Page 41 of Her Cruel Empire
Like I’m just another woman. Another woman who has the capacity to fall, and fallhard.
No one has ever made me feel likeI’mthe one who might get ruined.
I straighten my spine, smooth my hair, and continue down the hall to my bedroom, where I will shower and dress, and then get back to running my empire. I have enemies to crush. A reputation to maintain.
Robin Rivers is just a temporary tool. A stress reliever that I will use when I need it and put it away when I don’t. By the time our thirty days are up, I’ll be tired of her.
I’ll trade her in for a new model, just like I do every time.
Chapter 14
Robin
Istay in my room as instructed, jumping when Mrs. Kovacs brings in my evening meal, and then I go to bed when I can no longer stand being awake. But I barely sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, I see those bloody bandages. Or else I feel Eva’s hands on my skin, claiming and desperate one moment, cold and distant the next. Hear the village woman’s words echoing in my ears:You should not be at the castle.
The problem is, a single heated glance from Eva Novak is enough to get me soaking through my panties for her. The memory of her fucking me is just as compelling as the warnings from the village.
By dawn, I’m up and sitting by the window, watching gray light creep over the black lake. My reflection in the glass stares back at me—tired, hollow-eyed, wearing one of Eva’s expensive nightgowns with a matching robe. It feels more like a costume than clothing.
Did she kill those village girls like the ancestor she seemed so proud of? Did that ancestor behave like Eva, keeping a “toy” ina room nearby, and creep through that secret passageway to do terrible things to them in the dark of night?
I go to the wall now where she appeared from, just as I have gone to it scores of times this long night, and run my fingers over the hidden seam. It’s so perfectly set into the molding that I can barely sense it—and I have no idea how to open it. I have to assume it’s a way for the lady of Castle Blacklake to enter this room in secret, but whoever is in here can’t get back through the other way. That’s why she left by the usual door, after she was done fucking me into submission.
But whydidn’tshe tell me about this secret door? And speaking of secret doors, what’s behind that locked one that I’m not allowed to enter? Who isbleedingbehind that door?
The questions circle in my head like vultures. I can’t go on like this. The not-knowing is eating me alive, making me question my very safety.
I have to find out what’s really going on in this place.
I dress simply—a pair of jeans and another sweater from Eva’s carefully chosen wardrobe for me, and underneath, I wear the cotton underwear. She told me to stay in my room, but I’m not going to let her treat me like some naughty child. I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake.
And if she thought giving me an incredible orgasm was enough to teach me obedience…well, she has a thing or two to learn herself.
The kitchen staff are standoffish when I arrive for breakfast. They barely look at me, speak in hushed tones that stop when I get too close. Word has clearly spread about my village excursion and Eva’s fury.
But I sit at my usual spot anyway, sipping the thick, sweet coffee and picking at bread and cheese. Waiting. Watching.
And I don’t have long to wait before they appear. The woman with the silver braid and the man with the gun. They sit at their corner table, eat their breakfast in perfect silence, then rise to leave.
“I should get back to my room,” I announce loudly enough for the cook to hear. “Thank you for breakfast.”
She nods curtly without looking up from her kneading.
I head toward the main corridor, but the moment I’m out of sight, I double back, finding my way to the corridor where the locked door is situated. And I guessed the layout of the castle right, for once. Just a few seconds after I tuck myself into that empty room again, the strange pair emerges from another doorway and into the hallway.
If I do what I’m thinking about doing, I could wind up dead. But if I stay trembling and wide-eyed in my allocated bedroom, I couldalsowind up dead, if the villagers are to be believed.
I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried to follow the rules. But the rules here seem designed to keep me not safe, butcontained. And I’m not going to die from being naïve.
So I watch carefully as the man unlocks the forbidden door down the corridor and ushers the woman through. Just after they move through the doorway, I sprint as quietly as I can down thehallway and catch the door before it latches. I wait a few heart-pounding seconds for one of them to notice, to come back, but there’s nothing.
At last, I pull the door slowly open, praying it won’t creak.
It doesn’t. The hinges are well-oiled.
The hallway inside is dimmer than the rest of the castle, lit by overhead lights that have been put in as what looks like a temporary measure. And the air smells different here—antiseptic mixed with something…old.
