Page 11 of The Escape Artist

Ari took a slow calming breath and tried again. “If I was the type of man who would have done unspeakable things to you, do you really believe I'd still be calm right now? Wouldn't I be yelling and threatening you?”

“You DID threaten me, the first day!”

Ari shook his head. “That was before...”

“When you thought you'd been taken by a man? Am I supposed to be charmed by the patronizing sexism?”

“Tell me your name,” Ari tried again.

“Fuck you!”

“Is that the way it's printed on your birth certificate?”

She pulled another piece of duct tape off the roll and slapped the tape over his mouth. “We're done talking. You're not getting inside my head. It's bad enough you can still do it while I'm sleeping. You will never be in control while I'm conscious.”

Ari raised a brow. Wanna bet?

Claire stood in front of the monitor watching him. He'd just woken from their most recent session. He calmly cleaned the wounds but he seemed near his breaking point. Or maybe that was what she wanted to believe. Her hands shook as she looked down at his blood on her hands. Just a few small splatters from the whip. She touched her face and realized there were a couple of drops there as well.

Without warning, her stomach roiled, and she ran headlong for the bathroom. She collapsed in front of the toilet, throwing up the contents of her stomach. She spent another fifteen minutes dry-heaving, her body unwilling to give her peace.

That goddamned bastard was right. She was the one breaking. Claire flushed the toilet and went to turn on the faucet. She washed her face and took a sip of water and brushed her teeth. She gripped the edge of the counter and was caught off guard by her reflection.

She looked... haunted. He was doing this to her—or hurting him was doing this to her. How could hurting the man who'd destroyed her cause this much pain? Why was he so different in the cell from when he'd kept her in the basement?

You know why. Because he doesn't have the power anymore. It's all a trick. If he gets free, you'll die.

He seemed so reasonable. Like he understood her pain. Like he wasn't the one who'd created it and turned her into the dead thing she didn't recognize staring back at her out of the mirror. She'd give anything to turn back the clock and not do this. Some fantasies were meant to stay fantasies. She'd already learned that lesson once.

Yes, she'd wanted revenge. He deserved all of this. But she hadn't anticipated the way all of these vicious violent acts would carve away pieces of her soul until she hated herself. She wanted to go back to the girl she'd been before this, before the basement. When everything had been so simple. When her biggest problem had been being caught carrying a bag from last season.

How she longed for those shallow worries.

And if he got free, he probably wouldn't immediately kill her. Without clothing he'd had no way to hide the hard length of his erection from her. The thought of it terrified her. When she'd seen it, she'd almost run from the cell as memories of the blindfold and him inside her had come rushing forth.

She'd hurt him until he'd gone soft, until the threat of him had passed. After she'd injected him with the drug to make him sleep, she hadn't been able to stop shaking as she'd taken away all the things she'd brought into the cell and left him a fresh bucket of water.

What the fuck was he doing to her?

6

Claire held a glass of champagne at her parents' annual Christmas Eve party. The elegant ballroom at their estate was filled with all of their important friends. People Claire barely knew. Thanksgiving and Christmas day were just family. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve were big impersonal parties filled to the brim with all the people her parents wanted to impress.

A string quartet was set up at one end of the room, playing Christmas carols. The party spilled out onto the back terrace. It was particularly cold—even for December, a thick blanket of snow coating the ground outside—but it didn't stop the guests from going out to appreciate the winter wonderland. Large outdoor space heaters had been set up all around the terrace, keeping the space surprisingly warm, all things considered.

“Oh Claire, darling, you look fabulous!” her mother cooed in her normal fake cheery tone. She hugged her and gave her air kisses on each side of her cheek as though Claire were some casual spa friend she saw on Thursdays for mani-pedi day instead of her daughter. “Have you lost weight?” her mother continued.

“Maybe a little,” Claire said. She wanted to extract herself from the awkward exchange with a woman who only seemed to know her daughter in passing, but her mother had barely heard her answer. She'd already turned her attention to someone else on the far end of the room.

“Mary Alice!” her mother called out, waving. Then she disappeared back into the crowd without a goodbye or backward glance.

Claire would blame all the excitement and noise and activity, but it had been like this at Thanksgiving, too. And maybe she had seemed more alive at Thanksgiving, with the revenge fantasies still swirling through her head, unfulfilled.

But she felt dead now. How was it possible that her mother could be so distracted that she couldn't see her own daughter's pain? And what was she even distracted by that was of such fucking importance? Claire hadn't even bothered flagging her dad down. He was on the back terrace talking stocks and drinking brandy next to one of the heaters with his golf buddies. He'd be even more distracted than her mother.

She escaped out of the crowded ballroom into the closest guest bathroom and locked herself in. She held onto the marble counter top for support and took a long, steadying breath. She'd thought about not even coming tonight. But even though her parents seemed oblivious to her emotional state, they would notice if she made them look bad by not showing up.

They didn't want to see her pain. They didn't want to be inconvenienced by it. So they pretended she looked fabulous and never allowed an opening for her to really talk to them to discredit that theory—not that she could have brought herself to speak of the secret shame of forty-three days in that basement. Or the shame of what she was doing now.

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