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Linzey

“I hate you. You know that?” I growled at the immovable, infuriatingly handsome and frustrating man blocking the exit to my home.

“All I said was, wait five minutes and I’ll escort you,” he replied evenly, nonplussed by my outburst, the most recent of hundreds over the past four years.

Clad in a perfectly crisp bespoke suit that fit his body to a tee and emphasized his wealth and power, Adler rarely broke character as my stone-faced bodyguard.

Rarely except for when he climbed into my bed in the dead of night when all the shadows of the past loomed closer.

To be sure, he wasn’t there for sex. I couldn’t imagine him getting into my bed for that.

Well… No, that wasn’t right. I could imagine it.

I had imagined it. Many times. But actually happening?

Yeah, no. Sex with him wouldn’t happen…never…

ever. When he slipped in next to me, it was only to comfort me after nightmares.

To protect me from the demons that tormented me—just an extension of his bodyguard duties, I supposed.

The rest of the time, I got this. My ever-present shadow and all-too-often roadblock. Adler excelled at being unemotional, ultra-reasonable—and at the same time exasperatingly unreasonable —stoic, and more unmovable than my own personal Stone Henge.

Honestly, the man could make Buckingham Palace guards seem emotive.

“I don’t want you to escort me,” I argued. “I’m twenty-one freaking years old. I’m perfectly old enough to take my own damn self to wherever I want to go.”

I just needed to escape here. My home was completely new in the past two years, but after my nightmares, the echoes of the past still lingered. I needed to get away.

His arms crossed, his biceps bulging against the fine fabric of his suit and his pecs stretching his crisp white button-down. “And where do you want to go?”

Where? Anywhere else. I didn’t have a specific destination in mind. A nail salon, a coffee shop, the library or a bookstore, a subway train to nowhere… I just wanted to go out. On my own.

Not that I’d admit it to Adler.

I threw my hands into the air, my palms toward him. “You know what? Never mind. I’ll go just back to my room—the room that’s inside my penthouse for God’s sake—and rot some more in my gilded prison. And you do whatever the heck it is you do in the office—that’s in my penthouse! ”

Ending my tirade on a yell, I spun on the ball of my foot, snatched up my purse, then stomped back to my bedroom—the largest of the four in this place.

It was the only one that would ever be occupied permanently because I would never meet a guy to make a family with.

Strike that. I’d met the man I wanted, an irritating, annoying man.

He was the only person I wanted to fill the position as my life partner and father of my imaginary children.

But he wasn’t remotely interested in me, so I’d probably die alone. Alone but well protected.

The slam of my bedroom door failed to satisfy me since my expensive jail had fancy air hinges or whatever the heck they were called.

The door shooshed closed quietly, resisting when I shoved it to move faster.

I was so so so ordering new hinges off the internet.

I’d install them myself if I had to. I’d spent a good deal of my life poor; I was handy enough to put in new hardware.

I flipped the lock, though I was sure Adler wouldn’t follow me, then sank down, sliding my back against the slick dark-stained wood until my butt hit the highly polished hardwood planks of the bare floor.

I hated this. I was twenty-one, but I had less freedom than when I’d been a teenager.

I almost felt guilty. I was the selfish, ungrateful half-sister to my sister’s Cinderella story.

I’d been given everything I could dream of, right down to an exorbitant allowance that I barely spent, just building up in my bank account.

Adler was part of the deal that came with the new life I’d been thrust into at seventeen.

Getting to see my sister after she married a prince?

Check. Penthouse so I had the illusion of freedom?

Check. Online college? Check. An allowance so I could have any material item I could ever desire? Check. Sounded like a dream.

But all of it came with a stipulation. I posed a vulnerability for my sister, a possible target to coerce access to her.

Because of that, I’d been given everything behind Door Number One, as long as I consented to constant protection.

No agreement, no access to my older sister, my only living family member.

Of course, I’d said yes. Truly, I didn’t care about all the trappings of wealth. Sure, they’d been fun at first, every poor girl’s dream, but it grew old. All I really wanted was my family. Without my compliance, I wouldn’t even have that.

So Booker, my brother-in-law, gave me his prized personal protection guard, his best friend, Adler. The poor guy had ended up demoted from guarding a prince to watching a girl twelve years younger than himself.

