Stolen Heir: Chapter 18

I’m losing track of how long I’ve been at Mikolaj’s house.

Days slip by so fast when you don’t have any schedule, or anything planned.

I have no idea what’s going on in the real world. I don’t have a TV, a phone, or a computer. World War Three could have started, and I’d have no idea.

I’m in a place without dates or times. It could be 1890 or 2020, or something in between.

You’d think that I’d be obsessing about my family constantly. At first, I was—I knew they’d be looking for me. Worried, terrified, thinking I was dead. I missed them. God, I missed them. I’d never gone that long without speaking to my mom, not to mention Riona, Callum, and Dad. Aida, too! We usually text twenty times a day, even if it’s just cat memes.

Now I feel like I’ve slipped into another world. They’re much farther away than the other side of the city.

I’m not dreaming about them at night anymore.

My dreams are much darker than that. I wake up in the morning flushed and sweating. Too embarrassed to even admit where my mind has wandered in the night . . .

In the day I think about the strangers living in this house with me. I wonder about Klara, what her life was like in Poland. What her family’s like. I wonder about the rest of the men in this house—why Andrei spends so much time roaming around the grounds, and whether Marcel has a crush on Klara, as I suspect he does.

The only person I don’t wonder about is Jonas, because I find him deeply creepy. I hate the way he watches me whenever we cross paths in the house. He’s worse than Mikolaj, because at least Mikolaj is genuine—he genuinely hates me. Jonas pretends to be friendly. He’s always smiling and trying to make conversation. His smiles are as fake as his cologne.

Today he corners me in the kitchen. I’m looking for Klara, but she’s not there.

“What do you need?” Jonas says, leaning up against the fridge so I can’t pass.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Come on.” He grins. “You must need something, or else why would you come in here? What is it? What’s your favorite treat? You want cookies? Milk?”

“I was just looking for Klara,” I tell him, trying to sneak by on his right side.

He straightens up, stepping in front of me to block my path.

“I know how to cook, too,” he says. “You know Klara’s my cousin? Anything she can do, I can do better . . .”

I try not to let my face show how disgusted I feel. Jonas always makes everything sound like sexual innuendo. Even if I don’t understand his meaning, I can tell he’s trying to provoke me.

“Let me pass, please,” I say quietly.

“To go where?” Jonas says, in a low voice. “Do you have some hiding spot I don’t know about?”

“Jonas,” someone barks from the doorway.

Jonas whips around even quicker than I do. We both recognize Mikolaj’s voice.

“Hey, boss,” Jonas says, trying to recover his casual tone.

There’s nothing casual in Mikolaj’s expression. His eyes are narrowed to slits and his lips are pale.

“Odejdź od niej,” he hisses.

Get away from her.

“Tak, Szefie,” Jonas says, with a little bow of his head. Yes, boss.

Jonas hurries out of the kitchen. Mikolaj doesn’t move to let him pass, so Jonas has to turn sideways before scurrying away.

Under Mikolaj’s blazing stare, I feel like I’ve done something wrong, too. I can’t look him in the eye.

“Don’t talk to him,” Mikolaj orders, low and furious.

“I don’t want to talk to him!” I cry, outraged. “He’s the one bothering me! I hate him!”

“Good,” Mikolaj says.

He has the strangest look on his face. I can’t understand it at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think he was jealous.

I expect him to say something else, but instead he turns and stalks away without another word. I hear him go out through the conservatory door, and when I peer out through the window, I see him striding off across the lawn, to the far end of the grounds.

I’m confused and infuriated.

Of all the people in this house, I think about Mikolaj the most.

I don’t want to. But I can’t help it. When he’s in the house, I feel like I’m trapped inside a tiger’s cage with the tiger roaming around. I can’t ignore him, I have to keep track of where he is, what he’s doing, so he can’t creep up behind me.

But when he’s out it’s even worse, because I know he’s doing something awful, probably to the people I love most.

I don’t think he’s killed any of them yet. I don’t believe he has. I’d hear his men talking about it. Or he’d tell me himself, just to gloat.

But I can feel the wheels turning, rushing us down the track to this destination he’s set. The train keeps chugging on.

Which is why I should hate him, more than I hate Jonas.

It should be the easiest thing in the world to despise him. He kidnapped me. He ripped me away from everything I love, and locked me up in this house.

Yet, when I look in the bubbling mixture of emotions swirling around in my guts, I find fear, confusion, anxiety. But a strange sense of respect. And even, sometimes, arousal . . .

I want to know more about my captor. I tell myself that it’s only so I can stand up to him. Or maybe even escape.

But there’s more to it than that. I’m curious about him. He was so angry about those tattoos. I want to know why. I want to know exactly what they mean to him.

