He chuckled once, endlessly dark and threateningly bleak. “I’m much more than just a scientist.”
“You own the company? You rule many scientists?”
His brow fell sternly over his blazing eyes. “Clever.” He looked perplexed but also pained. “You keep surprising me. I don’t care for it.”
More goosebumps peppered my bare flesh. “Don’t like that I’m piecing together your past?”
He laughed coldly. “Believe me, if you’d figured out my past you would not be conversing with me so easily.” He leaned toward my cage. “You would not let me touch you so willingly. You would not kiss me back.”
My chest rose and fell as I sipped shallow breaths. “Why?”
He leaned away, crossing his arms. Ignoring my question, he demanded, “Tell me. Tell me what else you have pieced together.”
It’s a trap. Don’t answer.
And I wouldn’t if Sully had always been this nasty and arctic toward me. If he’d been a beast since the moment I’d arrived, I’d ignore him. Endure his torture and flatly refuse to interact with a monster. But he’d been generous. He’d been kind. And in a few fleeting moments, he’d been more than that. We’d been more than that.
Sliding down the bars, I sat cross-legged by the tray. I kept my hands between my legs for decency.
His gaze flashed with things I couldn’t decipher. His jaw worked and misery blackened his face for a single second. Wordlessly, he snatched my robe from the ground and stuffed it through the bars.
I waited as the soft material puddled on the cage floor before reaching across the small space and dragging it over me like a blanket. “Thank you.”
He snorted as if my thanks was misplaced and unwanted. His teeth flashed as he muttered, “Tell me. Tell me what you think you know about me.”
Slightly happier with my body covered, I fisted two handfuls of robe for strength. “I think something happened. Something to make you hate humans.”
He stiffened but didn’t interrupt.
“You rescued animals from laboratories and brought them to your islands. You brought their cages too…to um, destroy?” I looked around, understanding seeping into me like a steady drip through snow. “No, you brought them to remind yourself. To remember…that…” I struggled to link why he’d keep these terrible traps, hidden in the heart of paradise. The filth hidden beneath beauty, the pain beneath pleasure.
And it clicked.
My eyes locked on his; my heart leaped into my mouth. “You keep them to remind yourself that humans made these cages. Humans hurt defenceless creatures. Humans…can never be trusted.”
Sully swooped to his feet so fast the stool smashed against the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Six Years Ago
I LIVED IN A big house.
My parents had money—according to their boastful toasts at dinner parties with other equally wealthy people—and I’d been lucky to have been born into such an accomplished, loving family—according to my teachers.
But most days, I didn’t feel very lucky.
Most days, I was lonely…and those were the good days. The days I was invisible to my older brother, Drake. I’d choose being ignored over being taunted. I willingly hid in the treehouse all day if it meant my parents didn’t force Drake to hang out with his poor baby brother.
For seven years, I put up with his bruises, punches, and nasty shouts in my ears. One day, he shouted at me so bad, right into my ear canal, my eardrum popped. Blood dribbled and dried on my cheeks until my parents realised I wasn’t answering their questions at the dinner table and rushed me to a doctor.
They’d asked me how it happened. And like always, I kept my mouth tightly shut.
I’d learned very early on—in fact, it was probably my first memory—not to tattletale on my brother.
He was the chosen one.
I was the runner-up.
As long as I stayed in his shadow and did what he said, he permitted me to live another day.
My loneliness faded a little when I found my first stray.
A skinny mange-riddled poodle in the park where I sometimes snuck to before Drake could find me. It’d curled up under a bush, just waiting to die. It didn’t even open its eyes when I touched it. Didn’t growl when I scooped it up. Didn’t whimper when I carried it all the way to a vet downtown.
The receptionist tried to call my parents, to alert them that their seven-year-old was unattended, carrying a mangy stray, and begging for medical attention that he couldn’t pay for.
But the vet—a young woman who hadn’t been jaded by the hopelessness of the world yet—had ushered me into her surgery.
She’d treated the dog and kept him for a few days to make him better.
I went everyday to hang out by his cage. I held his paw. I told him stories. I found a friend in that bag of bones, willing the sick mutt to live.
When he was released, I dumped my entire contents of my piggybank on the counter that I could barely reach. I’d been a good boy. I’d done my chores and earned my ten dollars a week since I was five.