Page 13 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HIM

M y love.

That’s what it meant. Why didn’t I fucking tell her?

Instead, I subtly flicked my eyes up from the floor where they’d been forced to look.

Over to the bed, where, in the helpful glow of a lamp someone had switched on, Louisa had gone quiet.

Understandably, since the former gardener—Obadiah, apparently, now, though the repulsive creep scarcely deserved such a grandiose moniker—had strapped a muzzle on over her mouth and nose after Resi had decided she’d heard enough of her screaming and cursing.

What a girl. Too bad she’d never speak to me again, which I deserved.

Though the former gardener’s grip forced my neck down toward the floor, I could just make out her body, still clad in the white lacy thing they’d put her in, chest rising in and out, quivering ever so faintly.

It was those tiny movements, only, that kept me calm.

Kept me able to think. Unfortunately, what I thought was that everything I wanted to say— let her go; it’s me you hate; it’s okay, Lou, I love you, and I’m sorry —were the last liabilities either of us could afford if I had any chance of figuring out a plan to get us out of this while staying alive long enough to actually enact it.

Love. It’s just another thing they use against you.

Even a dumbass like Corey had known that; it was what had landed me with Langer and subsequently here; and if there was one thing that had taught me, it was not to give Resi the same advantage.

Because my life was the kind where protecting the people I loved, more often than not, came down to breaking their hearts.

It had started when Resi, at the precise moment Arlo and Felix had disappeared into their respective bedrooms, informing me that Louisa—my Louisa—was chained to the bed upstairs.

Good, I’d responded without thinking, hating myself for not hitting her right in her blindingly white, artificially aligned incisors. Of course the two gigantic men on either side of her pointing pistols at me probably had something to do with that.

And Resi had laughed. Good boy, she’d said. I’ve got to see this.

So I’d done it. I’d finally stopped calling myself a good actor and actually performed.

Acted like I hated Louisa, terrorizing and violating her and no doubt making her hate me .

I knew Resi could be lying, but if I’d refused, she would have slapped the cuffs on me as soon as I’d walked in the house.

And given that we were now both in chains, it looked like I’d failed anyway.

Still, part of my plan had worked: I’d been able to get one of Louisa’s cuffs loose in the process of face-fucking her, and as far as I could tell, Obadiah hadn’t noticed.

Of course I wasn’t sure Louisa had noticed, either, even though I’d tried to give her a fairly idiotic hint with that yes, and shit.

Anyway, until I figured out something else, I had to stay compliant as Resi, practically quivering herself, trailed one of her long, vanilla-sugar nails—as sharp as a knife’s edge—along my jaw, then tilted it.

Not much else I could do, given I’d been kicked to my knees, still naked though half-covered in a sheet she’d thrown me, my stiff arms and wrecked shoulder silently screaming that they’d had enough.

Meanwhile, my scarred and bruised wrists had been cuffed stiffly behind my back, with Obadiah latched onto one arm and an even bigger, balder guy named Noam on the other, preventing me from doing anything about any of it.

Better they held me, though. Because it meant neither of them was near her.

“Did you say something?” Resi asked lightly, tapping my nose like a naughty puppy. “Please don’t make me muzzle your pretty mouth, too. I like looking at it too much.”

I lowered my eyes, a show of submissiveness that I hoped would draw her attention away from Louisa and her loose cuff, at least for a second.

Buoyed by this, she removed her hand from my jaw and stood back to inspect me, bowed head to bent knees. “Now,” she said, “doesn’t it feel so much better not to be living a lie anymore? To be back where you belong? And,” she added, “and to have her finally see where you belong?”

My heart clenched. The angle was wrong, so I couldn’t see what I wanted to see most: where Louisa’s eyes were fixed, whether she was staring at me in disgust, chained and kicked into submission. Hating me as much as I’d assured Resi I hated her.

Because Resi was right. Louisa had still never seen me like this. She hadn’t seen me at the dealership the day her father had collected me. She hadn’t seen me chained to the fence being whipped. And she hadn’t seen me curled up helplessly in the storage closet, straining to reach her hand.

As if it would make any difference. As if she’d care either way. Right?

Resi moved behind me, crouched down, and stroked the underside of my wrist where I still wore the Rolex, next to where the metal cuff dug in. She let out a girlish gasp at what she found.

“Oh! So you finally did it,” she whispered.

“But you must have known you were just going to exchange one piece of metal for another.” She smiled as she glanced back toward Louisa, raising her voice.

“Sweet, sad boy. Just wanted to pretend to be free for a while. But tell me, did she think you were free? Did you lie and tell her you were, just before you slipped your cock down her throat?”

From Louisa, more thrashing; more desperate, indecipherable noise.

Resi giggled, a cloud of sweet poison mist that seemed to curl through the air and cling to every surface.

She glanced up at the ceiling. “Ah, you managed to convince your girl that that mirror was just a tasteful design element. Nice going. Too bad you didn’t convince me of anything.

” She shrugged innocently. “Oh, cheer up. You both got a lot more action tonight than your buddies did.”

I raised my eyes. Had the two other girls escaped somehow? Fought them off?

“Your bros are gone, likely to the airport and from there to San Francisco,” Resi explained. “A threat to report them to the feds for being accessories to human trafficking means they won’t be back for a while.”

Thank you.

“You must be crushed,” Resi remarked. “I could tell how much you all bonded. Because you have so much in common and everything,” she added.

My face burned, but she only laughed as she gently smoothed my limp hair back from my face.

Her lips parted to reveal her catlike tongue, which flicked around the perimeter of her mouth delicately, her breath soft and delicate and sweet, like all of her edges.

A stinging sea anemone tossed in the current. Beautiful, alluring, and pure artifice.

In a flash, she dropped her hand lower.

I squeezed my eyes shut, the memory of what had happened the last time it had ventured down there still ringing in my pain receptors.

“I know, I know. God, you are so much easier to condition than you think you are. But you know,” she breathed into my ear, “I can make it good, too. For boys and girls. For Alma. For Sloane. Your sister wasn’t as playful, I’m afraid.”

I bit back my growl.

“But I made it really good for Lemaya.” There was something different in the way she spoke this last name. Something in the way her light blue eyes flashed.

I raised my head without thinking, only to have it forced back down toward the floor with a harsh chop to the back of the neck from Noam. “She led me here. It was a trap.”

Resi didn’t seem to notice. “It was a double trap,” she clarified, glancing back at Louisa, forgetting she didn’t want to hear my voice.

Yes . That’s it. Keep the villain talking. Classic stratagem. Let’s go.

Subtly, I tested the cuffs. Obadiah had fucked up the double lock on one of Louisa’s; chances were decent he’d done the same thing with mine. Maybe I could feel for it without either of the goons catching on.

“Your sister and Lemaya became such good friends,” said Resi. “Teaching each other and everything. It was super cute, actually.”

Well, fuck. It seemed that whatever Louisa and Maeve and Erica’s plan had been, it had been doomed from the start the same as mine because we had all been going off the same wrong information—the layout, the locations of the girls, the timing and habits of Resi and the security guards—from Lemaya.

But they had had no reason to disbelieve Maeve, while I had had every reason to disbelieve Lemaya.

Hell, I had disbelieved her, but I’d done it anyway.

She—like the new suits and gold watches and aged bourbon—had been just another accouterment, another accessory, sent in to distract me, to play both me and my sister.

“Where’s Maeve?” I asked.

Resi’s eyes flashed again, but she didn’t answer. I swallowed. What did that mean? Resi hadn’t spoken much about her whereabouts, or those of the other girls, either, except to hint that they’d been mercifully spared the attentions of Arlo and Felix.

“Before Lemaya was either your friend or your sister’s, she was mine,” Resi was explaining, gazing out the narrow window almost nostalgically.

“And no wonder. When you’re the only slave in a crumbling mansion with a filthy, senile owner on death’s door, it doesn’t take much convincing to let someone finish him off for you.

Someone who’s promised you a job, followed by freedom.

And especially someone who’s pulled it off once before. ”

Before?

Suddenly, some puzzle pieces fell into place. “With Max’s—with your father,” I said. “After Max came back. And wrote himself into the will.”