Page 49 of Stolen Princess

Her fists dig into the seat on either side of her. “Shut up!”

“She’s holding you hostage. I know you see it.”

“I don’t have anything else!” she screams, her arms flying. “I have no one else. What am I supposed to do?”

“Go to the police.”

She laughs sardonically. “You mean the people you’ve been trying to avoid and had me avoid this morning?”

“What if you had more than you knew?” I say, testing where she is with that. “What if there’s more to your story⁠—”

“When I get home, I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her what I did and maybe⁠—”

“She’ll never let you leave again. You know that.”

“Why do you care?” she throws back at me, her voice high and cracking on the end with emotion. “This doesn’t impact you at all. You’re not the one who has to live this. I’m the one who has to figure it out, and I don’t know what that means. This is all I’ve known for seventeen years. I’m sitting in a car, staring out the window at shops and restaurants and giant buildings, and it’s as if I’ve stepped out of a cave, but there is comfort in that cave. Out here, there is no comfort. What does it matter what else I am or could be when I’m still me?”

She has a point with that. I can’t begin to comprehend what this is like for her. All of it. What she knows or what she suspects versus what she’s been told. What she wants versus what she’s afraid of.

“Then why were you so desperate to leave?”

“So I could see for myself.”

“You were going to kill yourself. If I hadn’t said yes, you would have been thinking about it. Rather seriously too.”

She makes an incredulous noise. “You can’t know that.”

“I do, though. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She twists to the window and angles her body away from me.

“Going back because you have no other option is the same as killing yourself. Physically, emotionally, maybe both. I think you know that.”

“That’s still my problem. Not yours.”

Before I can say more, a text appears on the car's screen since my phone is linked to it.

Lars. Fuck.

“Who’s Lars?”

I grunt. “A fellow thief.”

“A bad guy?”

I roll my eyes. “Princess, the world isn’t black and white. Most people are varying shades, and some are simply gray. Like your eyes.” I smirk at her. “But no one is pure white. If they tell you they are, they’re not only lying, they’re hiding something.”

I get a challenging brow. “Would you describe yourself as black or gray?”

“Perhaps somewhere in between. A charcoal gray.”

She taps on the dash beside the screen. “It could be important. You’re not going to see what he wants?”

“No.”

“How come?”

I sigh and run a hand across my jaw to the back of my neck. “Because I can do that later.”