Page 81 of The Wrong Man

He’s afraid of what I am. Horrified by what I do. And yet some part of him still cares enough to want me safe.

I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve him. But God help me, I’m going to find a way to keep him anyway.

“I will,” I say.

Then I walk out the door and become the monster again.

Chapter twenty-three

Dylan

Ican’t sleep.

The flat is silent. Completely, utterly silent. Dante had the soundproofing done days ago, installed by men who didn’t ask questions and worked with terrifying efficiency. I know this. I know that whatever is happening in the torture chamber down the hall, I won’t hear a single sound.

But I keep listening anyway.

I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, straining my ears for something that won’t come. The creak of a floorboard. A muffled cry. Anything that might tell me what’s happening in there, even though I desperately don’t want to know.

My imagination fills in the gaps. I picture the room I was in, the chair I was tied to, the tools that lined the walls. I picture Dante moving through that space with cold precision, doing the things he’s so very good at.

I picture someone screaming.

My stomach churns. I roll onto my side and press my face into the pillow, as if that could somehow block out the images in my head.

Whoever is in there is a bad person. That’s what I tell myself. Dante doesn’t torture innocents. He said so himself, and I believe him, because I have to believe him. Because the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.

But does it matter? Does it matter if someone is a criminal, a traitor, a monster in their own right? Does that make it okay to hurt them? Does that make it acceptable to tear them apart piece by piece until they tell you what you want to know?

I don’t have answers. I don’t have anything except this sick, hollow feeling in my chest and the knowledge that I’m lying here doing nothing while someone suffers.

It feels like participating. Like condoning. Like being complicit in something terrible simply by existing in this space, eating Dante’s food, wearing Dante’s clothes, starting to care about Dante in ways I can’t explain or justify.

But what else can I do?

Nothing. That’s the answer. I can do nothing. I’m weak and powerless and completely useless. Locked in a flat with no way out, no way to help, no way to change anything about this awful situation.

Declan would know what to do. Declan always knew what to do. He is clever and resourceful and utterly ruthless when he needs to be. If Declan were in my position, he would know how to stop Dante from torturing someone, if he wanted to. Not that Declan would give a shit, but that’s irrelevant because Declan wouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. He’d have escaped weeks ago. He’d have manipulated Dante into submission, found the weakness in the security, slipped away into the night without a backward glance.

But I’m not Declan. I’ve never been Declan. I’m just Dylan, the disappointing twin, the one who couldn’t even manage to be kidnapped correctly.

The tears come before I can stop them. Hot and silent, soaking into the pillow. I cry for the person in the torture chamber whose name I’ll never know. I cry for myself, trapped and helpless and so confused about everything. I cry for Dante, which makes no sense at all but happens anyway.

Eventually, exhaustion wins. I drift into an uneasy sleep, haunted by dreams as dark as my thoughts.

I wake to someone staring at me.

A face hovers inches from mine. Dark eyes, dark hair, features that are startlingly pretty in the dim light filtering through the doorway.

I yelp and scramble backward, heart pounding, tangling myself in the sheets in my panic. My back hits the headboard and I press against it, gasping.

The figure straightens up but doesn’t move away. Now that my eyes are adjusting, I can see more details. It’s a young man, probably around my age or a little younger. He’s wearing tiny shorts and knee-high socks, paired with a loose t-shirt that’s slipping off one shoulder. His dark hair is artfully tousled. His face is all delicate angles and full lips and those huge dark eyes that are studying me with open curiosity.

He looks like he just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Or a very specific type of website.

“Are you Dante’s pet?” he asks.

The question is so unexpected that I just stare at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish.