Toxic: A Dark Romance

I don’t answer Gracin, because what is there to say? He doesn’t deserve the courtesy, and I’m too tired to say or do all the things I want to, so I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep until he leaves me alone.

It takes me a few hours to figure out that I’m not in an actual hospital. No, I’m in a bedroom in someone’s house. Gracin’s house. The doctor and a woman I assume is a nurse check in on me for the next few hours. Most of the time, it’s quiet, and when night falls, I let the tears come. They fall in streams down my cheeks. I shake so hard I feel paralyzed, but I let the emotions come. I thought I’d cried all I could in the warehouse, but I was wrong.

It seems to go on forever, until I spend all the energy I have left, leaving me to stare at the wall feeling empty. More empty than I used to after Vic fucked me into submission and ignored me like I was less than a person. That tiny life was the only positive thing that came from the last three years of my life, and now it’s gone.

“Baby?” comes his voice from the darkness. I hear it, but I’m so tired, so thoroughly used up that I can’t summon the energy to move.

I know he means it as a question and not the endearment.

“You were pregnant?” he asks.

“So it would seem,” I say dully. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not anymore.”

“It was mine.” It isn’t a question. He says it like a claim. Like it’s something vital and real. And it was, but it isn’t anymore, and I don’t want to talk to him, especially about this, so I say, “Probably,” even though I know for certain it was.

“It was mine,” he repeats, his voice more insistent. I hear the chair creak, and my aching body tenses, bracing for whatever he has planned next.

He doesn’t touch me as I expect. He just moves the chair closer to my bed. “How?” I can’t tell if he’s merely curious or furious. He wants to know how I lost the baby, but that isn’t something I can talk about right now . . . maybe not ever.

My hands knot in the thin bedclothes. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I pause to clear the tremor in my voice. “Does it matter?”

He sighs, and the sound caresses my skin. I can almost imagine that I feel his breath coasting along my flesh. “I guess not.”

For some reason, his words cause my eyes to water again. I don’t let them come this time, blinking furiously to stem the flow.

The questions bubble up inside me, and I nearly choke on them. The reasons why Gracin did what he did don’t matter anymore. They seem so very childish in comparison to all the things that have happened since then. One day, I’ll demand answers, just not today.

I roll away from him, unwilling to say anything else. Thankfully, he doesn’t pry. I must fall asleep because the next time I open my eyes, I find the sun has risen and I’m alone. I watch the light for a long time before a knock sounds and a young woman enters. She’s wearing scrubs, so I assume she’s at least a nurse. I don’t ask. I also don’t ask how she knows Gracin or came to be in this room taking care of me. I don’t want to know.

“Hello,” she says in a soft voice that is warm and soothing. I want to lean into it for comfort. I want someone to hold me more than anything, but instead, I swing my legs over the side of the bed.

“Would you mind helping me to the restroom?” I ask brusquely.

She nods, her hands efficient and capable as she helps me navigate the wires and tubes and bears my weight as she guides me to a door off to the left. The bathroom is sumptuous with granite countertops and expensive tile. I spot a walled in shower with a dozen knobs and heads. After I do my business, I ask her to help me undress.

“Do you want me to—”

“No, I’m fine.” I soften my harsh words with a small smile. “Thank you, though.”

There’s a bench seat in the shower, and I ease myself down onto it with a small grimace. There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t hurt. Dr. Haversham had bandaged my thighs and calves with breathable gauze and some sort of waterproof plastic wrap. According to the nurse, they recently changed them, and I should be okay to shower, provided that it isn’t too long. I don’t even want to imagine what they look like.

A cursory check of myself reveals blood, which streams down to mix with the shower water. I can’t find it in me to be embarrassed. There’s only room for the constant ache of grief.

I don’t know how long I sit in the shower, but it’s long enough that the blood abates, at least for a while. Long enough that the thick glass walls are steamed from top to bottom, and my skin is puffy and wrinkled. Long enough that the bandages on my legs need changing. No matter how long I sit in the spray, though, I feel like I won’t ever get clean.

It’s Gracin who retrieves me when they’ve deemed my shower has gone on long enough. I don’t fight him, although his touch makes my skin crawl. He simply appears on the other side of the glass and reaches in to turn the water off. Then he sticks his arm in and offers me a towel. I expect him to peek as I wrap myself in it and step out, but he doesn’t.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

I hate that his voice doesn’t betray any emotion. The man I knew who was calculating, devious and flirtatious is nowhere to be found. It only reinforces my belief that it all truly was an act. And like the idiot that I was, I fell for it.

Guess it’s a good thing I’m not an idiot anymore.

I level him with a look, and he says, “Fair enough. Is there anything I can get you to make you more comfortable?”

“You can tell me when I can get out of here.” There’s no point in dancing around it. I didn’t spend two months on the run because I wanted him to find me. After what he did, the only thing I want is to get as far away from him as possible. Perhaps they’re taking new bids on the International Space Station. Yes, that or another planet might be far enough away.

His expression doesn’t change, but for a moment, his mouth tightens. “It isn’t safe for you to leave right now,” he says.

I lower myself onto the bed cautiously and then allow him to cover me with the blankets. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He glances away, and I have to swallow back the urge to force him to look at me. “It means you’re staying here until it’s safe.”

