Page 63 of Captive Audience
Dramatic is forcing someone to marry you and having them thrown in jail when they don’t go along with your twisted plans.
How do you like your new studio?
I clenched my teeth.
I typed out a response, deleted it, tried again. On the fourth attempt, I gave up. Nothing I wrote made me sound like a decent or remotely sane person.
Husband
Asha, you’re allowed to enjoy the nice things I buy you.
That was the problem.
I hadn’t returned to the studio since Rook had shown it to me, afraid I’d like it too much. Afraid that if I let myself get excited, I was no better than the corrupt people who accepted his bribes.
And I’m also allowed to hate you.
Husband
You only hate me sometimes.
Damn him for stating what I loathed to be true.
I didn’t want to feel sorry for a murderer, even if his brother hadn’t deserved to be killed. And I definitely didn’t want to acknowledge that Rook’s absurd methods to get me here had been less evil than the alternatives—violence, threats, fear.
More than anything, I hated myself for falling into this mess so blindly. As an investigative journalist and true-crime podcaster, I should’ve spotted someone like Rook a mile away.
Wrong.
I’d spent my career shining lights into other people’s darkness and missed the man hiding in mine.
28
ASHA
Itossed the phone onto the desk and exhaled a steadying breath while dragging my hands through my hair. My gaze slid to the partially open door of the studio and the treasure trove of recording gadgets that lay within, beckoning me like a siren’s song. With only three days until my next podcast episode was due, I had to go in there sometime soon but didn’t want to fangirl over things Rook had gifted me.
Was I punishing myself over this unnecessarily? After all, it wasn’t my fault I was stuck here, nor had I asked Rook to splurge on this over-the-top studio.
I needed to talk to my girls to get some perspective. Beth would be my go-to for advice on something like this, but she was usually limited to texting while at work. So I phoned Daisy, putting the call on speaker.
“What’s wrong?” she answered in a serious tone I rarely heard from my bubbly friend.
“Nothing’s wrong. Why would something be wrong?”
“Because you’re calling instead of texting. That usually means you’re about to day drink or cut your own bangs.”
“That happened once!” What else was I supposed to do when my shitty boyfriend cheated on me with the biggest mean girl in college?
“Girl, that’s too many times.”
She had a point.
“I’m fine, okay? The scissors are out of reach.”
I heard glass clinking in the background. Daisy must be mid-setup for one of her lavish weddings. “All jokes aside, you took so long to text us that Beth and I wondered if your coochie had caught fire during your night of sin with McHottie and you’d perished when his bed went up in flames.”
“There’s something wrong with you.”
