A banging sound wakes me up.

I jolt awake to see that I’m still in jail.

The same officer from yesterday is frowning as he pushes the key into the lock.

“You’re free to go,” he says.

Damn, my lawyers must have worked a miracle.

I stand up and go to straighten my jacket, but I realize I’m wearing an undershirt and sweatpants. My real clothes are in a locker somewhere.

“Would have liked to see you rot in here,” the officer says.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Valencia…” he says. “What’s his full name? Anton Valencia, yeah, the guy you beat the shit out of. He dropped all charges.”

I narrow my eyes. Did my lawyers get to him? Overnight? I wonder how much it’s going to cost me.

“I see,” I say.

“He sounded real nervous when he called in and told us,” the officer says. “Like he was being, uh, what’s the word? Like he was being forced or what not.”

“I’m right here,” I say. “I couldn’t have--”

“Save it,” the officer says, pulling open the cell door. “Get your clothes and get the hell out of here.”

I’ll definitely have to make that donation to the PD. If only to piss this guy off.

They give me my clothes in a bag.

“You don’t put a suit like this in a bag--”

The woman who hands me the bag scoffs at me. “This look like an Armani store to you? I’m sure you can afford to dry clean the wrinkles out of it.”

“Where’s my phone and wallet?” I ask.

She shrugs. “In the jacket pocket, I guess? Where do you normally keep them?”

I consider getting them out of the bag, but decide I don’t want to change into a wrinkled suit in the police station’s bathroom.

I see Hans standing to the side of the door, and I walk toward him. “Let’s get out of here.”

He nods.

“Is Amber at home,” I ask. “Do you know?”

“I took her to her apartment last night,” Hans says.

“Why?”

“She said that she didn’t want to be in that big house alone.”

I sigh. She technically wasn’t alone. There was plenty of staff there, Hans and James included. I understand what she meant, though.

“All right,” I say. “Let’s go to her place then.”

Hans eyes me up and down. He’s never seen me dressed like this.

“I’ll change later,” I say. “I want to tell Amber that everything is okay. In person.”

He nods, and we get in the car.

* * *

I knock louder.

Shit, she must have left already. Where did she go then?

I need to get my phone.

I run down the stairs and head back to the car. I tear open the bag and ruffle through my jacket’s pockets for the phone.

I grab hold of my wallet, pull it out. I keep searching, but don’t find the phone.

“Hans,” I say. “Can you call me?”

He nods and dials my number. There’s no ring.

“Incompetent police,” I say, fuming. “Let’s go back to the station.”

I nearly kick the doors down, and the woman who gave me my clothes already looks nervous.

“The phone wasn’t in the jacket,” I snap.

“Uh,” she mumbles. “We can check the lockers--”

“Why didn’t you check before?” I ask.

She locks eyes with me, but doesn’t say it. She could ask me the exact same question. I should have checked myself.

“I’ll go find it,” she says.

She pulls out a basket and sets it on the counter. I hear keys jangling.

I look in and see my keys and phone.

“I guess whoever booked you didn’t know the new procedure. Keys and phones aren’t supposed to get separated anymore,” she says. “Sorry about that.”

She slides the tray toward me, and the phone’s screen lights up.

Suddenly, a picture of Amber, naked and tied to a chair lights up. The text is from Amber’s phone.

The woman’s eyes dart to the phone and widen, and I snatch it up and out of the tray.

I open the text. “You know who this is. Don’t tell the police anything or she’s gone.”

I see the woman at the desk reaching for a phone, and I grab her gently by the arm and force my most reassuring grin.

It feels like hundreds of knives are stabbing me from inside, but I have to hold together a calm exterior long enough to convince this woman that everything is okay.

“Nothing to worry about,” I say.

“She’s tied up, held--”

“No,” I say. “Look, I tied her up…”

She looks at me in horror.

I lean in closer to her. “I have...complicated tastes. Do you understand?”

Her mouth drops open, and she looks up at me with a new mix of fear and fascination. She can believe that a guy with all the money that I have would be into something like this. I’m sure she’s read Fifty Shades of Gray.

“Specific tastes,” I elaborate.

“It’s consensual?” she asks, her voice cracking.

“She begs me for it,” I say.

There’s a flash of something in her eyes. Maybe it’s jealousy, but I don’t care. All I want to do is get out of here and tear Cynthia’s head off.

“Well,” the woman says, letting go of the phone. “Go home and enjoy then. I ain’t judging.”

I smile. “Thanks. And sorry I was so angry about the phone. You’re right, I should have checked myself.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, still looking at me as if I had whipped my dick out and thrown it onto the counter.

I get outside, and I still remain calm. The moment I’m in the car and slam the door shut, I yell. It’s a rage-filled shout, and Hans nearly jumps out of the driver’s seat.

“Sir?” he asks.

He’s loyal, but I can’t risk telling him. He might think he needs to tell the police.

“I know this is out of the ordinary,” I say, grabbing my wallet.

I hand him a stack of hundred dollar bills. “I’ll need to drive myself today. Use this money to get home…”

“That’s more than--”

“Take it!” I bark, shoving it into his hands.

He grabs it, opens the door, and jumps out.

I’m alone in the car now, and I check the photo again.

There’s a blindfold around Amber’s neck; Cynthia had it removed from her eyes just for this photo, I assume. Amber’s eyes are wide and glassy. They are full of terror and dread, and tears are streaming down her face. She’s tied to the chair with thick ropes. They are so tight that there are red marks on her skin where the ropes touch.

I nearly crush the phone in my hand re-reading the message.

I completely misread Cynthia. I knew she’d go to great lengths. I knew she’d proven herself capable of taking insane measures to get what she wanted. I thought she wanted my fortune, but all along, she just wanted me.

She must have realized that I actually did care for--no, love--Amber, and that set her off. I had arranged all my pieces to defend the king--my fortune--and Cynthia took my queen. My Amber.

Rage fills my body. It dissipates into my blood, and adrenaline pumps through me. I’ll use it to get through this. It will stay at a simmer, always on the edge of boiling over, but I won’t lose control again. Not until Amber is safe in my arms.

What is my next move?

Cynthia knows me. She knows my temper. She expects a response, and soon.

“I’ll kill you.” I type. “I’ve never harmed a hair on a woman’s head, but you’re not a woman. You’re a fucking monster. Let her go, or I swear to God I will do it.”

I hit send.

She needs to think I’m having an irrational fit of rage.

Cynthia is irrational in her own way. While I always fly off the handle and lose my cool, Cynthia was always cold as ice. She got just as angry as I did, but she always channeled it into cool and calculated cruelty.

Faking her own death, and now this? If she’s completely lost it, she might think she has a shot at getting me back. She might think that--somehow--I’ll agree to marry her if she lets Amber go. It makes no sense, but if she’s completely lost her sanity, she might have convinced herself to believe it.

The alternative, and the more likely scenario, is that she knows full well she has lost me. She knows I love Amber in a way that I could never love her, and all she can do now is hurt the one thing I love. She can hurt me as much as possible as payback for not being able to love her.

I have to assume the worst-case scenario. It’s unlikely Cynthia is at all considering letting Amber go. The only thing she probably wants to bait me into doing is getting close enough that she can take me, too. That she can make me watch.

She’ll have hired help.

I could hire some mercenaries of my own, but I’d still need to track her down. The real risk is that Cynthia would just kill Amber the moment she knew my team was on her.

I’ll have to surrender myself to her. It’s the only way I can get near Amber without Cynthia killing her. Getting near Cynthia might also give me a chance to “work” her, if that’s even possible at this point.

Yeah, I’ll surrender myself to her, or at least convince her that I have.