Page 64 of Dark Duet: Platinum Edition

“Yes! Yes, Master, I’m prideful. I’m sorry!”

“Is your pride worth the situation you are in?”

Caleb let her go and watched as she placed her hands on the floor and cried with her head bowed. “No, Master.”

He’d done what he set out to do. “Exactly, Kitten. Your pride isn’t worth it. It’s not worth the pain. It’s not worth the torture I, or anyone else, could put you through. It sure as fuck isn’t worth your life. Be smart! Fight the battles you can win and accept the ones you can’t. That’s how you survive.”That’s how you avoid being tied to a fucking mattress and soaked in your own blood.

“I’m sorry! Please…just stop. Don’t be this way anymore. I can’t stand it! I can’t stand being with you and not knowing who you are from one moment to the next!” Kitten cried.

Caleb buttoned his pants and crouched with one knee on the floor, pulling Kitten into his arms. She offered no resistance; her arms wound around his neck as though she had been desperate for them to be there all along, and she sobbed into his neck.

“I like you so much better when you’re like this,” she whispered as she pressed her lips to his neck softly, over and over as though she sought to calm him, when it was her in need of calming.

“What you like or don’t like is irrelevant, Kitten,” he answered, gently. She went still – not tense, just lax. “That’s what you need to start expecting.” Without another word, Caleb lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bathroom. They both needed to rinse the day away.

They would start fresh in the morning.

Chapter Four

Day 6:

I look around the room and feel let down by the lack of darkness and sterility. I had an image of what an interrogation room might look like: two-way mirror, scratched metal table, a high-watt bulb lighting my face and making me sweat. Instead, the room looks more like a kindergarten classroom, with art projects and motivational sayings glued onto bright construction paper on the walls. I am sitting on a plastic chair, staring at Reed across the round, faux-wood table in front of me.

“Okay,” Reed says. He releases a breath. “Just to get the chronology right: After you were kidnapped, you spent approximately three weeks locked in a dark room, in a city you can’t recall. You escape the man known as ‘Caleb’ and are, almost immediately, held for ransom by a man named ‘Tiny’ and his motorcycle gang. You contact your friend, Nicole Freedman, and ask her to obtain your ransom of one hundred thousand dollars and meet ‘Tiny’ in Chihuahua, Mexico, to exchange your freedom for the money. You never make it to the drop because you arerescued, by ‘Caleb’. In the morning, you discover he has kidnapped two people and held them hostage in their home. He leaves them alive but steals their car. He drives you to Zacatecas, Mexico. You are there forapproximatelythree months.”

There is a long pause, as though he expects me say some other thing that will amaze him. He’ll be vastly disappointed. He ought to start expecting disappointment.

“Is that all correct?” Reed asks.

“You look like you want to spit every time you say his name,” I say without inflection.

“My feelings are irrelevant,” Reed says.

“They’re relevant to me.”

Reed shakes his head and can’t seem to stop himself from giving me his two cents. “He’s a human trafficker, Miss Ruiz, a murderer, and a rapist. He didn’trescueyou. Hecapturedyou. There’s a wide distinction between the two. Have you considered you might have Stockholm Syndrome? Otherwise, I can’t see how you can defend him on any reasonable level.”

My vision is blurry. “He was a lot of things, that’s true enough,” I say. My voice is raspy and my lips tremble with the force of my sorrow. “But he was also more than what you’ve written in your damn reports.” I blink, and glare at Agent Reed. “It was the bikers who tried to rape me. It was the bikers who nearly beat me to death! If Caleb hadn’t stopped them, I’d probably be dead.”

“Is he the one who killed them?” Reed asks insistently.

I take a deep breath and lean back in my chair, wiping the tears from my face. “How would I know?” I shrug. “I was unconscious.”

“I’m not defending what those men did to you. Especially if it happened the way you said it did.”

“Are you implying it didn’t happen that way?”

Reed lets out an exasperated breath. “I didn’t say that. I’m interested in the truth and nothing more.” There’s a long pause, both of us regrouping. “The auction. When is it supposed to happen?”

“Caleb said about a week from now.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Pakistan, somewhere.”

Reed’s questions come at me quickly. I have no choice but to answer just as fast. I don’t want him to mistake my pauses for answers. Worse, I don’t want him to think I’m taking time to form a lie – which I am. “So, according to Caleb and Muhammad Rafiq, Demitri Balk – also referred to as Vladek Rostrovich – is supposed to be there?”

“I guess,” I grind out.