Page 24

“Are you going to tell me how you know my name?”

“No.”

I go very still. Something in me responds to that kind of nerve the way a shark does to blood—something old, attentive, and instinctive.

“Is that so, lass?” I say, my voice dangerously low.

“You gave me the bed and took the couch,” she says, as if that means anything.

“And?”

She swallows.

“So you reckon I gave you the bed because I'm…” I gesture into the air. “Polite? A good man? Chivalrous?”

She flinches when I reach for her and give her a little shake. Gentle, not rough, but enough to make it clear how easily and quickly I could change that. “My mother did raise me to be a gentleman, but that's not why I did it.”

She swallows again but doesn't look away. Bold.

My voice drops, the only direction it goes when I want someone to understand that I mean what I fucking say. “Answer the question… before I disprove the theory for you. How did you know my name?”

Nothing. Her chin lifts, and her eyes spark. She's going to die on this hill—I can see that already. I look at her for a long moment, considering my options.

I could take my belt to her arse and give her a proper spanking. But after her reaction to the last spanking I gave her, I don't think it would be as effective as I want it to be.

I could deprive her of everything she's been given so far: food, a blanket, comfort. No. I was in a cell long enough to know that deprivation only hardens people. That’s the kind of thing small men do when they have nothing left.

But she does need to learn her lesson.

I take her firmly by the arm, march her to the bed, and push her to a seated position. I can see it costs her something in the way she holds herself, in the way a muscle twitches in her jaw.

“Don't you fucking move.” I go to the black bag, and she watches me open it and take out the rope.

“No,” she says. “Please. Torin, don't.” I look at her.

“You had a chance to answer me, and you didn't take it, did you?”

“You can't⁠—”

“Watch me.”

I cross to her. She scrambles back against the headboard. I don't rush it. I take her wrist, loop the rope once, then twice, and tie it to the iron bar. Her other wrist goes next. She's pulling against me, but she's half starved, and I had years to do nothing but get stronger.

“Torin.” Her voice has gone tight. She used my name once, and it was effective, so maybe she's considering it again. “Torin, this isn't⁠—”

“When you're ready to answer my question…” I pull the knot taut and check it—firm enough that she's not going anywhere, but not tight enough to cut off the blood. “Tell me. You can think about it.”

She stares at me. Her wrists strain against the rope, then stop. She's smart enough to know that struggling only pulls it tighter.

I walk to the chair at the desk, sit down, and open my phone. Seamus sent three messages while I was in the shower, and I haven't even read them yet. “You're just going to sit there?” she says. I don't answer.

I read Seamus's first message, casually flicking through it. He's going to confirm the names of some of the men from the auction—a connection to the Boston Irish, going back a fucking decade. I'll follow that thread tomorrow.

“This is absurd, Torin,” she says from the bed. “You know this is absurd.”

I read the second message.

“You have to let me go,” she says. “If you don't, I'll scream.” Her voice ends on a high pitch bordering on a scream.