Day fifteen. I’ve seen the ocean—well, the Gulf of California—and I’ve learned where we are. About twenty minutes north of Los Mochis, a coastal city in northern Sinaloa, Mexico. Granted, I haven’t seen a map, so I have no idea where Sinaloa is.

Honestly, I don’t care. All I care about is that we’re a good five hundred miles from a certain basement. When Liam told me the distance, I believed him. Funny, that. How trust is harder to kill than a person.

But though he’s lied to me plenty of times, we aren’t the same people. He’s not trying to protect my innocence anymore. Nor has he made any efforts to charm me, to draw me in, to touch my barricaded heart. He speaks frankly. No sugarcoating. No teasing banter or secret smiles.

We are changed, both of us.

Maybe someday we’ll get drunk and tell each other our stories. Maybe we’ll part ways or die first. I don’t know how this story ends—for either of us—but I’m sick of reading. I’m restless. I want power back. Control. Freedom.

Choice.

“I can’t kill anyone. I won’t. But I don’t want them to have the money.”

Liam looks up from his hand of cards, eyes narrowed beneath lowered brows. “I have plenty of money.”

“I don’t want your money. I want what belongs to me.”

He drops his cards on the table and leans back, crossing arms behind his head. He’s still beautiful to me. More beautiful, even. Hardened and refined by the force of his world—smelted and polished to his utmost potential. A killer.

The notion no longer bothers me.

“It doesn’t belong to you,” he says mildly. “I seem to remember your mother stole its source from Maddoc, who might have stolen it from someone else.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, actually. Enlighten me.”

I toss my cards beside his. I was losing, anyway. “I want what they stole from me. I want my life.”

“Your old one?”

“Yes—no. I’d like to know that my parents are safe, but I can’t go back. I can’t be a doctor again.”

It’s the first time I’ve mentioned it, but he doesn’t look surprised.

Liam’s eyes catch the sunset, flaring like flames on water. “Can’t?” he asks softly. “Or won’t?”

“I’m not looking for psychoanalysis,” I snap. “I want to know if you’ll help me. I want the money.”

The old Liam would have made a graphic suggestion about how I might earn his help.

The new Liam merely nods. “All right.”

“That’s it? All right?”

He looks out the window at the darkening sky. “Yes, Eden. Of course I’ll help you.”

An aching part of me asks again, “Why?”

He stays absolutely still, a statue of lethal beauty. After a long minute of silence—wherein I watch the sun fade from his face—he turns his head and meets my gaze.

“Until you tell me to stop, I’ll follow you. To hell and back if necessary.” A ghost of a smile graces his lips. “I serve at your whim, Eden Sumner.”

“Out of guilt,” I whisper.

He sighs and stands. As he passes me on the way to the door, his fingertips graze my shoulder. For the first time in two weeks, I don’t flinch at the casual touch.

“You know it’s more than that,” he murmurs, and leaves me to the shadows and at the mercy of my tortured mind and heart.

* * *

There’s only darkness. No light. Squeak. I’m still in the basement. Liam was a dream. He’s dead, like Chris told me. I’m alone. A monster defeated, a woman sundered.

Eden.

Without choice, there’s no surrender.

There is only defeat.

“Eden.”

Memory tempts me. Snatches me in its gossamer clutches, paints me in watercolor. Too many colors together… I am mud.

Sparks of pain in my scalp. Fingers squeezing the column of my throat. He’s back… finally.

I will him to finish me.

“Fight, damnit!”

No surrender.

Only defeat.

Cool air on my naked breasts, then weight and heat. Light cocooning darkness. I’m smothered, wrapped tight and aching for release. Freedom. Can there be freedom here? I wonder…

“Come back to me! Now, Eden!”

The command jerks me awake with a gasp. A hard male body rests atop mine. Fingers press against my throat. More are clenched in my hair.

“Do you feel the difference?” he growls. “Do you feel the power?”

I do.

But I can’t surrender anymore.

With a hoarse cry, I buck and flail my arms, beating his head and back with every ounce of my strength. White-hot rage burns through me, all my weeks of impotence flooding through my limbs like a drug.

My nails find skin, dig and tear. Like a banshee, I wail in an unearthly pitch as I conquer. Somehow, I maneuver atop him. I find his neck with my hands.

I squeeze. Hard. Harder.

Gentle hands cup my face. “Yes,” he whispers. “Yes.”

The monster is soothed by his touch. Memory swirls and plays across a landscape of bloody red.

“Liam?” I gasp, my fingers unclenching from his neck.

He smiles, moonlight through the window revealing raw tracks on his cheek from my nails, redness on his throat.

His hands keep moving, smoothing down my arms, my hips, until I shudder, fully rooted in my body.

“You were having a nightmare.”

I scramble off him, fleeing to the window. Gulping night air, flavored with the barest touch of salt, I try to make sense of what cannot be understood.

“Why let me hurt you?” I whisper.

Fabric whispers as he shifts. There’s a soft thud as his feet hit the floor. “Because I can give you what you need.”

I turn, shivering, not in cold but fear, and meet his steady gaze. “And what’s that?”

“Control.”

I don’t pretend to misunderstand, though his offer is numbing. Mind-boggling. A man who thrives on controlling others, on manipulating pawns in games of power…

I shake my head. “I can’t.”

He nods, standing. “Not yet. Perhaps never.” In a surreal mimicking of his earlier exit, he pauses in the doorway. “But should you ask, I will serve.”