Still, I can’t keep myself from begging.

“Could you at least tell them I’m safe?” I ask him. “Please.”

I’m begging him with my eyes, my face, even my hands clasped in front of me.

If he has any soul, any at all, he’ll see the pain in my face.

But he has nothing inside of him.

He just laughs, shaking his head.

“Not a chance,” he says. “That would spoil all the fun.”

11

Miko

For five days I watch the Griffins tear the city apart, looking for Nessa. My men report back to me how the Griffins threaten, bribe, and search, without finding a shred of evidence.

Only five people know where Nessa is hidden: Jonas, Andrei, Marcel, Klara, and myself. Out of my dozens of soldiers, only the most trusted have any idea what I’m up to. I’ve warned each of them that if they whisper a word of it, even hint it to a single friend or lover, I’ll put a bullet in the back of their skull.

I’m thrilled to see that the Gallos are equally frantic to find Nessa. Dante, Nero, and Sebastian Gallo are all hunting for her, and Aida Gallo most of all. It’s almost touching, how two families who were mortal enemies just months ago are now united in their desperation to find the youngest of their number.

Or it would be touching, if their alliance wasn’t the exact thing I’m determined to crack.

I drink it all in. I love that they have no idea if she’s alive or dead, or where she might have disappeared. Not knowing is the torture. Death can be accepted. But this . . . it will gnaw at them. Drive them into chaos.

Meanwhile, Nessa Griffin goes mad with boredom. I watch her via the cameras in her room. I see her pacing her cage like an animal in a zoo.

The starvation is a problem. She was already skinny to begin with—she doesn’t have the fat stores to withstand weeks of hunger. I can’t allow her to fuck up my plans with her petulant protests.

So I order Klara to get Nessa dressed for dinner. I intend to tempt her with food, and if that fails, to forcibly stuff it down her throat.

I wanted to see her in person again anyway. As a figure on my phone screen, she amuses me, but that can’t compare to the exquisite bouquet of fear and fury that she can provide in the flesh.

When Jonas drags her into the formal dining room, I see that Klara has done her job a little too well. I’ve only seen Nessa in dance attire or school clothes, hair pulled back and face freshly scrubbed. When dressed to impress, Nessa Griffin is fucking stunning.

A few days without food have made her willowier than ever. The green silk dress clings to her frame, showing her every breath, down to the sudden intake of air when she spots me waiting for her.

Her light-brown hair floats down around her shoulders in waves, longer and thicker than I expected it to be. It reflects the light just like the silk dress, just like her glowing skin and her big green eyes. Every bit of her is luminescent.

But incredibly fragile. The thinness of her neck, her arms and fingers, is frightening. I could snap those bird-like bones without even trying. I can see her collarbones, and her shoulder blades when she turns. The only part of her with curves is those big, soft, trembling lips.

I’m glad to see that while Klara has painted Nessa’s face, she’s left those lips bare. Pale pink like a ballet slipper. A raw and innocent color. I wonder if her nipples are the same shade, underneath that dress.

I can still see the pale brown freckles scattered across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. They’re sweet and childish, in contrast to the surprisingly dark eyebrows that animate her face like punctuation marks. Her eyebrows swoop up like bird’s wings when she’s surprised, and contract plaintively when she’s distressed.

Even dressed like this, at her most mature and glamorous, Nessa looks incredibly young. She’s fresh and youthful, in contrast to this house where everything is old and dusty.

I don’t find her innocence attractive. In fact, I find it infuriating.

How dare she walk through life like a glass sculpture, begging to be smashed? She’s a burden on everyone around her—impossible to protect, impossible to keep intact.

The sooner I start the process of dismantling her, the better off everyone will be.

So I make her sit down. I make her eat.

She tries to strike her ridiculous bargain with me, and I allow it. I don’t care if she wanders around the house. She really can’t escape, not with the monitor around her ankle. It tracks her at all times, everywhere she goes. If she tries to break it, if it stops reading her pulse through her skin for even an instant, I’ll be alerted.

I’m curious to see where she’ll go, what she’ll do. I’ve grown bored of watching her inside her room.

Buoying her up with this tiny victory will only give her further to fall. And if she actually starts to trust me a little, if she thinks I can be reasoned with . . . all the better.

Constant cruelty isn’t how you worm your way inside someone’s head. It’s the mix of good and bad, give and take, that fucks with them. Unpredictability makes them desperate to please.

So after we’ve eaten, I take Nessa into the ballroom. I’ve watched her dance several times now—at Jungle, at Lake City Ballet, and trapped in her room, in the space next to the four-poster bed.

Dancing transforms her. The girl who blushes and can’t meet my eye is not the same one who lets go of herself under the influence of music.

It’s like watching a possession. As soon as I take her in my arms, her stiff and fragile body becomes as loose and liquid as the material of her dress. The music surges through her, until she’s thrumming with too much energy for one tiny frame. She’s vibrating under my hands. Her eyes glaze over and she doesn’t seem to notice me at all anymore, other than as an apparatus to move her across the room.

It makes me almost jealous. She’s disappeared somewhere that I can’t reach her. She’s feeling something that I can’t feel.

I whirl her around faster and faster. I’m good at dancing in the way that I’m good at everything—quick and coordinated. It’s how I work and how I fight. How I fuck, even.

But I don’t get pleasure out of it like Nessa does. Her eyes close and her lips part. Her face bears an expression usually reserved for sexual climax. Her body presses against mine, hot and damp with sweat. I can feel her heartbeat through the thin silk; I feel her nipples stiffen against my chest.

I dip her backward, exposing the delicate column of her throat. I don’t know if I want to kiss her or bite her—or wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze. I want to do something to yank her back from wherever she’s gone. I want to force her attention back to me.

It’s odd. I usually feel irritated by women’s attention. I hate their neediness, their clinging hands. I use them for release, but I make it very clear there will be no conversation, no affection, and definitely no love.

I haven’t kissed a woman in years.

Yet here I am, looking down at Nessa’s closed eyes and her parted lips, thinking how easily I could crush that delicate mouth under mine and force my tongue between those lips, tasting her sweetness like the nectar of a flower.

Instead, I touch the ivory column of her throat. I run my fingertips down her breastbone, feeling skin so soft it might have been born yesterday.