Page 23 of Deadly Rival

This can’t really behappening. Can it? There has to be some deeper motive at work. A way to twist this situation that doesn’t end in me wearing that collar and leash. Sebastian places it carefully on the table, out of my reach, turned so I can see the shiny tag.

Ophelia.

Seeing my name is worse than some demeaning word. Those carved letters chill my blood and turn my stomach. He’s planned this. Not just the capture, which had to have taken weeks of surveillance, but this, too. The ways in which he’ll torment me while I’m here.

The Brotherhood. I’ve heard the name spoken but always quietly and always in the context of a business rivalry. Dad and Harrison never let me near the criminal side of the family’s dealings, but I know enough. We deal in information, stealing tech from cutting-edge companies and selling it to whoever pays the most.

If I’d had to guess, I’d have said the Brotherhood was a secretive tech firm with a weird, anachronistic name. But how thehell does that gel with Sebastian’s ramblings about sex slaves and a private army? Maybe he’s insane.

Sebastian strides to the window and stares out. “Ten minutes. Eat up.”

His voice is flat now, but it wasn’t earlier. He enjoyed feeding me. He got off on telling me his crazy story. But as soon as Maggie entered the conversation, all that twisted happiness drained away.

Even now, staring at the leash with my name on it, I can’t fight back the guilty lurch. Something about Maggie, how much freedom she seemed to have, always plucked at my nerves in high school, and I lashed out, targeting her. None of it was her fault, and I’d give absolutely anything to change the way I treated her. When I learned she’d killed herself, the guilt almost destroyed me.

Maybe losing her pushed Sebastian over the edge?

“Eight minutes.”

Sebastian’s clipped words bring me right back into the present. I can’t waste time on regret. Sebastian hates me, with good reason. He might well be insane. I’m locked to a goddamn chair in his apartment, and this might be the only chance I get to eat today. However sick it makes me feel, I have to eat while I can.

I attack the food with wooden efficiency. A chocolate pastry. Some fruit. I’d kill for a coffee, but the jug is out of reach. I’ll die before I ask Sebastian to bring it to me, so I make do with the orange juice closer to hand.

As I eat, the empty, shaky feeling diminishes. I have to be smart. I grew up around dangerous men. I can handle Sebastian Grange, even if he’s all grown up and fucking terrifying.

He doesn’t move from his spot at the window, and he doesn’t look at me. I try to picture him as I remember him. Long hair, pasty skin, baggy clothes. And when my brother beat the livingshit out of him for confronting me, he hardly fought back at all. His blood dripped onto the concrete from his busted nose, and I grabbed my brother’s arm. “He’s had enough.”

“No, he fucking hasn’t.”

Then a savage kick to the ribs. It was the last time I saw him. What has he been doing for the last ten years?

They’ve all suffered.

His words rush back. What did he mean by that? I search for memories of my high school friends. The ones who used to torment Maggie right alongside me—though I was always the ringleader. Were any of them reported missing? Has he been picking them off one by one?

Sebastian moves. I think he’s going to come close, and my body locks up, hand clutching a piece of strawberry. I watch his back as he disappears into the bedroom. Maybe I can shuffle the chair a bit. Is there anything I can use as a weapon? Even something makeshift, like a jail shiv?

Jail.

It’s a lightning strike, scorching a name into my brain. Cecilia Faulkner, the girl who helped me force Maggie’s head into the toilet, has been in jail for two years. She worked as an investment banker and got caught stealing millions from a pension fund. If I remember the scandal right, she’s serving fifteen years.

They’ve all suffered.

Sebastian appears from the bedroom with a pair of insanely high platforms. He holds them up for inspection. “You’ll wear these. I’d prefer stilettos, but they make far too good of a weapon. We’ll switch once you’re my good little pet.”

Pet. That word again. Coupled with the leash, the little word grows heavy. But my mind is still snagged on Cecilia. I shouldn’t antagonize Sebastian, but I have to know.

“Cecilia Faulkner. She’s in jail. Wasthat—”

“She was so easy to set up. If she manages to keep her nose clean in jail, she’ll only serve ten years. Free by thirty-two. And of course, they sent her to one of those lovely, open prisons with gardening classes and a lacrosse team. More an extended holiday than anything else. Not bad for taking a life. Don’t you agree?”

I can’t think of a single thing to say. He set her up. She lost her freedom because of him. I’m clinging to the idea that he can’t do what he’s threatening to me, but he already fucking has, just in a different way. If only he’d used that method on me. I’m sure my dad could have lined the right pockets and gotten me out.

Which is why he didn’t use that method on you.

Of course. I have to remember that Sebastian is smart. Harrison used to laugh because he had a private math tutor—he was too advanced for the class, and my dumbass brother thought it made him a nerd. And I heard somewhere he went to CalTech. If he’s been planning this revenge for ten years, he’ll have planned it well.

Shit.

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