her toward the bed with a slight shove. He made his way to the door before the men. As he stepped over the threshold, he looked back at her and caught her gaze. Something in his expression had her holding her tongue from spilling her side of the truth. Once again she wondered why she trusted Ethan Gunn. The man had just thrown her under the bus to save his own hide. He used her for his own gain just as Jared had. He should be receiving her wrath.
Instead, her lips stayed sealed.
Roni dropped to the bed for the first time since being tossed in here. The horror of what this meant floored her. Her panic tripled.
Why? What was it about Ethan Gunn that silenced her? He wasn’t a killer, as he’d stated. She didn’t fear for her life.
And yet, she did.
But somehow, it was different.
Her hand went to her neck and the silk of her scarf slipped through her fingers like water. One moment in her grasp, in her control, the next...gone.
She had her answer, and it scared her. She felt her control disappearing in the presence of Ethan Gunn. He had something Jared never had, even when Jared was in the driver’s seat.
Ethan had power over her.
She never gave that to anyone. So why him?
The long, red-carpeted hall leading to the dining room felt like a death march to Roni’s sleep-deprived mind. Four guards now accompanied her. After Ethan portrayed her as the escapee, her entourage had been beefed up to maximum security. An opening for an escape looked bleaker than when she’d arrived. All because she’d been duped by Ethan Gunn.
Hello? Criminal. What did she expect? A man of his word? Criminal, criminal, criminal, she silently reminded herself, as she had done since the moment he had left her room a few hours ago. She hoped saying it enough times would release whatever hold he had on her.
It was probably another reason he came to her room. Yes, he needed to cover himself, but he most likely wanted to torment her with the hold he had over her.
Something told her he knew more about her than he let on. Roni felt her scarf’s knot at her neck. A quick perusal, and she knew the silk covered her well. It would have to.
And not because of Ethan Gunn, she told herself.
The open double doors at the end of the hall were her curtain, and she needed to be more than the spectacle at the show. She needed to be the showstopper. Her life depended on it. And so did Maddie’s.
Roni thought of the young woman. She hadn’t seen the maid yet that morning, which surprised her...and concerned her. Had her owner penalized her in some way? Had he learned that she planned to help Roni escape? Had the man left Roni during the night for an impromptu interrogation of Maddie? Roni’s stomach clenched at the thought of what his interrogations would consist of.
She passed a door with two guards posted on either side. Her recollection of Maddie’s drawn map labeled it the door to the garage below. Getting through those men would take some figuring, if she could get away from her four, first. And who knew how many more awaited her below. Would she even get near a car to hot-wire it? She would need a diversion. The proverbial rabbit-in-the-hat trick. While the goons went all crazy for the rabbit on one side of the stage, she would pull a fast one on the other side. The faster the car the better, too, she thought, speculating about the models of cars below.
The doors were before her and her boots slowed on the carpet. The hand of one of her guards touched her back. Roni pulled away as though he burned more of her skin, but that movement also put her through the threshold into the ornate dining room on a rush. Her heels slid across the mosaic tiled flooring, glimmering like the surface of a lake in the setting sun. If only it could swallow her whole in this moment like one.
A raise of her eyes caught the dreaded man already seated in the head chair, his elbows resting on its golden arms in waiting. His tight lips said for a while.
“Sit,” he instructed with a point for her to take the chair at the other end of the long table. An honor or a tactic? She would find out soon enough.
“Has my family been notified yet?” she asked when she pulled her seat in and mimicked his pose right down to his clasped hands at his chest.
He watched her but no reply came. The door behind her opened and a cart wheeled across the floor, coming up on her right.
Maddie stood behind it.
Roni jumped to her feet, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor. “There you are. I waited for you this morning. I thought maybe you—” Roni cast a glance at the Boss, before finishing “—weren’t well.”
Maddie kept her head down as she lifted the serving dishes to place them on the table. She gave no inclination she even heard Roni. When she picked up Roni’s goblet to pour her juice, Roni put out her hand to stop her.
“I can pour my own juice.”
The liquid jostled over the rim of the glass.
“You were told to sit,” the Boss spoke, his voice heavy with an unspoken threat.
Slowly, Roni pulled her hand back and found her seat again.
“You are not to address the help. They have a job to do, and it would do you well to watch carefully.”
Roni picked up her napkin, opening it to fit over her lap. “Where I come from, we treat our help differently. Our maid is treated like family. She sits with us for meals.”
“You will need to leave those notions behind. Servants are to be treated as servants, not family. Knowing their place is what makes them happy.”
“I would have to disagree. There is nothing wrong with being a maid. It’s a job to be proud of and blesses both parties. When they’re paid well of course.”
The Boss sipped his tea, and his eye twitched, accenting a tiny scar by his right eye. He brought the cup back to the saucer with a clatter.
Roni continued to speak over it, not letting it cut into her nerves. “My maid, Cora, has been with my family since before I was born. We’re devoted to her as much as she is to us, and because of that, she’s never wanted to leave.”
Until recently anyway.
Roni kept that to herself. No need to go into the details of Cora’s retirement. “All I’m saying is your servants might not feel the same way as you do about their place.”
“Remove your scarf.”
Roni jolted at the request. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me. I don’t repeat myself.” Not a hair of the man’s slick black hair moved.
Roni lifted a hand to her throat where the silk covered her scars. She quickly brought it down to grab her fork. “I would rather not. It’s my signature piece. I’m never seen without it.”
The scrambled eggs on her plate looked as if they would lodge in her throat if she dared put them down it. She reached for the juice and took a sip, then another and another. Returning it to the white-clothed table, she moved some more eggs around the plate. Her fork hit something hard.
Roni paused and looked back at the man across from her. Two of her remaining guards had stepped up beside him from out of nowhere. The Boss waved a finger and they moved down the sides of the table toward her, their eyes only on her scarf.
Roni wanted to move her eggs to find out what was under them, but she also needed to protect her neck from being exposed.
She reached for her napkin to blot her mouth and threw it over the eggs just as she stood up, upending her chair to the floor.
“Step away from me,” she said with a glare at both men.
“They only follow orders from me, Miss