Page 182 of The Contract

Maybe she’s safe.

Maybe she’s not.

Zver could be lying through his perfect fucking teeth, and that’s the part that guts me the most.

But he hasn’t touched me. Not yet.

Though somehow, the fucker still finds time to slip into my room and watch me sleep.

Somewhere, a therapist weeps, denied the privilege of dissecting that sick, fucko mind.

My breath deflates and I look around. Technically, it’s not my room.

None of them are.

They’re all his.

Twelve rooms by my count, but that’s just in the half I’m allowed to see.

Though from the yard, I can factor in the other wing. The basement. The guest house. The other guest house. The boat house. And the attic that always feels like it’s watching me back.

By my count, there’s easily three times more.

His estate.

His rules.

His chessboard.

And I’m the piece he refuses to move. The pawn he owns, just waiting in place.

The worry and fear I’ve swallowed every day for two months finally snaps.

I crush the note in my fist, extra violently, then shove it deep into the trash.

I hope he sees it. Let him.

When he’s tiptoeing through the dark to watch me get myself off.

Because yeah.

I know. But—ugh. Two fucking months.

And all this pent-up rage? It has to go somewhere.

When he said the East Wing was mine and the West Wing was his, I assumed “off limits, no exceptions” went both ways.

And for a minute, I thought I could live with that.

Sorely, I was wrong.

The house is vast—gargantuan, really.

Old stone. Vaulted ceilings. With a messy forest wrapped around it like a mom bun on day three.

Charming in the way isolated seaside mansions tend to be. With haunting acres of craggy cliffs that drop straight into black water.

No neighbors. No traffic.

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