“That’s not my problem.” I flinched as he pushed away from the wall and expected him to hit me for speaking back, but instead, he shocked me by breaking out in a deep laugh.

The sound made me squirm, and I put my hands behind my back and gripped my hands together to keep from trying to touch him.

“Say, ‘dude’ in front of that statement,” Cain said, his eyes holding the first real emotion other than a predatory one since I’d been here.

“What?”

“Put the word ‘dude’ in front of that sentence and say it again.”

Was this a joke? Maybe a test?

“Dude, that’s not my problem,” I said and added a dash of dramatic flare as I rolled my eyes.

Cain laughed hard. It was short-lived, but it was a real laugh. My chest warmed with this sensual gooiness I didn’t want to analyze. His eyes locked with mine, and his face softened.

“You sound just like Abel,” he said and turned away from me.

The image of his twin’s sarcastic banter and him doing a superman dive onto us to help contain me flashed through my mind. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if what he’d said was a compliment or an insult.

The woman on the table moaned as she woke up. That could’ve been me. Instead of attached to a wall, Cain could’ve slapped me down on a table and tied me up, and I wasn’t sure what was worse.

Cain leaned over the woman, and her eyes grew wide as she tried to move and realized she couldn’t. She jerked hard on the bindings, and even though Cain hadn’t said a word, the woman began to scream and thrash. I covered my ears and winced away from the sound as the high-pitched octave hurt my sensitive ears.

“Barbara,” Cain said, and like a magic trick, the screaming stopped. “You’re hurting my….” Cain glanced up at me. “Other guest’s ears. So, I’m going to need you to stop, or I’ll make you. It’s your choice.”

Was it wrong to feel the bottom of my stomach fall out as he referred to me so informally? A guest? What the hell did that mean?

Barbara tilted her head back and spotted me, our eyes meeting for a moment before she looked back up at Cain.

“I’ll be good. I-I-I will be quiet,” she stammered.

In that singular moment, as Cain’s face shifted subtly from passive watcher to predator about to strike, I realized Barbara didn’t understand. She didn’t see him for what he was. If she did, she thought there was a way out, and he might not kill her.

“What do you think we should do to her,” Cain asked.