Restrain (Siren Book 3)

Restrain (
Siren #3)

Katie de Long

About the Siren series:

Love is pain.

Calder Roane has always been the spoiled youngest son, and is struggling to seize the reins to the family business following his mother's death. But when he wakes up imprisoned in a rusted death trap with several others, it's gonna take everything he has to get out alive. As the mystery unfolds and he tries to discover why he's
there
, a vulnerable and resourceful fellow prisoner could be the key.
If
he can win Milla's heart.

Under other circumstances, Camilla Greenwich would've grown up as Winchester royalty, born to a life of politics and privilege. But when the Roane family took her family's place, their actions corrupted the entire community, and cost Milla everyone she loved. Now, she has the chance of the lifetime: the chance to punish the heir to the Roane family empire, and those who've abetted him. But seizing that chance could well be her undoing. She'll have to get far closer to her enemy than she dreamed possible, and risk exposing herself. She'll have to become prey, alongside him.

As her war goes on and the collateral damage mounts, they're about to discover how deep the conspiracy runs. Each past sin is exposed, and in the end, they may be the only people who can redeem each other.

Restrain

Siren #3

Only a few bloodsuckers left before I can be at peace, for the first time since I promised revenge against those who tore apart my family, and plundered my community. My confidence has grown with every cold body. I know the slick of blood on my hands, the taste of burned flesh. The give of skin and muscle as it's separated by steel. I'm finally beginning to feel
whole
, more powerful than I dreamed possible.

But Calder's broken, refusing to play the game, refusing to go down fighting. It's safer for me to keep my distance, away from the confusion his touch inspires. But given the choice between my safety, and his suffering, I'll choose his suffering any day.

I have too much to lose to risk falling in love now, especially with the man I swore to kill.

Restrain contains mature content that may be upsetting to some readers.

The Siren Series

Capture
(Siren #1)

Torture
(Siren #2)

Restrain
(Siren #3)

Mindf*ck
(Siren #4) (Coming October 2016)

Ravage (Siren #5) (Coming November 2016)

Deathwish (Siren #6) (Coming December 2016)

Dedication

For the crazy bastard who side-eyes me every time the answer to “What'd you do today,” is “Wrote mechanically assisted murder masturbation,” and who hasn't DIY lobotomized me yet. For the Divas who didn't look at me like I was crazy, and for Sera, who encouraged me to at least
draft
the darkest, most warped version possible of any given scene, just to see if it worked.

C
hapter One

Calder, Present Day

The world sways and yaws in my blurred vision. I’ve had concussions before, but nothing like this. Strangely, I can almost hear my mother talking to me, reciting Humpty Dumpty. It’s an odd juxtaposition since the only thing I can
clearly
make out is the half-naked woman in front of me. She’s been beaten to shit. Stabbed, too. That’s on me. But most importantly, she’s
definitely
not my mom.

She’s crying. I try to shape the words to console her. “Shhh, birdie.” The first part comes out just fine, but the rest doesn’t.

This is how I die. I never would have imagined it, a year ago. But the months I’ve spent trapped…wherever I am… have eroded any sense of propriety in it. The thought of dying of old age, in bed next to an elderly wife, is more foreign than the idea of never seeing my thirty-fifth birthday. I’ve known for a long time now that my death wouldn’t be peaceful. Wouldn’t be natural. Wouldn’t be painless.

But I never thought it would be at Milla's hand.

Months now, she’s been my rock. She’s kept me steady. Nursed my wounds. Let me close enough to truly savor her wry wit and spunky personality. Not to mention the comfort I’ve found in her arms. She kept me grounded, even as our environment did its best to remake me into someone I hated, someone who hurt her.

Her betrayal drives home the last ugly truth: whether or not I can hope to live doesn’t matter. My world is already dead.

I’d hoped to escape this, to bury my family and friends in peace. But I always knew that there was no room for that kind of optimism, not in this deathtrap.

“Do you know what it’s
like
?” she asks. “To look at you, and see everyone who’s dead because of the Roanes’ ambition
—your family's
ambition
?
For you to touch me, and for me to see only
them
, only the pain, and the selfishness, and the greed, and the callousness, and your casualties?”

I think so, birdie. Truly I do. It’s what I see in your eyes, right now. In this light, the hints of teal are gone, leaving only the deeper blue that I always saw staring at me in my brother’s face. That was you, too, wasn’t it? Did you see his body? Did you see what you did to him—what you made
us
do to him, back when there
was
an us, and not just me here, bloodied, broken?

