Page 27 of The Rook’s Obsession

Then she looks at the headboard. “There’s nothing to cuff me to,” she observes.

She’s right. The headboard is a solid piece of wood, smooth, no bars, no gaps. Nothing to loop a handcuff through. The bed frame is low to the ground and equally useless.

I pull the handcuffs from my bag and hold them up. “I’ll cuff you to me this time.”

She stares at the cuffs. Then at me. “You’re joking,” she deadpans.

“I’m not.” I sit on the edge of the bed and click one cuff around my own left wrist. Then I hold out the other, open, waiting. “Just in case you get any ideas about smothering me with a pillow.”

Something moves across her face. For a second, the corner of her mouth twitches. “I would never.”

She’s a liar. “Whatever you say.”

With a smirk, she sits on the bed next to me and extends her right wrist. I close the cuff around it, careful of the irritated skin from before, leaving it as loose as I can while still being secure. The chain between us is short—maybe eight inches of slack. Enough to move, not enough to reach anything useful.

We lie down on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other, connected by a strand of metal that clinks softly every time either of us shifts. The room is dark except for the faint glow of moonlight through the window, reflecting off the lake.

“Goodnight, Laura,” I murmur.

A long pause. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “Goodnight, Nick.”

It’s the first time she’s used my name.

I lie in the dark and listen to her breathe, and I hold on to that single word like it’s the first crack of light under a door that’s been locked for almost half a lifetime.

IVY

This is fun.

Maybe I can brainwash myself into thinking that if I try hard enough. Lying on my side of the bed, facing away from the man handcuffed to me, is a good time. The drifting in and out of sleep, groggy and disoriented, is what I’ve been missing in my life.

Otherwise, I just might go crazy.

This isn’t like me. There hasn’t been a situation I’ve been up against in the past decade or more that I haven’t been able to bend and twist until it looked the way I needed it to. Discipline, training. That’s what it’s all about, the only reason I’ve been able to make it as long and as far as I have.

Turns out all it took was a few pointed questions and a flight across the Atlantic to erase years of progress.

I close my eyes for maybe the hundredth time in the past several hours, refusing to give that thought any energy. Like depriving a fire of oxygen until it goes out. That’s what I need to do. That’s the only way I’ll make it through this. I’ve been able to train my mind to do a great many things. I can do this, too.

Then again, considering there’s so much I don’t remember, starting at birth and up to the age of fifteen or so, maybe my mind isn’t as trustworthy as I believed. Back in the day, early on, when I still dared ask questions, I used to worry about it to Vincenzo. Why couldn’t I remember? Was there something seriously wrong with me? What if I started to lose my current memories, too? He always reassured me there was nothing to worry about, but in an offhand, dismissive sort of way. Still, it was what I needed to hear, so I accepted it.

All those old fears have come back, along with so much else, and I feel myself losing my grip a little more all the time.

Sleep starts to take hold again, and I give in gladly because I need to be as sharp as I can. Otherwise, situations like the one in the kitchen will keep happening, and I can’t have that. It’s bad enough my body seems to want him. I need to be sharp, focused, or else risk making an even bigger mistake than kissing him.

It might be an hour, or it might be a minute before there’s a buzzing sound from the nightstand on the other side of the bed. His breathing changes, and the cuff shifts between us.

In the time it takes my heart to beat again, I’m fully awake. Vincenzo used to test me by sending people into my room at night. If I didn’t wake up before they reached the bed, there were an extra five miles to run in the morning.

I never ran those miles. Not once.

I look over my shoulder. He tilts the phone toward his face, and the light catches his expression. Whatever he sees takes the last of his sleep and drains it from his features, replacing it with something hard. Focused. I know that look. I’ve seen it all my life… at least, the life I remember.

“Laura. Wake up.”

All things considered, this isn’t the time to remind him he insists on calling me the wrong name. “I’m awake,” I confirm, sitting up, reading the situation by tracking his eyes. “What’s happening?”

“Eastern side has been breached. Multiple contacts.” He drops the phone on the bed and grabs for the key on the nightstand, unlocking the cuff. The metal falls away from my wrist—I flex my hand to restore circulation. “They’re moving in formation from the tree line. We’ve got maybe four minutes.”