That’s why, once I know he’s out on the grounds, I get a very stupid idea in my head.

I want to see what’s in the west wing.

He told me not to go there, in no uncertain terms.

What’s he hiding there? Weapons? Money? Evidence of his dastardly plan?

There’s no door to keep me out. Just a wide, curved staircase, the twin of the one that leads to my own rooms.

It’s so easy to run up those steps, to the long hallway that leads west instead of east.

I expect the forbidden wing to be even darker and creepier than my own, but the opposite is true—this part of the house is the most modern. I see a lounge with a fully stocked bar, and then a huge study. This must be Mikolaj’s office. I see his safe, his desk, his computer. If I actually care about his plans, this is where I should snoop around.

Instead, I find myself continuing down the hall, to the largest room at the end. The master suite.

It’s huge, modern, and masculine. As soon as I slip through the door, I’m hit with the distinctive scent of my captor. He smells like cedarwood, cigarettes, scotch, fresh orange rind, shoe polish, and that rich, heady musk that belongs only to him. The scent is so unadulterated that I doubt any other person has stepped foot in this room, not even Klara to clean it.

Unlike the rest of the house, this room isn’t dark and moody at all. The furniture is dark, but the space is light. That’s because it’s one of the highest points in the house, and the far wall is one gigantic window. It runs floor to ceiling, the whole length of the room.

While my window faces east into the tree-stuffed grounds, Mikolaj’s window looks out over the Chicago skyline. The whole city is laid out before him. This is where he stands when he imagines taking it all under his control.

I know exactly where I am now. I could almost point to my own house, situated on the rim of the lake.

If I searched, I could find it, picking out its gray-shingled roof from the other mansions along the Gold Coast.

Instead, my eyes are drawn back inside by the irresistible temptation of this private space. Looking through Mikolaj’s room is like looking inside his brain. In the rest of the house, I only see what he wants me to see. This is where I’ll find everything hidden.

He might keep his keys in here. I could steal the key to the front door and escape some night when everyone’s asleep.

I tell myself that’s what I’m looking for.

Meanwhile I’m trailing my fingers over his unmade sheets, releasing the heady scent of his skin. I can still see the indent where his body lay. It’s hard to imagine him unconscious and vulnerable. He doesn’t seem like someone who eats or sleeps, laughs or cries.

Here’s the evidence, right in front of me. I lay my palm down in that indent, as if I’ll still feel the heat of his body. My skin prickles and my blood runs faster, until I snatch my hand back again.

His bed is surrounded by built-in bookshelves. I draw close to read the spines.

Sure enough, I find exactly what I expected: weathered copies of The Hobbit, The Snow Queen, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and The Little Prince, mixed in with Persuasion, Anna Karenina, and dozens more, some in English, some in Polish.

I pull Through the Looking Glass down off the shelf, cracking the spine carefully, because the book is so soft and fragile that I’m afraid some of the pages will come loose.

On the very first page, written in pencil, is a name: Anna.

I let out a sigh.

I knew it.

He was so angry when I spotted the illustrations in his tattoos. I knew it meant something, that it was tied to someone he loved.

That’s why he was angry. To brutal men, love is a liability. I discovered his weakness.

Who was Anna? Most of the books are for children, or young adults. Was she his daughter?

No, the books are too old. Even if they were purchased second-hand, the handwriting doesn’t look childish.

What, then. A wife?

No, when I took that jab at him about not being married, he didn’t even flinch. He’s no widower.

Anna is his sister. That must be it.

Right as I realize it, a hand grips my wrist and jerks me around.

The book flies out of my fingers. Just as I feared, the glue holding the binding together is too old to withstand this kind of treatment. As I spin around, a dozen pages tear free, floating down through the air like falling leaves.

“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Mikolaj demands.

His teeth are bared, his fingers digging into my wrist. He’s run up here so fast that his pale blond hair has fallen down over his left eye. He swipes it back furiously, not looking away from me for a second.

“I’m sorry!” I gasp.

He grabs my shoulders and gives me a hard shake.

“I said what the fuck are you doing!” he shouts.

While I may have seen him angry before, I’ve never seen him out of control. Those times that he sneered at me, or taunted me, he was fully restrained. Now there’s no restraint, no self-control. He’s raging.

“Mikolaj!” I cry. “Please . . .”

When I say his name, he lets go of me like my skin is burning his hands. He takes a step back, grimacing.

It’s all the opportunity I need. Leaving the book torn and abandoned on the ground, I run away from him as fast as I can.

I flee the west wing, back down the stairs and across the main floor. I run out the back door into the garden, and then I hide in the very furthest corner of the grounds, in the shelter of a willow tree where the boughs hang all the way down to the grass.

I hide there until it’s night, too afraid to go back inside the house.