Maybe he didn’t want her anymore. He’d seen what he could have with a woman who could handle him and now he wasn’t interested in a woman little more than a child. Faith angrily scrubbed away an escaping tear. Why should she care one way or the other? None of this had been her choice. It wasn’t as if she’d pursued him. He’d brought her home in the same way he’d brought the kitten home. Like some pet, some animal who didn’t get a choice in where they were going to live, or the conditions they would live in, or the kindness or meanness of their master.

The images on the screen flickered past her, a series of flashing lights with no content her mind could grab onto. Likewise the spoken words were mere noise. She turned off the TV and went after Leo.

She found him in his office, a room she’d been forbidden to enter. He sat at his desk, writing in that damned black book again. He didn’t look up.

“Yes, Faith?”

“Y-you said I could tell you my answer after everybody left.”

He closed the book and spun in his chair to face her, one leg propped on top of the other in a relaxed posture. If this meeting created any emotions, he didn’t give them away.

“Well?” he prodded, after a few moments.

The answer is no. I’m sorry. I’m going to go back to my room in the east wing if that’s okay. “Yes. I want to be with you.”

“Don’t you want to see the dungeon before you make that decision?”

Her eyes went to the floor, unable to stand the way he looked at her. Through her. “Okay.”

She waited for him to give her some kind of instruction, tell her what to do with the rest of her life or just this moment. What to call him? Would she have to call him Master like he’d insisted that first night? The idea was still weird to her, but at least it wasn’t terrifying. Not like the other worse things he would insist upon.

The chair creaked when he got up. “Follow me.”

He took her down several hallways she hadn’t been down because they were forbidden. They were smaller and more ominous, warning visitors away with their lack of light. At the end of one of the hallways was a large metal door. Leo took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed a switch on the wall.

A string of LED lights along the ceiling came on, lighting the path of the carpeted spiral stairs that went on and on into an endless abyss, maybe even into hell. And here was the devil standing beside her with a smooth smile and his hand extended like a gentleman toward the waiting doom.

“After you,” he said.

If she went down these steps, would he ever let her back up them again? She chided herself for being so dramatic. They were getting married in June. Of course she’d come out again. Caprice had survived whatever they’d done together and kept coming back for more. Leo had killed the man who’d abused his sister. Whatever these feelings were, they couldn’t be her worst fears. It didn’t line up with the facts.