Merciless

Chapter Twenty Four

Aria

This isn't what life is supposed to be like. Not for someone like me. Surrounded by luxury and chained to a gilded cage, I shouldn't wake up feeling at ease.

But that's how I feel. I know that so long as I obey Carter, I'll be all right. I'll be safe and pampered even.

While my family is murdered, and I do nothing.

I can't allow it. I won't.

I have to remind myself with each kindness he offers me.

Like last night. I was holding onto a deadly combination of hate and hope. Desperate for a way out of here so I could warn my family, or a way to convince Carter to be on my father's side to present itself.

And I slipped into sleep knowing I needed to do something. That today I would act and find a way. But each kindness makes me weaker.

I'll never forget the way he held me. Gripping me to him as I lay on my side. My heart raced, and fear was real in my veins. As real as anything else. Sleep still held my eyes tightly shut until I heard his voice, recognized the deep measure of his determined words. "Come back to me." His breath was hot on my neck, his hand strong as it splayed across my belly. He held me so close and so tightly, I couldn't move when I woke up.

I could still feel the drum of my racing heart as he flipped me onto my back and buried his head in the crook of my neck, kissing me ravenously, as if he'd been deprived of it. And I pined for his lips on mine, but he didn't give them to me. I was still blinking away sleep when he whispered, "If you're going to scream a name in your sleep, it'll be my name."

I woke up wondering if it was a dream if he hadn't really taken me from a nightmare and fucked me into a deep sleep of desire. But he was still holding me the way he had when I woke up and there was no denying it was real.

"You stopped humming." Carter's deep voice pierces through my thoughts and I look up at him from the ground beneath his feet. Rolling the black charcoal between my fingers I lie to him, something I know I shouldn't do.

"I'm just thinking about what I'd like to draw next."

He knows my response is a lie. His eyes narrow, but he allows it. I don't think he wants me to go back to the cell any more than I do. Although part of me wonders if one day he'll start fucking me on that mattress and I'll be confined there.

The only thing that relieves that thought is the knowledge that Carter enjoys others seeing how I've become his. How I obey him while he gives me this freedom. If you can call it that.

My gaze wanders across Carter's office and lands yet again on a bench that doesn't belong. It peeks out from under the bookshelf across from me and it simply isn't supposed to be there.

The wood is old and unfinished, at odds with the dark polished shelves housing beautifully covered books.

The hinges have a hint of rust. I tap the charcoal in my hand against the paper and stare at it. Wondering why Carter would allow it to stay.

"Where did the bench come from?" I ask him on a whim. I haven't asked him anything. Not for a single thing. Nor have I initiated conversation. But if I have any hope of changing his mind about my father, I have to be able to speak up. And it starts right now, with that bench. Craning my neck to look at him over the desk, from where I'm seated on the floor in front of him, I wait for his reaction.

"Bench?" he questions, although I already know that he knows what I'm referring to.

Pointing straight in front of me, I answer him, "It doesn't look like it belongs."