Page 41 of Dead Love
“This morning.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “How is she?” she asked quietly.
I glanced around the side of the canvas. “Holding on.” I motioned for her to return to her pose. “Confident that you’re out there.”
“Good.”
After a few minutes passed, I added, “Your father had a big event last night. A charity cookout. That’s probably why there were no bodies found. He was too busy using his men to patrol the cookout, rather than finding them.”
Kora grimaced. “That makes sense.”
“Was the funeral the first time you had been around that many people?”
I don’t know why I asked, but the words had slipped out, and I wasn’t going to hold back with her anymore. It was part of breaking her down, showing her the flaws in her own existence. Kora blushed, then nodded, looking over the railing to the basement below.
“You shouldn’t have let your parents control you like that,” I said. “You’re young. You have the world in front of you. Do you even want to be a florist?” I put the brush down. “They’ve put you in a cage since birth.”
Her features grew melancholy. “You say that like I’m not in a cage here,” she said. My empty hands tightened into fists impulsively. She lifted her chin. “My parents are good to me. At least, my mother is. She has strange habits, but she’s never left my side. She’s always taken care of me. Gave me a good life, set me up for the future—”
“And did you get to decide any of that for yourself?”
Kora adjusted the strap of her shirt, and from this angle, I could see the outline of her lace bra underneath the tank top. The way her stomach rolled with each breath, giving way to that delicate valley between her legs. On the canvas, I switched to her thighs. Kora parted her legs in front of me, and my eyes were glued to that tight fabric, showing off the outline of her pussy. I licked my lips.
“Listen,” she said. I lifted my eyes to hers. “You think you know everything about our life, but you don’t. My parents love me. And yeah, I know that my mother has some flaws.” She shuddered. “Okay, maybe she has some major flaws. But she’s not evil. She’s just scared.”
I had never considered that someone as successful as her mother could be afraid. But I had also never thought that a young woman like Kora would have any spine to speak of. But I wasn’t going to give Kora back just because her mother was having a difficult time. Plenty of people had hard times. Try watching your mother, father, and brother die.
“Everyone’s scared of something,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re right.”
The chandelier’s lights flickered in her eyes, as if her hope was changing into something else, an emotion that was more honest. Everything inside of me burned, wanting to push her over the edge, to watch her fall to the ground, to jump down after her. The world might not have been the place that Kora thought it was, but there was so much more it could give her.
And that frustrated me. There was so much I could give her, and yet I hated myself for it. I wanted to destroy her.
But I needed to possess her first.
CHAPTER15
Kora
A few more days passed,Vincent and I fell into a routine. Every night—or day, or morning?—Vincent would pose my body, then paint me. He never showed me the final products, but always engaged me in conversation. Something had changed between us. Our dynamic, while it was still one of abductor and victim, didn’t feel like that anymore. If I wanted to play with the dogs, he took me out at night. If I wanted to model for him, I did. All I had to do was ask. In a way, I almost looked forward to seeing him.
No, that’s not right. Ididlook forward to seeing him. Maybe it was the fact that he was the only person who Icouldsee: a case of the victim liking their abductor out of pure survival instinct. Or maybe it was something more. It’s not like he had to bring me to my best friend’s grave and give me her ring, tell my mother that I was out there, or even speak to me while he painted. We both knew he could force me to do whatever he wanted. But he hadn’t.
So I stopped questioning those feelings. Otherwise, I would go insane.
After a few days like this, I knocked on the basement door. He didn’t answer at first, but when he did, he huffed down the hallway, exiting the house. He simply wanted me to stop banging on the door.
I glanced at the kitchen, then the door to the backyard, where his property rested on the far edge of Mount Punica. My pulse quickened.I could run—
“Tracking device. Poison. Gun. Knife,” he said, popping through the sliding doors. My heart raced. Was I that obvious? And would he really kill me? “Follow me.” I tightened my hands into fists, took a deep breath, then caught up with him.
We took the path that led to the cemetery. Near the field where I played ball with the dogs, there were two empty graves, and a third was halfway done.
Three graves?
Vincent jumped down and went straight to work.
