My eyes flicked to the clock on the bedside table. “I’m going to have to go, Carolyn, I’m meeting Ned downstairs in the lobby in ten minutes. When you get ahold of Justine, please tell her I’m sorry and give her my love.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
PRESENT
Something wakes me, the sound of the door closing. I sit up and something falls from my shoulders. My blanket. It’s back.
I stretch out my hand and find a tray. The last four had been left inside the door. Does this mean that my punishment is finally over? My spirits lift. I wish I hadn’t been asleep when the tray was brought. I’ve missed my captor, missed his presence.
Maybe it’s because my punishment appears to be over, and I no longer need to obsess about lack of food or human contact, my mind keeps returning to the past. So far, I’ve managed to bury the absolute horror of the few days before Ned and I were kidnapped somewhere deep inside me, terrified that if I gave in to it, grief would make me lose my mind. But now their faces—Justine, Lina, Hunter—loom in the darkness. Please, not now. Don’t let me break now.
I do everything I can to block them out. I pace the room, counting furiously in an attempt to focus my mind on something other than those memories. When that doesn’t work, I lie under my blanket, my eyes shut tight, my fingers in my ears, not wanting to see, not wanting to hear. But nothing works, and sobs rack my body. Aware of Ned being able to hear me, I jam my hand into my mouth so that no sound escapes.
By the time my captor brings my evening tray, despair and loneliness have morphed into a burning resentment.
“Do you even see me?” I spit. “I mean, do you see me—Amelie? Or do you see some poor stupid girl, some poor, stupid, collateral-damage girl? Because that’s not who I am. And I want you to know that. And now that I’ve told you, you can leave. Go back to your worthless life working for violent men who seek to extort money by imprisoning women. I hope you feel good about yourself.”
He has already moved away, and I can’t bear that my words have left him unmoved. Groping for the tray, I pick it up, knocking everything off it, and aim blindly for his departing back. I hear a thud, then a grunt.
“Got you!” I yell.
The door slams shut, and I burst into fresh tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PAST
In the hotel room, I dressed quickly, struggling to process what Carolyn had just told me. I couldn’t believe that the man I’d spent six days with—the man I’d just married—could have done something so terrible. But Justine wouldn’t have made it up.
My fingers were shaking so much I could barely zip up my dress. What would Carolyn think when she heard that Ned and I were married? I needed to tell her face-to-face—and in spite of what Ned had said, I would tell her the truth. There was no way I was going to pretend that Ned and I had been in a secret relationship and that I was so in love with him I’d said yes when he proposed. Our deal was off. I didn’t want his money; the thought of it made me sick.
I’d have given anything to be able to say that I hadn’t been thinking straight when Ned had put his proposition to me, that the champagne and wine I’d drunk had clouded my judgment. But I couldn’t lie, not to myself, not to anyone else. I had gone into our arrangement with my eyes wide open, and my head turned at the idea of living a life of luxury for a month. Waves of shame rolled through me. How could I have been so stupid?
And now there was Justine to worry about. Carolyn had said that she wasn’t answering her phone. I suddenly remembered what Ned had said, that she had gone to Paris to interview Ophélie Tessier. Maybe that was why she wasn’t answering Carolyn’s calls. Or had she never gone, after Ned assaulted her? Because if she’d filed a complaint against Ned, why would she continue working for him? On the other hand, why should she give up a job that she loved, or hide herself away, when she had done nothing wrong? And what about Ned? Did he know about the complaint Justine had filed?
A knock at the door made me jump; it would be someone to collect my luggage. My suitcase was still open on the bed, I closed the lid quickly and opened the door.
Ned was standing there.
“Good morning,” he said, then stopped. “Is everything alright? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
I had to stop myself from backing away from him. “I—I thought we were meeting downstairs,” I stuttered, my heart crashing in my chest.
“It wouldn’t look very good if we arrived in the lobby separately,” Ned said, amused. “Now that we’re married.”