“I hated you… but when I knew you, the hate only stretched so far. Why couldn’t you have been a monster, like the rest of them? Why did you have to make me love you?”

I’m cold. So cold. But not numb. Never numb. I can feel half my leg, and the pain that rips through the rest of it isn’t a good sign. Am I bleeding? Or are my bones just splinters?

I wish I could hate her. I wish I could blame her. But I know too much about her to see her as a faceless villain. I know how she comes. How she’s afraid of sharing that with someone else, and prefers to give pleasure rather than take it. I know what she looks like when she cries in fear, not in guilt.

I know what she looks like when she lies. I know her more thoroughly than it’s possible to know another person without walking through hell with them.

We’ve walked through hell together, but it looks like I’ll be staying there.

“I wanted to claw myself out of my skin, just so I wouldn’t have to remember that I
liked
you touching it. Because, you being what I thought you were, if I
liked
you, if I
liked
that
,
what would that say about
me
?” Her cadence is halting, choked with sobs. Maybe it should sooth the wound, that at least she feels remorse for what she’s done. But instead, it just grinds glass shards into it, because I can’t comfort her.

I wish I could hate her. But all of the hate I felt for the person who masterminded this sick torture is gone, because I see her for what she was: a scared child, lashing out. And I see her for what she
is,
as well: confused, and fierce, with eyes bright with the manic gleam of a widow about to throw herself onto her lover’s funeral pyre.

Months here, I wanted nothing more than for us to
live
. For
her
to live. To imagine that somewhere out there my birdie was taking care of herself, her wings unclipped, free of her cage. She’ll still have that. When I’m dead. I wish I could mouth the words to myself, just to see how they taste. I wish I could string together the thoughts to say
something
to her. Offer her blame, or forgiveness. But the words get lost on their way to my mouth, and a strangled moan is all I can manage. Pain and grief shadows her eyes, and tears spill down her cheeks.

I’m scrambling to put together the pieces, if only for my peace of mind. Every secret she’s told me, every moment of vulnerability and honesty. It all has to mean
something
to the poisonous woman who made my death, and the deaths of others, her purpose.

What caused this? What happened to her? Maybe if I could understand, this all—the pain, the torture, the isolation, the ignoble death lurking just a few faltering heartbeats away—would mean something.

She kneels by me, and reaches for my hand. Her fingertips brush the back of it.

And then she grants me my deepest wish, and my greatest fear: she speaks.

And I listen. As the world fades into black and the blood stops rushing in my ears with each desperate heartbeat, I listen.

Chapter Two

Calder Roane

Five months earlier…

I'm falling into brackish water, fighting to hold my breath. Swollen limbs, the meat slipping off the bone, seize me, pulling me under. Fingers already blackening with decay pull through my hair, stroking my cheeks. With a start, I find myself face to face with one of them, eyes locked on a face that formerly had eyes the same shade of blue as mine. My brother George pulls me into his arms, and as I flail, trying to reach the surface, the edge of my forearm catches the back of his head, scraping on bone and sinking into mush.

I shove him away, my lungs burning and my breath fighting to escape. I kick out, trying to drive myself to the surface, and my foot connects with a rib that's cracked out disturbingly far from its owner's sternum.

There's a glow below me, and I pray that I've simply gotten turned about and the surface is
that
way, equilibrium be damned. I swim toward it, past Denise reaching for me, her bloodless skin downright green in the light.

As I approach, as I stare into the light, acknowledging that there's
no
way back to the surface, a face forms in it. Freckled, tanned skin only paled slightly in the water, almost eerily healthy. Soft lashes framing closed eyes, and full lips parted slightly. Milla.

A mermaid, and an angel.

I reach for her, and as my hand comes into view, it's as bloated as the rest of theirs, mottled burns marring the skin, splitting the flesh open, revealing bone beneath, the blood washed away in the water around me.

My hand closes around her wrist, needing to embrace the one thing in this place not tainted by death. As my grasp captures her cool flesh, dark spots spread from her hand to her elbow, then shoulder, overtaking her like a plague. The flesh swells, the spots too, her body bloating and decaying before my very eyes, even as I expel my air to yell “no,” begging the life to stay in her.

I wrap her in my arms as though that could change a thing, her hair floating around my face in the waves, tickling my cheeks.

But no matter how I try to will warmth into her, she's cold, dead, drowned in the same ballast tank we'll all end up.

“Milla!”

“Cal! Enough.”

Marquel's strong hands shake me awake ruthlessly, and it isn't until I take a breath to tell him off that I realize my throat's sore from screaming. “Sorry.”

