Page 114 of Cruel Riches

22

Alexis

I saton the bunk with my back against the concrete wall behind it, stomach churning. There wasn’t a clock on the opposite wall, but I pretended there was so I could watch the seconds tick by, one by one, until something terrible happened.

Nate hadn’t yet punished me for what I did the other night when the police showed up at the estate. In fact, he hadn’t even said a word. He just waited for his mother and Colette to be out of sight, and then he dragged me back down to the bunker and pushed me inside before slamming the hatch shut.

Since then, he’d shown up three times—once to bring me water and twice to bring me meals. The meals were homecooked and delicious, so I was sure they were from Colette. At first I was surprised that he brought them to me instead of letting me rot in the bunker with nothing but the ancient canned foods, but I could tell from previous conversations and interactions that he deeply cared about Colette. He probably couldn’t stand the thought of wasting something she made.

That meant I was wrong about him all this time. He wasn’t a complete psychopath, and he had a heart. Just not one that beat with any sympathy or regard for me.

That actually made him worse than a psychopath. As far as I knew, psychopaths were born with some sort of genetic predispositions or chemical imbalances in their brains, or they were raised in shockingly traumatic environments that shaped their personality into something twisted and monstrous. In the end, as abhorrent as their behavior was, some of it was out of their control. They didn’t choose to be like that—nature, genes, and society molded them to be that way.

Nate actively chose to be a monster. In my eyes, that was definitely worse.

The last time he showed up to bring me food, I asked him what he was going to do to me, but he didn’t look at me or say a word. Just dropped the food and left.

His silence made me feel ten times worse. I had no idea what was coming, only that something was, and it filled me with a gnawing dread that made it impossible to sleep, even though I had a proper bed with a blanket now instead of an old, dirty mattress on a stony floor.

My brain felt like it was melting from exhaustion and anxiety, and my limbs felt like they’d been replaced by putty. Weak and limp. I barely had the energy to pick up the closest bottle of water when I was thirsty.

A sudden scraping sound made me sit up straight, senses on high alert. Nate appeared a moment later. His face betrayed no emotion.

“Get up,” he said.

On shaky legs, I did as he said.

“Time to go,” he said, tipping his head to the side to gesture toward the passage.

I followed him out of the bunker. In silence, he led me back to the hulking mansion and up to the fourth floor.

“In here,” he said brusquely, opening a door on my right.

With wide eyes, I looked around the new room. The floors were polished oak, partially covered by a patterned rug, and the walls were lined with gray silk wallpaper decorated with a silver brocade pattern. An ornate chandelier hung from a ceiling dome over an enormous bed that jutted out from the left wall.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“My bedroom,” Nate replied.

I turned to him with a frown. “Why are we in here?”

He nodded toward a door on the right. “Go in there and take a shower,” he instructed. “When you get out, you need to do your hair and makeup. You’ll find everything you need in there.”

“Are we going somewhere?” I asked. Perhaps Laurel had refused to accept the police report on my safety, and Nate was going to force me to spend an evening with my friends pretending that everything was fine.

“No.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Don’t put your clothes back on when you’re done.”

Coldness struck at my core as I realized what that meant.

“You’re going to make me sleep with you,” I said in a hollow voice.

Nate laughed at me; a mirthless, patronizing sound. “Seriously?” he said, stepping closer. “You really think I’d do that?”

“Yes,” I muttered through gritted teeth.

Sexual assault wasn’t actually about sex. It was about control and power. It was about taking something from someone; stealing all the good things they used to know and leaving an empty shell behind.

Of course Nate would want to do that. He’d made it abundantly clear that he wanted to destroy me before he killed me—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

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