Alone in his bedroom he undressed and crawled into bed. He hated sleeping alone, but his exhaustion was profound. He ached all over from lack of sleep. He’d sought refuge in the pain Felicia gave him from the pain Sam had given him. What hurt worse than anything—worse than Sam’s lie and worse than Felicia’s erotic brutality—was the simple terrible fact that Søren had been right. Kingsley didn’t know anything about Sam. He’d been too quick to trust her. And now he regretted it.

He fell asleep the second his head hit the pillow, but terrible dreams poisoned his rest. In one dream he was a prisoner in his own bed, and it burned all around him. In a second dream some faceless enemy had Søren trapped in a labyrinthine prison, and Kingsley had sixty seconds to find him and save him before he was shot. The dream morphed a final time, now he was the prisoner, and a man stood before him with a chain in his hand. He wrapped the chain around Kingsley’s throat, tightening it until he couldn’t speak, couldn’t fight, couldn’t breathe.

He woke with a cough that wrenched his lungs and his stomach. He gasped for air and couldn’t get enough of it. Finally the coughing fit ended, and on shaking legs he got out of bed. It was midnight according to his clock. He’d slept an hour and a half, and yet it seemed like days as his nightmares had been so vivid and brutal. The images stayed with him even as he dragged on his pants. He tried to banish them with other thoughts, but the panic stayed with him. He almost called Søren to reassure himself the dream of Søren’s captivity and imminent death had been nothing but a dream.

Alcohol. That’s what he needed. He hadn’t had more than a glass of wine or two a day since meeting Felicia. He’d been drunk on her body and her pain for a month. But he should drink now—heavily.

He pulled on a shirt but didn’t bother buttoning it. He walked down the back servants’ staircase to the wine cellar behind the kitchen. Wine might not be strong enough tonight, but he discovered all the hard liquor in the house had disappeared. Søren’s doing? Or Sam’s? Both of them treated him like a fucking child these days. He wouldn’t put it past either of them to hide the liquor. Fine. He’d drink wine. A bottle of pinot would put him to sleep and subdue his restless mind.

With the bottle in his hand he headed back through the dark kitchen. He flinched when light suddenly infiltrated the room.

“Ah, merde,” he said, raising a hand to his eyes. “Who is it?”

“Me,” Sam said. She quickly came into focus. “I heard footsteps and... Oh, my God.”

Fuck. Kingsley sat the bottle on the kitchen table and started to button his shirt. But it was too late. Sam had already seen him, seen the bruises and welts Felicia had left on him.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “What are you still doing here?”

“It’s not nothing. Who the hell did that to you?”

Sam reached for his shirt, and he caught her wrist in his hand. His head had cleared completely now, and he saw the look of fear on Sam’s face. Fear? Of him? Or for him?

“Nobody,” he said. “And you didn’t answer me. What are you doing here?”

“Still working,” she said. “I got the financials from your friend The Barber. I’ve been digging.”

“Find anything?”

“I’m not having this conversation with you until you tell me why you look like someone beat the shit out of you,” Sam demanded. She looked tired, too, as tired as he probably looked.

“Non,” he said. “Forget you saw anything.”

“Okay, maybe you’ll answer this—where have you been for the past month?”

“Staying with Blaise,” he said.

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Nothing is interesting.” He took his wine bottle and pushed past her.

“It’s very interesting because Blaise has been in DC for the past two weeks with the NOW,” Sam said, following him out of the kitchen and down the hall. “You want to tell me another lie?”

“You accuse me of lying?” Kingsley asked as he started up the stairs. “Very amusing accusation coming from you.”

“What the fuck do you mean, coming from me?” She took two stairs at a time to keep up with him. “I have never lied to you. Do I want to talk about my past? No. But not talking about something isn’t the same as lying about it. Don’t you dare call me a liar when you can look me in the face and tell me you were with Blaise when we both know you weren’t.”

On the second landing, Kingsley turned to face her so fast she took a step back from him.

“You want to talk about lying to someone’s face. You told me the night of the party that if you were going to be with any man it would be me.”

“Yeah, I said that. So what?”

“So what? So I went to find you the morning after the party, and I saw you with a man. You were kissing, the bed was a wreck, and I saw it all.”

Sam turned her back to him. Her shoulders shook. Then she laughed—a big, loud, shocked laugh that filled the whole house.

“What? You think this is funny?”

“Hilarious,” she said, turning back around. “Hysterical. So that’s why you’re so pissed at me? Why you’ve been avoiding me for a month? You think I had a sex with a man?”

“I know you did.” He turned and strode up the last set of steps to the third floor. “And Søren was right about you.”