Page 11 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Florentine

I bathed. I slept. I woke up in a strange—and so freaking comfortable—bed and I was led to the breakfast table after redressing in my clothes. I know, not the most hygienic thing to do, but I was right, nothing fits in that damn closet.

I’m served coffee and croissants with toasted bread, but I don’t have time to eat more than a single piece of toast before it all starts.

As soon as Brice enters the room, Charles—who came to pick me up for breakfast—disappears.

“I want you to fix me,” Brice says without even a good morning or any niceties.

I guess now is when I discover why I’m here.

But fix him?

“How?” I ask him, because I really don’t understand what he expects from me.

“I heard you’re a genius, so you’ll find a way,” he says, and I wait for him to elaborate, but he adds nothing.

Does he think he can say things like that and not explain what he means?

What the hell is wrong with that man?

“And what, pray tell, am I supposed to fix?” I ask with a falsely sweet voice. Inside, I’m fuming.

“My brain,” is the only answer Brice gives, and all my angry heat falls like a soufflé. Instead, all I can feel is disbelief.

What does he think I can do?

“I’m an electrician. I don’t fix brains.

I fix holos, I fix any machine, hell, I fix and make weapons, but I’m not a freaking surgeon.

I don’t do humans or, well, shifters. I don’t fix the living.

I fix things that are sometimes semi-sentient,” talking about you Milton , “but never things that can feel or breathe.”

“Who said I can feel anything?” Brice asks me as he brings his cup of coffee to his mouth.

He seems completely unbothered when I look shocked.

The contrast between the two of us is jarring.

“Wait. You can’t feel? What do you mean you can’t feel?” I ask, taken aback by his question.

“Exactly what I mean,” he tells me as he brings back his cup of coffee to his lips.

If I wasn’t so annoyed with him just now, I would love for those full lips to be on me.

Wait, Flo, no daydreaming about your captor. You’re a prisoner here. You can’t catch Stockholm syndrome after just a day.

That doesn’t prevent me from studying the man in front of me.

I have no idea how old he is. If he was human, I would easily say that he is in his early forties, but he’s a shifter, so I know he must be older than that.

No matter his age though, he looks handsome.

Short black hair graying at the temples, deep green eyes that look like they can see through me, high cheekbones, and a square jaw that is dusted with a very short beard seem very unfair on someone so stiff and curt.

“Please, leave me hanging and don’t finish your explanation,” I answer Brice sarcastically.

It’s not lost on me that the table in the dining room is big enough to sit twelve people and that he decided to sit on the opposite side of where my breakfast was served.

He wants me here as much as I want to stay.

I’m just a means to an end, even if so far I have no clue how he expects me to find a solution to his problem.

“I’ll show you after breakfast,” he tells me in an ominous tone. He then ignores me and proceeds to eat his toast.

In silence.

I don’t know what is wrong with that man and his silence, but it’s slowly—who am I kidding, not slowly at all—grating on my nerves.

I keep my eyes on my plate and eat my buttered toast and croissant, trying to avoid sneaking glances at the tall asshole sitting on the other side of the table.

If he wasn’t meticulously eating his toast and drinking his coffee, he could easily pass for a statue. You know, the ones in the museums from the Greek gods era.

I don’t know if it’s a bat thing, but it for sure leans into the Vampire myth that made them out to be unbreathing creatures.