Chapter 24: Merciless Prince: Chapter 23

When I wake up in the morning, nothing greets me.

No sunlight, no hunger, no desire.

I’m frozen under the same sheets I covered myself in after my shower with Aiden yesterday. All night, the steamy scene ran through my mind.

At times, my legs tingled from the memory. But only for a moment. These weren’t pleasurable thoughts I was having. They were cold and calculating. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened. To him and to me.

Aiden is more of a contradiction than ever. A dark mystery wrapped up in so many layers that I wonder if I’ve ever even seen the real man.

He’s supposed to be my enemy. I’m supposed to be suffering. But yesterday, he made me feel so good that I broke for him, and he didn’t just use his body. He used his words too.

Aiden made me picture a better future. A future where we were still together and more normal than we have any right to be. It put into focus a train of thought that I have been trying to suppress and push aside.

My view of the horizon should be focused on getting out of here, on gaining his trust for freedom’s sake, not on wondering what it would be like if I stuck around.

But how can I gain his trust if every time I let my walls down, I risk losing myself to him even more?

It’s insane. This is an arranged marriage. I was bought and locked away. None of this was my choice. But then, out of sheer luck, my only friend in the whole wide fucking world gave me an out.

And the only way to take that out is to crawl deeper into this black hole.

Will I even be able to escape by the time I gain enough of Aiden’s trust to make it to the tunnels? Will I ever even be able to gain enough of his trust?

Yesterday, I gave him almost everything. And still, he walked away from me without a single look back. What more could it take?

These questions keep me weighed under my blanket for so long that by the time I finally gather myself enough to lift them off, the sliver of sky that seeps through the top half of my bedroom window is dim and orange.

I can’t live like this.

My heart aches as I sit up in bed. My body is sore. My head is swimming.

My thoughts have finally settled. More than ever, I know that I need to escape. Soon. If I don’t, I could be lost forever.

The dangerous game between my true emotions and my fake ones will have to play out. My only hope is that Aiden gives me enough breathing room to gather myself in between his sessions.

This time, a full day has passed without him and I’m only now able to focus back on what matters. Freedom.

But how long will it take next time? And the time after that?

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that escape isn’t happening anytime soon. How long have I even been here for? Almost two weeks? That means that the wedding is two weeks away. If I doubled the trust I have now, do I have enough to make my run?

Doubtful.

If I’m going to get a chance to breakout, it will likely only be after I’m already Aiden Kilpatrick’s wife.

At that thought, a fractured hope springs up on either side of my chest. The glory of freedom is so bright that it almost blinds me. Can I really even imagine it?

But there’s another hope too. A hope that Aiden wasn’t lying when he said he’d change once we were married. That hope is just dim enough to see clearly.

It’s a dangerous sight. A happily-ever-after. But it’s stuck in there now. He wedged it into me when he made me laugh, when he made me kiss him. The only chance I have against that hope is to pit it against harsh reality.

He won’t live up to his word.

Aiden is out there somewhere, and part of me wants to be with him. Another part of me wants to be as far away from him as I can possibly get.

But I don’t even know who I’d run to. Father is just as much a captive as I am. And even if he wasn’t, I’m not sure I’d want to return to his style of imprisonment. There’s Felix. Though, who knows if he’s even still alive? I saw him fighting Aiden’s men when I was dragged away. I saw the jealousy in Aiden’s eyes when I brought him up. If I went to him, Felix would be the first to suffer.

“Knock knock.”

When I look up from my twisted thoughts, I see Tara standing in my doorway.

“Hey.” My voice is raspy.

“Back to not eating, huh? Are you feeling alright?”

I purse my lips and look over to my bedside table. A cold uneaten sandwich and salad rests on an untouched tray. “You are sneaky,” I try to force a smile. “I don’t think I’ve slept one bit since last night and I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I told you,” Tara smiles, taking a seat next to me on the side of my bed. “I would have stuck around if I knew you were up, but that lump under your covers wasn’t moving. Hell, for a second I even thought you might have, uh…”

We both scan the room for eavesdroppers. We’re all alone, but it’s not worth the risk to talk openly about the escape plan in here.

“… Actually fallen asleep?” I cover for her.

“Prematurely,” she smiles.

I can’t help but let out a little laugh. “I’m not sleeping until we’re ready.”

“Good. I think we may be closer to that moment than you think.”

That comes as a shock. Here I was, brooding about all day because of how long I figured this was all going to take—and that’s only if I even had the guts to actually go through with it.

“What do you mean?”

Tara leans close and whispers into my ear. “He’s starting to trust you.”

My gut ties up in knots. I remember the duality of him from yesterday. “Why do you say that?”

“Just the way I’ve seen him acting. He’s a subtle creature, but when I bring you up in conversation, there’s a look that comes over his face that makes me believe he’s changing.”

“You two talk about me?”

