Page 17 of Gilded Shackles
"She doesn't let me out much. No, actually," she turns to her side, "that's the understatement of the century. No boyfriends. No friends, really. All I had were lots of rules and four walls I had to stay within." A shrug, like she's trying to make it smaller than it is. "But it wasn't all bad. I read a lot. I swam."
She trails off. Then: "I always had guards watching my back. Mother knows where I am every minute of every day. But tonight, I snuck out."
My spine stiffens. Warning bells. The kind I've learned to trust over the kind that keep me warm.
"Why? She doesn't let you out at all?"
"She says it's for my protection. That the world is dangerous." Elle shrugs, her shoulder a pale curve in the half-light.
I study her face. No tells. No twitches. No rehearsed pauses or sideways glances. Either she's the best liar I've ever met, or she's telling the truth.
I'm betting on the latter. And I don't like what that means.
"And tonight you decided what, exactly?"
"That I needed an adventure of my own or I was going to explode." She looks at me, her green eyes bright even in the half-dark.
“Who are you?”
“Elle.”
I roll to my side and look down at her. My instincts are telling me something is very wrong.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
She flinches. “What’s wrong?”
“Who are you?”
“Raphaella. Elle. I’m nobody.”
“Why are you confined to that building?”
“I told you—my mother.”
“Why?”
She reaches up and touches my cheek. I don’t pull away. I stare into her eyes and search for the lie.
She’s truly innocent. How in the hell does that happen?
"Does it bother you? That I was a virgin."
My suspicion wanes. I flop back down.
"It bothers me that you had to ask." The answer is out before I decide to give it. She just stares. "No," I add, quieter. "It doesn't bother me."
Something passes between us. Something I don't have a name for and don't plan to find one.
“Are you my new guard?”
“Why would you think that?”
“You were in the building. Do you know Jeffrey?”
This is tricky. I don’t know Jeffrey. I can’t tell her why I was in the building. Telling her I was doing a little recon would prompt a conversation I wasn’t interested in having with a woman I knew nothing about. The intel I had missed the fact a young woman was living in the penthouse.
The door explodes inward.
