There are shelves on the wall adjacent with a multitude of books on physics, chemistry, and computer science. All subjects I would have failed at in school.
I see some classical literature books that I’m very familiar with, like Great Expectations, Dante’s Inferno, and To Kill a Mockingbird. That’s it, though. That’s all I recognize. Everything else is either by Einstein, someone like him, or what I’d imagine people like him to read.
I move over to the king-size bed and mull over its wooden headboard with the intricate design embossed into it. The design looks old. Like something Celtic, but I can’t quite be sure. The nightstands on either side match it, and the black bedsheets and pillows complement the design.
But that’s not what I’m interested in—pretty as it is. I want to see what’s in the drawers.
I open the first, and my cheeks warm when I see several boxes of extra, extra -large condoms and a little pot of lube sitting beside it. Next to them are a pair of restraints similar to the ones he bound me with nights ago. These have velvet cuffs, though. I pick it up and feel over the velvet texture.
When I saw the restraints the other night, I knew he was into BDSM. Now I’m sure of it. I don’t know why, but I wonder who he’s had in here that he used these on.
I set the restraints on the bed and pulled the drawer out a little more. That’s when I see a memory stick sitting on top of a stack of sticky memo pads.
That’s the kind of thing I would gloss over and keep snooping, but what stops me from doing so is the label on it.
It says:
Robert recording from Monaco Cliff.
My breath stilts, and my chest tightens like someone is strangling my lungs from the inside when I realize what this is.
This is the recording from my apartment. The one that captured my sister’s death.
I release the breath I’m holding and pick it up, staring at it like it’s a drug. Not the enticement part of a drug. No, not that. The enticement part is what you know that drug can do for you to ease your pain and allow you to escape reality.
What I’m referring to is the other part, though. The part that all addicts know but most refuse to acknowledge when they look at a drug. It’s the part where they know it’s bad, but they want to take it anyway.
I’m having the same effect here.
Seeing what’s on this recording would probably kill me, but I want to see it. I wonder if that’s why I want to watch it. Because I want to die. That can’t be true, though, because I don’t. Perhaps, the guilty part of me feels more guilt because I should want to, but my fight to live keeps me going.
I have the recording in my hands. If I took it, Eric would know, and what would I watch it on? I don’t have access to anything.
That doesn’t mean, though, that I might not at some point.
“Tsk, tsk.” Comes a sound from the door that has me snapping my gaze up.
When I meet the steely cold eyes of Eric Markov, I know there’s little point contemplating anything further.
Because I’m in trouble, and he already warned me not to make an enemy out of him.