Tara laughs. “Not like that, sweetie. It’s just small stuff. Like, he’ll ask where I’m going and I’ll say to bring you some food. There’s always a little spark in his reaction, and it’s growing. If we were playing poker, no one would be able to tell but me. That’s why he doesn’t play poker against me!”

The raging conflict inside of me that had finally started to settle down finds life again. “He doesn’t act like he trusts me,” I mumble. That’s not entirely true. Sometimes he does, but Tara doesn’t see when Aiden and I are alone and he changes like he did in the shower.

“Was he not happy about you being in the garden?”

I sigh. “Honestly, I don’t think he really cared.”

“That’s a good sign,” Tara assures me. “He never lets anyone go anywhere near it. He even gets cranky with his brothers when they’re too careless.”

“Really?”

Tara nods. “I guess it’s because he feels like they got to say their proper goodbyes. Unlike him.”

I still don’t know where Aiden was when his mother passed, or what it might have had to do with my father. The knots in my stomach tighten some more. Tara doesn’t know it, but she’s dragging me back into the same pit I just spent all day trying to claw myself out of.

There is something special about the way Aiden sees me. There has to be. It’s the only explanation.

But that realization only makes me want him more.

“When he leaves here, where does he go?” I ask, trying to hide the desire from my voice. She can’t know that I’m slipping. Otherwise, she might call off the entire escape plan. Tara’s taking just as big a risk as I am, if not greater. If I manage to escape, I’ll be free, but Tara will still be here, and if Aiden finds out that she helped me… Well, I don’t even want to think about that.

Tara rolls her eyes. “Everywhere. It may be changing now that he’s the main boss, but before that he’d spend just as much time in the streets as he did in the office. It was always impossible to tell if he’d be at Kilpatrick Tower, Nolan’s club, or some alleyway uptown. Only one thing was for sure. He was always working.”

Out of everything Tara just said, only one thing stands out to me. “Club?”

“His younger brother owns a club.”

“What kind of club?”

Tara snorts. “The kind that draws powerful men. The kind that is filled with expensive booze and world class strippers.”

My heart constricts with unwanted jealousy. “Does Aiden like strippers?” Why wouldn’t he? A man like him could get any girl he wanted, and if he’s so busy, why wouldn’t he just pick the ones who could please him the easiest?

Tara lets out a belly laugh and I don’t know whether to feel better or worse. “No. Aiden does not like strippers. Even if they like him. He’s got a one-track mind, that boy.” Tara places a reassuring hand on my leg. “He may be running an entire empire, but when it comes to his personal life, he’s straightforward. He’s not out cheating on you, Elisa. Not unless he’s changed even more than I feared. Plus, I hear that the club is gone now.”

Her words hardly clear up the tension in my gut. Now, I just feel shameful for daring to ask such a thing about a man I’m supposedly trying to escape from. “It’s just, he never tells me anything.”

“That’s how he is,” Tara shrugs. “Any info you get out of him is a rare victory. He’s a steel curtain. It’s special when he pulls back the drapes. But that doesn’t mean he will, even if he thinks you’re special.”

“He’s impossible,” I mutter.

“Welcome to the Kilpatrick clan,” Tara laughs. We sit in silence for a while before she looks over to the bedside table. “Are you going to eat this or should I take it away?” She picks up the tray of cold food and gives it a long sniff. “Still smells good. I could heat it up for you?”

“No thanks. I’m not hungry.”

“That’s alright. Do you want me to stick around or would you rather be alone right now?”

I look over my shoulder to the open slit in my bedroom window. The sun has set, but it’s too cloudy to see any stars. “I think I’d like to be alone.”

Despite spending all day thinking about everything, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. My mind still races and I desperately want to try and settle it down. But being with Tara only makes me want to ask more questions, and it seems like every time I ask a question, all I get in return are more questions.

“Alright,” Tara says. “But you should really eat. You’ll need your strength for… ‘sleeping’. It won’t be easy. Just remember, don’t get too high or too low. This is a long enough game that doing either could burn you out before you have a chance to use those pretty little feet of yours.”

I nod and Tara silently shuffles away with my food.

Don’t get too high or too low.

How am I supposed to keep from doing that? Every time I’m with Aiden, he forces me into one extreme or another. Sometimes, my body wants him but my mind doesn’t. Yesterday, both my body and my mind wanted him.

It was an exhilarating high.

Even now, I’m still reeling from it. My entire body is filled with a mixture of intense conflicting emotions. Yet, underneath it all, there remains a simmering desire for him.

He’s done this to me. Aiden has ripped away all the pretenses of what I was raised to be and forced me to confront the raw desires of my naked soul.

Call it corruption, call it desecration, call it uncovering the truth.

Whatever you call it, I haven’t had enough. And It pulls me in the opposite direction of freedom. But I can’t let go. Even though it could mean the end of me.