Page 5 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

FOUR

TRINITY

It’d been weeks since I’d painted at the club.

After the strange, compelling man I’d painted with a galaxy, I had a few other clients, one of whom hired me to paint murals on every wall in his huge ass mansion.

He’d promised to cover all my living expenses, plus a hefty salary for the labor, and the cost of the supplies.

I couldn’t afford to turn him down, so I told Minnie, the owner, that I was taking a hiatus, and she promised that when I was ready to come back, the spot would be mine.

I hadn’t had a chance to test that promise, though, because the second I stepped foot inside this man’s fucking house, he had me microchipped with a tracking bracelet I couldn’t get off my ankle, and I’d been trapped here ever since.

I should have known the gig was too good to be true.

He made threats of what would happen to me if I tried to run away, and I believed him. I’d seen the kinds of men he associated with. I wanted nothing to do with them. But I was going insane, and no doubt my parents were, too, considering I’d been unreachable for almost a month.

There was no end in sight, either. No telling how long I’d be here, stuck at the beck and call of this man who’d made me strip bare and traipse around his house with paints in tow, making color appear on the canvas of every bare wall in his world.

Color he didn’t deserve. Color that it pained me to see whenever I walked past it each day.

Color that did nothing to brighten the bleak future I had if I ever ran out of walls to paint.

And heavens help me if he decided anytime soon that I’d be better used as a hole to fuck. For now, at least, he wasn’t pursuing sex with me. Or raping me. Small miracles, I guess. All things considered, I had to take the small wins where I could find them.

I wondered if I’d ever see the outside world again.

Or if I were forever stuck here, painting the colors of a sunset from memory, imagining the night sky without a window between me and the realness of it. If I’d ever feel the ocean swallowing the sand between my toes as it rushed in and back out from the shore, taking a part of me with it.

If I’d ever find Keehn, or what happened to him. That cop wearing his name had to be here somewhere. I just hadn’t managed to unearth him yet.

And I never would, now.