Post #2155930

Chapter 5 cont. He stood. His shadow stretched across the hardwood floor, swallowed her. "I've got nowhere else to be tonight. You hungry? Thirsty?" The shift in subject threw her. "I'm not—" "When's the last time you ate?" Diana couldn't remember. Coffee and toast at dawn, maybe? The day had shattered into fragments the moment those black vans had appeared. "I'll bring you something." he paused at the threshold. "Think about what you're protecting, Diana. Think about whether Herman would do the same for you." He left before she could answer. *** Zane slapped together a ham and cheese sandwich with more force than necessary, the knife scraping against the plate. His mind kept circling back to the woman chained in his bedroom—the way her blue eyes had gone wide when he'd mentioned trafficking, genuine shock written across her face. Either she was the best actress he'd ever met, or Luis had kept her in the dark. He wanted to believe the latter. Wanted it more than was professional. The bread tore under his knife. He cursed, started over with a fresh slice. This was procedure. Standard leverage play—grab someone close to the target, apply pressure until they cracked. He'd done it a dozen times before without losing sleep. But those other times, the people in his custody had been hardened, complicit. Their eyes had held knowledge of their crimes. Diana's eyes held fear. And something else that made his chest tight. He grabbed the plate and a bottle of water from the fridge. Walked back down the hallway toward his bedroom, each step feeling heavier than the last. She'd shifted position on the bed, curled on her side with her cuffed wrists pulled toward her chest, clutching at the tatters of her shirt. The defensive posture of someone who'd learned to make herself small. Strands of brown hair had escaped from behind her ear, falling across her face in soft waves that caught the afternoon light filtering through his bedroom blinds. Even restrained like this, even with terror flickering in those impossible blue eyes, she was beautiful in a way that hit him like a physical blow to the solar plexus. The kind of beauty that made smart men do stupid things. The kind that had probably been both her protection and her curse growing up in Luis Guerrero's world. He found himself cataloging details he had no business noticing—the delicate arch of her eyebrows, the way her full lips pressed together when she was thinking, the pulse visible at the base of her throat where her skin looked soft as silk. She was twenty-one, he reminded himself. Young enough to be genuinely innocent, old enough to destroy his career if he kept thinking about her like this. Christ. He was in trouble. "Here, eat," he said roughly. He set the plate on the nightstand, within her reach. Diana pushed herself upright, chains clinking. Her hair tumbled over one shoulder, exposing the curve of her neck. His eyes tracked the movement before he could stop them. "Drug-free?" Her voice carried an edge of defiance that shouldn't have been attractive. "Disappointingly so." The corner of her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Then she caught herself, face shuttering closed again. Zane dragged his chair closer, watched her pick up the sandwich, the cuffs forcing her movements into an awkward coordination. She seemed too eager, like she hadn't seen food in days, and he filed that detail away with all the others accumulating in his head. Protected stepdaughter. Sheltered. Kept separate from the family business. Or bait. The perfect lure to draw in someone exactly like him—someone who'd see innocence that needed saving. He didn't know which option scared him more.