Chapter 106

“I’ve made about a hundred cupcakes and a huge chocolate cake,” Mia told me that night, during our dinner. It was just the two of us, after… you know. I wanted to make love to her; I was insatiable, but she was hungry first.

“Planning your escape by putting my guards into a sugar coma?” I joked, feeling unusually cheerful.

“No,” she said sheepishly, making me look up from my dinner. “I was thinking of donating them to an orphanage or hospital.”

“No.” The word escaped before I could fully process her request.

She frowned. “Your punishment involved uprooting me and bringing me to this fancy cage. It didn’t involve never seeing the outside world again.”

“No,” I repeated.

She huffed. “You’re being unfair. I’ve been here three weeks and been a good prisoner. I haven’t tried escaping, I’ve made you dessert, and I haven’t caused any problems. Don’t you think that deserves a reward?”

“Sure, ask for a diamond set or something.”

“What am I going to do with a diamond set if I have nowhere to wear it, Alex?”

Even though she made perfect sense, my answer remained the same. When I initially abducted her, the plan was to learn why she recorded me—the real reason—and then decide what to do. Now, things were different. Her recording me was a distant memory; her presence had consumed me these past few weeks.

Leaving meant facing reality. It also meant facing the possibility that this was a ploy—a plan for her escape, or worse, to contact her boyfriend, which a paranoid part of me still believed existed.

“You can come with me,” she pleaded. “You can guard me yourself. I won’t talk to anyone; I won’t even look at anyone. I just miss the outside world, and all those cupcakes will go to waste if we don’t donate them.”

“No, Mia. No discussions. It’s final.”

Mia’s grey eyes held frustration and sadness. “Are you ever going to let me go?”

I clenched my fist around my fork, releasing it only when I realized I might break it. “Define ‘letting you go’?”

“Outside,” she mumbled. “Or is this my life now?”

“How can I trust you’d come back? That this isn’t a plan to leave a message for someone to help you escape?”

“You can’t guarantee that. You’ll just have to trust me,” she pleaded.

Chapter 106 (continued)

“I’ve known you for three weeks, and that’s only because you hid outside a room trying to record me and Bakshi. Trust is a generous word, don’t you think?”

Something flashed in her eyes—hurt, presumably. “Yes, trust,” she repeated, her voice shaky but firm. “Just like I trust that while I’m stuck here and you’re out all day, you aren’t sleeping with someone else. Just like I trusted your word when you said I’m the only girl allowed to touch you.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love how she’d given it right back to me. Unlike almost everyone in my life, she doesn’t just listen. She never hesitates to tell me what she’s thinking, even though she knows I can break her in a heartbeat.

She was so soft, so malleable, so breakable.

“Mia…” I called to her.

“No,” she said, getting up and sniffing. “Thanks for dinner. Goodnight, Alex.”

I blinked, watching her walk away, leaving her half-eaten plate. She was stubborn.

But right now, I was distracted by another stubborn girl—my twin sister. I groaned when I saw her name on my phone before answering. “Yes, Aurora?”

As expected, she was tiptoeing around in the dark, probably looking for food.

“Hungry?” I asked, making her jump. She glared at me.

“It’s 2 A.M., what are you doing awake?” she asked dramatically, clutching her chest.

“The devil never sleeps, works hard, and all that,” I quipped.

She crossed her arms. “I came for some cupcakes I made. You know, since you decided to let them go to waste.”

“I never said that,” I said, getting up from the couch where I’d been working. I walked towards the kitchen where she stood.

“But—but you said I couldn’t go.”

“I said you can’t go, not that we weren’t going to donate the mini-bakery you made in my kitchen.”

Her lips parted. “What?”

“I sent them to Bakshi’s hospital with Dominic.”

“A hospital?” Her eyes twinkled, even in the darkness.

“To Bakshi’s hospital,” I said. “I had to send him something to remind him of me and the work he still needed to do. I was thinking more along the lines of a skull, but cupcakes work just fine.”

Her eyes widened. “You—you sent them to that hospital?”

I nodded.

“Wow. Thank you.”

I nodded again. “Come to think of it, you never told me what you were doing at the hospital that day.”

“Wh—what?” She looked startled.

I stepped forward. “What were you doing at the hospital that day, Mia?”

“I—I told you I really like kids, right?” she asked.

“Hm?”

“I spend my free days in the children’s ward. I take them cupcakes sometimes. Since it was Sunday, I—I was there and needed to use the bathroom. They were cleaning, so I used the one in the administration wing and overheard you talking to Bakshi.”

I sensed she was telling the truth; her eyes didn’t twitch like they usually did when she lied. Or maybe they did, and it was too dark to see. Still, I knew she was hiding something. Always outspoken, yet always full of secrets.

“You wanted to leave, right?” I asked. Her head perked up, her eyes full of hope that my intrusive thoughts wanted me to crush. “Pack your bags tomorrow, then.”

“Pack?” she practically yelled. “We’re going out? Seriously? Where? When? How many days? What am I supposed to pack?”

“Don’t be dramatic, cupcake,” I rolled my eyes. “Two nights. Pack whatever; I don’t care. I have to go somewhere, and since I can’t leave you to stir trouble, I’m taking you with me.”

She grinned.

“Goodnight, Mia,” I said, leaving her alone in the kitchen, smiling like an overjoyed child.