And Adler had been my bodyguard since he and Booker had rescued my sister, Marigold, and me from Rod, the deranged pervert who’d kidnapped us. Marigold had been lucky. He hadn’t had much of a chance to do anything to her. Me…

Well, the guy was her stalker, and I was collateral damage.

I’d been his captive for two weeks.

Now, I had nightmares.

And coping mechanisms no one knew about.

And a bodyguard who didn’t give me an inch.

For my own protection.

Ridiculous. The person who’d taken me was in prison, and I wasn’t a royal like my sister. None of it was for my safety.

It was for my sister and Booker. While I’d been captive, she’d met a freaking royal heir, her proverbial prince charming, who was the second son of the ruling family of Zenderland and third in line for the throne of the small European principality.

She’d married him right after the rescue four years ago.

I’d been collateral damage then, and I was collateral damage now.

No one really wanted me. Not Rod. Not some proverbial dissidents, wanting leverage with the Zenderland monarchy. And not the bodyguard who was stuck watching my ass, day in and day out.

Of course, he didn’t watch my actual ass.

Closing my eyes, I drew up my knees, tipped my head back against the door and took deep breaths to ease my anxiety. Every thought rattling through my thoughts sounded like a bunch of woe is me . And I really wanted to kick my own ass.

Mostly, the situation just pissed me off.

I was stuck, bound in place and unable to do anything about it.

Today, I’d just needed to get out of here, to escape the nightmares still taunting me, even into waking.

Four years out from the terror and the memories remained as vivid as they were yesterday.

Even now, hours after leaving bed, my throat constricted with the memory of the chain tight around my neck, choking me while I fought my captor or shivered from the bone-deep cold that had been a constant ache.

“It’s not real. It’s not real,” I whispered, rubbing a hand hard over my neck and swallowing. “It’s not real. He’s in prison. He can’t hurt me. He can’t touch me. He can’t…”

My lips snapped shut, teeth grinding. I would not speak of what he’d done.

The people around me didn’t know. Except Adler.

He’d taken me to the doctors who’d secretly treated me.

And my legal team and the authorities knew.

Talking to them about Rod’s upcoming trial had likely brought on last night’s nightmare.

Four years later and I’d have to face him again because his lawyers had successfully appealed to have his murder trial separated from the assault and kidnapping charges—and because the judge knew Marigold’s case would be high profile, mine had been separated from hers, as well.

In the coming weeks, I’d have to take the stand and come face-to-face with him for the first time since his trial for murdering my mother.

I hadn’t witnessed it, but he’d taunted me with it, threatened me with the same, while he’d had me. I’d been glad to see him convicted. She hadn’t been a good mom or really even a good person, but she hadn’t deserved to be murdered because she’d stood in a stalker’s path.

Huddled against my door, I shuddered as my brain spiraled into dark thoughts. My breathing grew choppy, bile burning in my throat. I swallowed hard and clenched my fists as I stared blindly across the room.

Adler had no idea I needed to leave the penthouse to escape the specters that haunted me today, exactly four years since that unspeakable day when Rod had grabbed me on my way home from school.

Black pinpoints danced in front of my eyes, and my chest ached.

Damn it! I’d been holding my breath again.

If he doesn’t hear me breathing, if I don’t move, maybe he’ll forget I’m here.

The sound of a belt clearing its loops. A scream clawing into my throat—

No!

Damn it, no! I wasn’t falling into a flashback!

Gritting my teeth, I brutally pinched the skin on the inside of my elbow to bring me back to the here and now. Focusing on the pain loosened the grip of my past, pushed away the clouds for a moment.

Heaving a breath, I lurched to my feet and yanked off the jacket and light sweater I’d put on this morning.

Not caring that I was in jeans and a blouse, rather than workout gear, I strode over to the treadmill stationed near the big glass windows that bordered the length of one bedroom wall.

From there, I could see a huge swath of Central Park and nearby city buildings.

I could see the trees blooming, spring bringing the world back to life, the tiny people scurrying from place to place on the streets and sidewalks, the tourists on carriage rides.

The world was visible from my gilded cage, but I’d hardly notice a bit of it while I ran until I forgot anything but the relief of exhaustion dulling my thoughts.

I wouldn’t feel except for the ache of my bones from the repeated jar of my feet hitting the track and the weakness in my muscles from running miles but going nowhere.

And maybe, for a little while, I just wouldn’t feel at all.