Page 27 of Broken Hearts

11

Celeste

I chopped lettuce in silence,stealing glances at Alex every few seconds. He was going through the fridge, looking for the jar of capers he needed for tonight’s dinner—chicken piccata and salad. I was helping him make it, tasked with preparing the salad ingredients.

He looked at his watch and sighed. “I better take something to Baldwin,” he muttered. He looked up at me. “Can you finish chopping all the vegetables and put them in that?” he asked, pointing to a large silver salad bowl on my right. “You can add whatever else you want to it. Dressing and so on.”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded. “How about feta and olives? So it’s a sort of Mediterranean salad. I won’t add too much.”

He smiled. “I trust your judgment.”

With that, he grabbed some food out of the cupboard and headed outside. I watched him head for the shelter through the kitchen window. The sky outside was dimming, turning from a mixture of gray and turquoise to glowing indigo.

I looked down at my knife, remembering Alex’s last words to me before he stepped out of the kitchen. I trust your judgment. It wasn’t really about the cheese and olives. It was a test. Usually I wasn’t allowed alone with knives, but he was checking to see if he could begin to trust me again after I’d admitted to trying to get on his computer (which as far as he knew was all that happened in the study that day).

If he could leave me alone for a few minutes without me doing anything crazy, I would start to get back on his good side. He might even begin sleeping with me again. Not that I really wanted that at this point.

Ever since my discovery of his lies six days ago, my mind had been plagued with thoughts of what else he might’ve lied to me about. Some things may not have been lies, but they could’ve been massively exaggerated for various reasons.

The Circle, for instance. I knew they were real, and they were a fucked up group of evil bastards who did sick things to innocent young kids. But were they really after me?

The more I thought about it, the more I thought Alex had led me down the garden path in regard to that, and the more I disbelieved the threat and doubted his words. The doubt was like a tumor, growing every day and slowly weaving its sickly, creeping tendrils through every inch of me, threatening to choke the life out of me.

When he explained why the Circle had allegedly kept an eye on me all these years and why they were still so dangerous for me, it made sense, given his persuasive silver tongue. But now I doubted it all. It no longer made sense to me that they would be looking for me, despite my recently-returned memories of the past.

They were a group of men with huge amounts of money, power and resources. Maybe they’d checked up on me and my mother a few times when I was young, just to make sure I didn’t remember their dirty secret and to make sure my mother kept her mouth shut, but surely that was the end of it. I couldn’t believe that after all this time, they’d still be keeping their eyes on me, waiting and watching in case I ever happened to remember anything. Surely they had bigger things to devote their time, energy, and resources to. Surely they weren’t actually chasing after me.

No, I had a new theory now. Alex was coating the truth with a lie, much like I’d done the other day. He took a real group who could theoretically be chasing me—but most likely weren’t—then made up a whole story about them definitely being after me in order to justify him taking me and keeping me here as his permanent captive.

If he planted the insidious idea in my head that it was too dangerous for me to leave and that I’d practically die as soon as the Circle found me, then I’d be too afraid to try and get out of here even if I had the opportunity. And hell, it worked. I actually believed him at first and thought that if I ever got out of here, the Circle would track me down and kill me now that I’d begun to remember things about their existence.

I hadn’t even left when I literally had the chance to with Dan the other week, and Alex knew the whole damn time that I wouldn’t. Otherwise he wouldn’t have given me the chance in the first place. But he did, because he knew he had me swallowing his lies hook, line, and sinker.

It reminded me of a serial child snatcher from Europe who I had to write an essay about in a class last year. He used to kidnap young girls and lock them up in a room in his house, and he’d eventually terrify them into wanting to stay with him. He convinced them their parents were part of a Satanic cult and planned on sacrificing them as part of some dark ritual, and that he’d actually helped and rescued them by taking them at the last minute.

They all ended up thinking he was their savior, and they were too scared to leave until the police raided the place, found them, and told them the truth. Even then, for years, some of the girls were petrified of their parents and genuinely believed their abductor had told them the truth. They lived in fear, wondering if he was right all along.

Of course, he wasn’t. It was all just a cunning, fucked-up ruse to make them stay with him even if they managed to find an escape route. He was obsessed with the idea of collecting girls, and he needed a way to ensure they never left him.

It made sense that Alex might choose a similar tactic to keep me here. He was obviously the kind of man who became obsessed with things too, and for the last few years, I’d been his obsession. He watched me, followed me, stalked me. Someone that obsessive would do anything to convince their target they belonged with them, say anything to make them stay.

Anything.

A big part of me wanted to believe Alex and see the best in him, but I knew that seeing the best in people sometimes meant not seeing the truth. And I wasn’t completely broken yet. Not enough to be blind. I could see that he wasn’t really helping me by keeping me here, other than the help he’d given me with my nerve pain. He’d clearly overstated the danger I was in to instill doubts within me, make me too scared to leave. But if I somehow left tomorrow and went back to my old house, I was willing to bet no one would be there waiting for me, waiting to hurt me. My life would probably just go back to normal. Well, as normal as possible, considering what I’d been through.

Subsequently, I’d spent the last few days thinking about an escape, which filled me with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. It seemed like the millionth time I’d considered the idea in the six or seven weeks I’d been here now. But it seemed impossible. Even though it would be easier now that I wasn’t in the cell and had access to warm winter clothes and shoes, I was still stuck here unless I could get the electronic collar off.

I wondered if I could even walk out the door if Alex took the collar off and told me to go. Something told me the answer was no, and that made me want to slap myself in the face. I wanted to hate him for what he’d done to me, hate him for keeping me here and lying to me, and yet, I wasn’t ready to feel that way about him. There was still something keeping me loyal and eager as much as I distrusted him. Something deeply-rooted and pervasive.

It was like my brain knew one thing, but my body knew another. The logical part of me wanted to get the hell out while the rest of me still wanted to submit to Alex and give him everything he desired. I could plot and scheme to my heart’s content when he was out of the room, but when he was close to me, I held no real power over my actions.

I knew the feelings would eventually pass—at least I hoped they would—and when that finally happened, I would have the strength to leave.

If I ever got the opportunity, that is. It seemed unlikely.

Alex stepped back into the kitchen and looked over at me with a hint of a smile playing on his lips, seemingly pleased that I’d done nothing other than what was asked of me while he was out of the room. I was working on the tomatoes now, slicing them into wedges, the knife coming down on the chopping board in short, hard movements.

“You’re really giving it to those poor tomatoes,” Alex joked as he butterflied the chicken breasts for the piccata. I didn’t laugh. I kept slicing, wondering what would happen if I flew across the room and plunged the knife into his chest.

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