Page 7 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

I raised my hand to push my hair out of my face, only to discover I’d been tied spread-eagle to a bed. What the hell?

Terror shot through me. Where was I? What happened? No, I knew that. Awareness slowly returned to me, frustrating me with how difficult it was for me to think.

You’re SofiafuckingRusso. Get it the fuck together.

I tested my bonds, and to my surprise, they loosened around my wrists. Carefully, I tugged my wrists out of the ropes that attached me to the bed. Idiots.

My memory flashed to a younger me, curiously rifling through Lorenzo’s bag, only for him to lose his shit on me when he found me examining the contents. He’d explained that cable ties were for holding bad guys, then ripped the bag away from me. I hadn’t been fucking stupid. I knew what the tools were for, why he carried around knives and pliers and shit.

Even then, I’d understood his instinct to protect me fromthe worst of my father’s brutality, the crimes that kept a roof over my head and kept me living in isolated comfort.

Sergio, on the other hand, clearly didn’t expect me to do anything but lie there. My abdomen twinged as I sat up. The first day with him had been a creepy facsimile of a loving relationship. He’d kept me tied up in a small kitchen, hand feeding me, touching and stroking me, telling me how much he loved me and missed me.

The first time I spat on his face, he backhanded me. The second time, he lovingly, carefully, injected me with something, and I’d woken up in this fucking bed, disoriented and terrified.

Get your shit together, Sofia.One deep breath, and then another. After unlooping the ropes from around my legs, I peered around the dark room. No windows. No furniture aside from the bed. Two doors—one pitch black, the other with a thin strip of light illuminating what I suspected was a hallway behind it.

In a white nightgown, rather than the dress I’d been taken in, filthy with blood and—I couldn’t remember anything since Sergio drugged me. No underwear, no bra, nothing—no. I couldn’t remember, I didn’t want to remember, and I didn’t have time to reflect on that dark path right now.

I could fall apart once I’d escaped.

Footsteps fell heavily on the hard floor outside the door. Not carpet. Concrete? Tile? Finally, they fell silent. Terrified someone would come find me, I reached up to the doorknob and twisted.

It moved.

I leapt back, as if the doorknob had seared my hand, hope burning hot in my chest. Frantically, I looked around the room for something, anything, I could use as a weapon. Isnatched a piece of rope, under no illusions that it could be truly effective, and murmured a quick prayer to a god I’d long since stopped believing in.

Silently, I crept back to the door, listening for a long pause in footsteps. When I heard one, I cracked the door open, my heart pounding, fearful for what was on the other side, or that I’d be caught.

I peered through the crack, but couldn’t see anyone, or anything, through the limited field of vision. Dammit. I waited, controlling my breathing. Whatever happened, it couldn’t be worse than what had already happened. Every movement intensified the ache in my core, even if I couldn’t remember what happened.

When no alarm sounded, I opened the door wider and poked my head out, ready to slam the door shut if anyone noticed me.

No one did.

On silent feet, I crept out of the room, sliding along the wall, the paneling revealing I was most likely in a house, rather than a commercial building. The concrete was cold against my bare feet—could this be a basement?

I searched for a stairwell, afraid to open any of the doors and call attention to myself. I found one at the end of the hallway and walked up it, wincing at each creak and crack.

It led into a kitchen, and?—

I was yanked to the side by my hair, the pain forcing a cry out of me.

“Where do you think you’re going, sweet Sofia?” Sergio cooed in my ear.

“Nowhere,” I said, shaking my head frantically. “I woke up, and I didn’t know where I was, so I came up here to find out.”

He eyed the rope burns on my wrists, then raised eachone to his lips, kissing them reverently, his dry lips sending goosebumps of horror skittering up my arms.

“You weren’t trying to escape?”

He wasn’t fucking stupid, and neither was I. Of course I was trying to escape, and of course I could never admit it.

“Do I need to?” I asked him, coyly looking up at him through my lashes, leaving my wrist in his hand for him to stroke his thumb over.

“No, sweet Sofia. You never need to escape from anything again.”

He brought me over to a table covered in paperwork and pulled out a wooden chair for me. I winced as I sat, the movement reminding me of everything I didn’t want to remember.

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