Page 127 of Cruel Riches

26

Nate

I took a tentative step forward,hardly believing my eyes.

The man was asleep on the bunk with his head at the top end, so I couldn’t make out much detail, but I could see that he was relatively tall with messy shoulder-length hair, which was dark brown with streaks of gray. He had a thick mustache and scruffy beard as well, and the deep lines I could see on his forehead made me think he was at least fifty years old.

His left ankle had a thick steel cuff around it, joined to a chain that was attached to the base of the bunk. It looked like it was several feet long, meaning the man would be able to access every corner of the room while he was awake, including the toilet and shower in the right corner and the kitchenette on the left. It wouldn’t stretch as far as the passage, though, so he was permanently confined to this space.

Shock and confusion roiled in my guts as I took another step forward.

Who the fuck was this guy? Why was he locked in a bunker on my family’s property? How long had he been here?

Before I woke him up and demanded answers, I did another quick sweep of the room to see what I was dealing with. There was a TV on a small cabinet opposite the bunk, and one of the open storage cupboards appeared to be full of books. The other cupboard door was shut, but judging by the pile of trash pushed into one corner of the room, I was willing to bet that it was filled with food, water, and soda.

I looked back at the man. Clearly, he hadn’t been left down here to die. Not unless the person who locked him up wanted it to happen extremely slowly.

I cleared my throat loudly. The man jerked awake and sat up, bloodshot eyes widening as he caught sight of me standing in the entryway.

Despite his wild, unkempt appearance, which didn’t square with anything in my world, something about his face was deeply familiar. I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen him before, but I felt like I knew him all the same.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer my question. He just stared at me through narrowed eyes. “Nate Lockwood,” he finally said in a low voice. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Who are you?” I repeated.

The man sat up straighter. “You really don’t recognize me?”

I shook my head slowly. “No. Should I?”

He scoffed. “You always were a self-centered little asshole, weren’t you?” he muttered. “What are you doing here, anyway? How’d you find me?”

“Tell me who the fuck you are first,” I shot back.

The man lapsed into silence and stared at the opposite wall. There was something flickering in his blue eyes; an emotion I recognized easily after spending so much time with Alexis.

Fear.

Whoever this man was, he was afraid of me and what I might say or do to him. He wasn’t going to talk again unless I made him feel like he had no other choice.

I took a step back and raised my palms. “Look, whoever you are, you’re obviously in a bad situation,” I said, dipping my chin toward the chain and cuff attached to his foot. “I’m going to call the police to get you out of here.”

I actually had no intention of calling the cops—not while I had Alexis trapped in another bunker less than fifty yards away from this one, anyway—but I had a feeling that a simple mention of them would be enough to get this man talking.

I was right.

“No!” he roared, making the chain rattle on the concrete floor as he jumped off the bed. “No cops!”

I didn’t flinch as he lunged toward me. He couldn’t reach me where I was standing. “Why?” I asked. “Don’t you want help?”

“No.” The man dropped back down on the bunk again. “Your mother will get in trouble for keeping me here.”

A heavy feeling appeared in my stomach. “My mother is the one who put you down here?”

He raised a palm. “You don’t understand,” he said. “She’s a good person. She saved me.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re clearly a prisoner.”

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