“You’re bare feet. You’ll hurt your pretty feet,” Cian said as if he were telling her something about the weather. In the end, she was grateful. The stone flooring in the dungeon had been bad, but the bed of sharp rock, thorns, thistles, and prickly sticks, not to mention a multitude of forest creepy crawlies would be unforgivable on her feet.

They entered the door under the dragon’s heads. Cian set her down carefully, her feet immediately sinking into the thick, fluffy, cashmere-soft carpet.

“Alex.”

The sound of Cara’s voice as she rushed down a staircase obliterated everything else from Alexandria’s mind.

Cara.

Cara, her cheeks bright red and her eyes full of love and happiness, charged toward Alexandria and crushed her in a hug.

“I can’t believe you’re here. Oh my gosh, I have so much to tell you. Look, I can go everywhere now,” Cara said, twirling around the room. “I finally feel safe again,” she whispered, grabbed Cara’s hand, and dragged her upstairs.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let her be late for dinner,” she called to her brothers as they bounced up the staircase.

This was not what Alexandria had expected. They were allowing her to see Cara freely. Was she their prisoner or not?

But Cara didn’t give her a chance to mull over the status of her abduction.

“This is your room, and look, it has an interconnecting door. There’s one on the other side for when Rhea comes to visit as well, and we’ll have PJ parties the whole night long.”

Alexandria glanced suspiciously at the enormous room that Cara had said was hers.

She knew enough about luxury to know that everything in the room, from the carpet to the furniture to the chandeliers, cost an exorbitant sum of money, the kind only billionaires could afford.

Who were these men?

“And look,” Cara said, opening a walk-in closet. “My brothers told me I had the task of buying you everything you needed. It took me days. Jacques, the pilot, had to make several trips to bring everything. Please tell me you like them.”

Alexandria soothed her hand over the designer clothes. Even with having rich parents, she couldn’t afford some of the labels. “

“I don’t understand. All these clothes cost so much—”

“They gave me a limitless budget and had their PA send over a list of designers whose clothes I could choose from because they were the best.”

The frown on Alexandria’s face deepened. What was going on?

After Cara showed her all the clothes, shoes, makeup, perfume, purses, and bags, she drew Alexandria a luxury bubble bath and had a glass of coconut water brought up in the room for her, which she sipped while in the bathtub, her skin burning after she had scrubbed it off with a sugar body scrub in the shower. She’d also washed her hair in the shower, glad the detangling conditioner meant she wouldn’t lose too much hair trying to comb out the knots after being imprisoned. By her family.

She brushed aside the thought. It would weaken her and throw her over the edge, and while she knew that was the inevitable end to her life, she wanted to know that Rhea was safe first.

While Alexandria soaked her body in the pool of milky hot water, Cara talked nonstop about how she’d been helping to get the castle together. It had been just rock and dust, and now it would be taken back to its former glory.

“Do you know there’s an actual treasure in a cave that belonged to the dragons? Not that my brothers need it. They're already billionaires and told me they had more money than the richest men in the world put together.”

“Cara, who are they?” Alexandria asked, wrapping a towel around her and blotting the water out of the ends of her hair.

“They own Dragons Peak Enterprises. Have you heard of them?”

Dragons Peak Enterprises? One of the richest companies in the world? How was this possible?

“Do you know they were eleven years old when they found me? I was about a year old. My mom said she didn’t want me, and they have taken care of me since then. I would be a ghost without them, Alexandria. They had nothing for themselves, growing up in a trailer park, but they gave me the best.

Tears flickered in Alexandria’s eyes. She wrapped her arms around Cara so tight that she never wanted to let go.

Somehow, knowing all this about them made them more dangerous to Alexandria. She’d been a part of the people who had hurt their family. Their vengeance on her was bound to break her to pieces.

Chapter Fifteen