Page 26

Della

Turns out that reverse psychology does not work on everyone like I thought. Who knew?

I silently curse while forcing myself up the stairs.

“ Miss Jackson! Come back here .”

I’m tired and I could do with sitting down, but it sounds like I just won a battle I did not foresee winning.

I turn around and walk back down the stairs.

Professor Vincent or Dexter Pieter, the secretive head of the Council, is not in his office. That door is firmly closed.

He’s in the stark white ultra-modern kitchen.

He points at the black stool on the other side of the kitchen island. “Sit.”

My eyes narrow. “I am not a dog.”

As he walks over to me, I wonder if I need to learn to keep my mouth shut so it doesn’t keep getting me into trouble.

I’ve had a painful encounter with three alphas, and I’m not looking for another.

He stops inches away from me and looks me straight in the eye. “If we do this, there are going to be rules.”

“Like?”

“You will come down in the morning, and you will eat your meals instead of disposing of them the way you have been.”

“No, I haven’t,” I lie.

“Do I need to show you the trash you threw out?”

Shit.

“So?”

He takes a step closer, smothering me in his sharp and slightly sweet alpha pheromones. “You will sleep more than you have been.”

“What makes you think?—”

“The bags under your eyes, Miss Jackson.”

Okay, so he might know a little more than I want him to know.

“Stop calling me Miss Jackson,” I tell him, deciding I need to set my own ground rules.

Not because I don’t like it. I like it more than I should. He doesn’t just say my name. He growls it. “And what the hell am I supposed to call you, anyway? Mr. Vincent? Dexter? Head of the Council? Wearer of tweed jackets that make girls sigh? Sir ?”

“Who was sighing?” He looks far too interested in my answer.

“None of your damn business,” I tell him severely.

Me. I did more sighing than I should have.

“Sir.” His expression is inscrutable.

I growl.

I swear he hides a smile as he turns and walks away to open the refrigerator. “Vincent.”

I stare at his back. “What?”

He peers over his shoulder. “You can call me Vincent.”

“Are you seriously telling me you used your real name as your fake name or your fake name as your real name?” I sit at the kitchen island.

“You’re reading too much into it.” He pulls ingredients from a fully stocked refrigerator.

“So, you’re going to help me find those three men?”

I could do it on my own, and but my abductors were rich. Probably so rich they’ll have someone hiding them in the city.

“Killing isn’t an easy thing to do.” He pulls a chopping board from a cupboard and a chef’s knife from a drawer that slides open so smoothly, it doesn’t make a sound.

“That’s okay, I can do it. Just help me find them, and I’ll take care of the rest. Might need a little help to dispose of the bodies, then we can go our separate ways.”

He reduces a red onion to a pile of thin slivers. “How would you do it?”

“Strangling might take too long.” I think about other ways to kill a person. “A bullet would be too fast. Maybe a baseball bat?”

He lifts his head and looks at me.

His expression is utterly blank. “A baseball bat?”

I nod. “Maybe with nails in it, if I knew how to put nails in it.”

After another long stare, he refocuses on the vegetables he’s slicing. “You’ll have nightmares after.”

“I have nightmares now.” I wince the moment the last word leaves my lips. Shit. I said way more than I intended.

He merely nods. “As long as you help me unearth secrets from Haven Academy.”

“Why?”

He lifts his head to look at me. “Because that’s part of our deal.”

“I need more than that.”

One dark eyebrow arches. “More?”

“Yes. I’m not just going to agree until I know why.”

He takes chicken, peppers, and mushrooms from the refrigerator and places them on the counter next to a massive stainless-steel stove. “That’s a big question.”

“No, it’s not. It’s straightforward.”

“Perhaps,” he says in the tone of someone who disagrees.

I watch him dice chicken into thin strips. “What are you doing?”

“Making a chicken stir fry.”

“Why?”

“Because. Tell me everything you remember from the abduction.”

Terror clenches my heart, and a cold sweat covers me from head to toe.

I gulp. “ Everything ?”

He glances at me and adds in a softer voice. “Names, facial descriptions, things like that. Things I can use to identify and track a person.”

I hesitate.

He waits.

I want to say nothing, but I was the one pushing him for a deal. I’d help him, and he’d help me find the alphas who hurt me. His job is going to be significantly harder, if not downright impossible, if I don’t give him something useful.

“Okay,” I eventually say.

I tell him the names I remember and describe the faces of the men who took me. Even though he resumes chopping vegetables as he listens. Something about the way he listens makes me think I could ask him a week from now what I told him and he’d remember every word.

I watch him whip up a chicken stir-fry in minutes, loaded with veggies, chicken, and fresh egg noodles. My mouth waters and my stomach grumbles when ginger, garlic, and soy sauce hit the sizzling skillet.

My mind may struggle with the idea of food, but my stomach isn’t facing that problem.

I blink, surprised when he plates up a single dish and sets it in front of me. “What’s this?”

He presses a fork into my hand. “What does it look like? Chicken stir-fry. Eat.”

I take the fork, since he’s not giving me any choice. He scoops the leftovers into a glass container, placing the lid beside it, presumably to allow it to cool before covering.

“Aren’t you eating?”

He pours a glass of water and places it in front of me. “Here. I’m not hungry.”

I open my mouth to complain, only for him to walk out of the kitchen and return moments later with a file, which he places on the kitchen island beside me and flips open.

“What are you doing?” I ask, squinting at the paper.

Honestly, the first words are so dull that I’m instantly bored out of my mind by whatever corporate nonsense he’s reading.

“Working while you eat.”

“Because?”

He levels me a stare. “We had a deal, didn’t we?”

“Well, yes. But I didn’t expect you to be cooking me a meal.” I pick at the stir-fry.

It smells good, but I’m not hungry, even though I should be, having gone days without eating. A glass of water and dry crackers aren’t nearly enough to sustain a person.

“Della?”

I lift my head. “Yeah?”

He’s not paying attention to his file; he’s focused on me. “You’re not eating.”

I can admit that I haven’t been okay these last few days, or I can eat this chicken stir-fry. I eat the stir-fry.

I don’t finish everything, managing a quarter before I’m full.

“Done?” Vincent asks, closing his file.

Nodding, I drain my glass of water.

He stands up and scrapes my plate into the trash. The dirty plate and fork go into the dishwasher. “Leftovers are in the refrigerator when you want them,” he says, snapping a plastic lid on the glass container and sliding it into the refrigerator. “We’ll start working in two days.”

“Why two days?”

“You need to eat, and I need time to decide how much to tell you.”

“You could tell me all of it,” I suggest.

He stares at me,

Okay, he doesn’t trust easily. I can relate to that.

A sudden wave of exhaustion washes over me, and I yawn as I get to my feet. “Well, good night.”

I feel him watching me walk up the stairs, gripping the banister for support.

The moment I walk into my room and see the balcony, I remember the disturbing thing I nearly did, and I’m terrified I might do it again.

Backing out of my room, I close the door and hover in the hallway.

Several doors are closed, and I don’t know which room belongs to whom. I take a comforter from my bed and wrap it around myself before tiptoeing downstairs again.

Vincent is no longer in the kitchen. He isn’t talking in his office anymore, but since I didn’t hear him come upstairs and his file is missing from the kitchen island, he must have retreated there to continue his work.

I find the living room and walk behind an uncomfortable-looking white couch. With my comforter wrapped around me, I settle down on the hardwood floor. Then I close my eyes, hoping that tomorrow I can get a little closer to the Della I used to be.

This Della is truly pathetic.