefly. If I hadn’t spent ten years learning to catch the truth under what people actually say, I’d have missed it completely. He reaches for his coffee cup and takes a sip he clearly doesn’t need.

Got yah, asshole.

“Often enough,” he responds, his face still impassive.

“Often enough that even you don’t always know exactly where she is right this second?” I ask, watching him carefully over the rim of my own cup.

“I always know exactly where she is.” There’s no tell this time, but that’s also a tell, too.

“Then tell me.”

“No.”

If I could pout, I would. “Why not? If you’re so sure I’m never getting out of here to do anything with the information?”

The look he gives me is almost pleased, like I’ve said something clever. “Because the not-knowing is doing something to you that I find I like very much.” He tilts his head, like a predator assessing its prey. “You’re leaning forward. Did you notice? You’ve been leaning toward me for the last two minutes like I’m about to hand you the answer if you just get close enough.”

I sit back so fast my spine cracks against the chair.

He laughs lowly and it’s delighted and infuriating before he goes back to his phone like he’s won something.

My ears are hot and I’m furious that he clocked me reading him at the exact moment I thought I was doing the reading.

Fine. Breakfast is a wash, but I’m not a quitter.

I don’t get anything else out of him.

He just watches me try, clearly enjoying it, until I give up, push back from the table harder than I mean to, and mutter something about needing air.

He doesn’t stop me, but then again, why would he, when the whole estate is a very beautiful, very expensive leash?

I storm off in the vague direction of outside and end up nowhere near the patio, because I’m too busy fuming to actually navigate.

Somewhere around the second hallway I stop pretending I have a destination and admit the truth: I’m bored out of my mind and pissed and I have nothing to do with either feeling except walk.

So I walk down the east hall, past a sitting room I haven’t seen, past a closed door, then another, counting them without meaning to, because this is how I entertain myself now.

My hands trail over the wood of the doors absent-mindedly.

I’m three doors down before I register that the last one isn’t completely shut, unlike every other room in this goddamn fortress.

I stop dead in my tracks and immediately look around, like I’m some spy in an action movie.