“And where is here?”

“My house.”

I slump back against the pillows, more than a little stunned. Gracin has a house? I think back to the bathroom that must have cost a small fortune. It doesn’t compute with the man I met at Blackthorne.

The questions give me a bitch of a headache, which probably shows on my face since he closes the shades and dims the lights without my asking him to.

“Get some rest. We can talk later.”

“Idon’t want to go to dinner,” I shout at the woman who’d come to invite me down. “I want to leave. Now!”

My imperious tone does little to intimidate her, though she’s five foot nothing if she’s an inch. If anything, she absorbs my rudeness, and her fierce scowl intensifies.

“Master Kingsley would like you to join him for dinner. Six o’clock sharp.”

The implication that tardiness is a mortal sin is implied. She leaves, and I throw myself back on the bed, muttering obscenities I don’t have the balls to say to the tyrant’s face.

Three weeks have passed, and I haven’t left the room once. At first, I was too listless, too emotionally and physically drained to do more than the bare minimum: sleep, eat, bathe, repeat. Once the good doctor gave me a clean bill of health a week after arriving, I thought it would either be time for the conversation Gracin and I were supposed to have or time for me to leave if I wanted.

Boy, was I wrong.

As soon as the doctor left, I showered, dressed in the clothes provided for me, and went to leave. But the door was locked. It stayed that way until the woman, who I only knew as Marie, delivered my meals. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions and only speaks in orders.

I get the feeling Gracin knows how I am doing, but he hasn’t come back to visit—not that I actually want him to. He could go to hell first. He’d have to starve to death before he found me willingly joining him for dinner.

Four o’clock comes and goes, then five. Then six. My apprehension grows with each ticking of the second hand. The television he must have had installed while I was sleeping only entertains me for so long, and then I’m right back to watching the clock. Ten minutes after, then twenty.

The clock strikes half past and the lock on my door clicks. I expect to see Marie; I get Gracin.

He leans against the door. “Now the only reason why I think you’d refuse dinner is that you’re still too sore to walk yourself downstairs. I wish you’d said something. I would have come up sooner, little mouse.”

The reminder of the prison, of what had transpired between us, is almost too much. I launch myself to my feet. “Don’t call me that. I’m fine. The doctor says the burns have healed nicely. You don’t need to keep me locked in here anymore.”

He studies me as if he doesn’t quite understand me but is desperate to figure me out. I don’t like it. In fact, I want him to stop.

“If I go to dinner, will you let me leave?”

“If you come to dinner, I’ll consider it,” he says.

We both know he negotiates deals only to renege after he’s gotten his way, but I don’t have any other choice. I glance around the room, hating these four walls and knowing that his consideration is about all I’ll get. Besides, at least this time, I’m going down on my terms, not his.

Gracin waves an arm, inviting me outside into the hallway. Part of me is afraid of what I’m going to find. I take hesitant steps past him, and my jaw nearly drops. There are elaborate hallways in both directions with dozens of doors on either side. This isn’t a house—it’s a goddamned mansion.

What the hell was a man who could afford a house like this doing in prison?

I shiver as I remember Sal and decide that maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I just want to get out of here and as far away as possible.

When he puts a hand on my arm, I jerk back. Touching hasn’t been easy for me since the night with Danny and Co. Gracin must realize that, because he doesn’t try it again. He just says, “This way,” when we have to turn a corner or go through a doorway.

I rub the spot on my arm where it came in contact with his hand and try not to remember where else his hands have touched me. He leads me to an intimate dining room with a view of gardens, which are bursting with color. It’s a far cry from the cold grays of Michigan. It’s funny how you don’t know you miss something until you don’t think you’ll ever see it again, not that I ever thought I’d miss the snow. But in this moment, I do.

Silently, he offers me a seat at the table, and Marie brings out the platters of food with a smug smile in my direction. “Anything else, Master Kingsley?” she asks Gracin.

“Thank you, that will be all. See that we aren’t disturbed.”

I help myself to the steak and salad as he watches. After weeks of bland hospital-like food, my mouth waters at the mere sight. I keep my mouth full so I don’t have to talk to him, but it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. He doesn’t eat, just watches, still with the curious expression on his face.

“Why didn’t you tell them anything?” he asks when I’ve finally cleared my plate.

As I reach for seconds, I consider the man across from me. The dressings may have changed, but the air of brutality sure hasn’t. He’s violence wrapped in a pretty bow. Danger made to shine. Only instead of the prison jumpsuit, his warning label is an Armani suit and a Rolex. Money is power, but on him, it’s also lethal.

“They only would have killed me faster,” I tell him as I take a bite.

“Some people would prefer a quicker death,” he says.

“Some people are also cowards.”

He chuckles, surprising me. “I guess we both know you’re far from a coward.”

“Are you going to tell me who they are? I think you owe me at least that.”

He leans back in his chair, his legs spread and his hands resting on his thighs. Posed that way, he owns every syllable of his nickname.

“Telling you any more than you already know will only put you in more danger.”

The rope. The blood. My murdered child would say otherwise. “I’d rather know what I’m involved in than be in the dark. Besides, it’s about time you tried honesty for a change.”