“The dreams again?” He has his empathetic face on, a little mirthless half-smile. Still, I can almost see the smile rotting off his face as he fights to keep it plastered on there.

“Yeah.”

“Can't blame you, man.
Shit
, if that was
my
brother...”

“I don't want to talk about it.” There's no way I
can
. The two people closest to me, both gone in a single hellish night.
Fuck
, even being alone is easier than losing people. In this torturous fishbowl, I loved the others as much as my own family, because they're the only ones I existed to. It was only in the moments before his death that George truly
felt
like my brother, not just an acquaintance on the same team during a group project.

Trying to remember the old days, working with my mom, or my brother, surrounded by a thousand people who respected me without knowing me... it's a fever dream. No doubt everyone out there thinks I'm dead. George, too. Our headstones will go next to Mom's and Dad's, whether or not they find our bodies to put in the accompanying graves.

I can't imagine any of them mourning me. And that seems fitting. Live alone, die alone, rot alone. I have no idea why the idea that that might happen to me never really entered my head, before.

But there's no avoiding it now. Someone wanted us to die; that much was plain from the moment I woke up imprisoned here. When I first realized it, I was consumed by the need to know
why
, the idea that there was some kind of mistake. That there was some way to talk them down, prove my innocence, if only I knew what to
say
.

But the obsession has faded, swallowed by the loss of my companions. Picked off one after another by the unforgiving rusted ecosystem we're trapped in. First Alex, his body cooking facedown like a hamburger on the grill. Then Denise, her body mangled and torn, bones sticking out from flesh. And Evan, stabbed several times and thrown down a hole. Now George, the last of my immediate family, dead in a tank with several other corpses here
far
longer than us, his head bashed open, and Milla, lungs full of water, no longer the resourceful woman, full of anger, who kept me sane, kept me focused.

Whose touch set me on fire and whose lips soothed the burn into euphoria.

Who held secrets I'll never learn.

If I believed I could talk myself into innocence, I believed she wouldn't
have
to. She was
obviously
a mistake or an oversight. A lowly welder who probably was only on our killer's radar in the first place because of something she saw working for my family in the shipyards. Not someone who would have had any true enemies of her own.

“You want something to eat?” Marquel asks me, giving Allen a glance. Allen pulls a bag out of the newest cooler. There's no food here but what we find in them. And our jailer seems to like making us work for our meal. They're always carefully hidden, or dangerous to get. He tosses it to Marquel, who offers it to me.

They've obviously been talking about me, and I don't have it in me to ask what they were saying. I take the bag, and open it, peeling it back from the sandwich inside without replying. The food's halfway to my mouth when I realize what it is. Egg salad. Milla's favorite.

The last egg salad sandwich I found was soaked in blood.

It seems like a premonition.

I lower the sandwich, seal the bag up, and toss it to Allen. He hucks another bag at me. “You need to eat. If you won't eat that one, try this one.” He has the practiced tone of the father of a fussy eater. Vaguely, I can remember my dad doing similar when I wouldn't touch my veggies.

I should appreciate their care. But there's no point. We're all dead anyways.

Smoked hickory flavoring from the meat in the second sandwich still fills my nose and throat, making me want to retch. Once, it was my favorite. But now, the meat doesn't smell too different from burned human. I hate that I know that. I hate that I'll never be able to see bacon again without my stomach tightening.

I don't even recognize myself, most days. Marquel doesn't either. It's probably a good thing George died before I saw him change this way, too. That corruption seems like the final indignity.

Allen sits next to me. “We need you, Cal. We've nearly gotten all the screws loosened on that pipe, but it's gonna be
heavy
, and we'll need you to help move it, to see if we can get through the opening.”

I can't make myself reply. Words are a waste of energy. What kind of death will we find in the next room, that we couldn't here?

“Look—I
know
you're going through some serious shit right now. But there'll be time to mourn later. Right now, you've gotta get your mind back on the
living
.”

Hard to believe that until recently, Allen was an insecure dick who hid resentment toward even slight strains of authority. That's fine. He wears his authority well. He can handle it, if it's what he wants.

I turn onto my side, rolling away from him. He leaves me be with a sigh.

*              *              *

The days sink into nights, stretch into weeks, with a quiet routine. Periodically, the coolers appear, and Marquel and Allen greet them with loud whoops. But there's no papers in them, no hints. And as the patterns emerge, as the weight falls off me, Marquel and Allen stop asking if I want my full portion of the food. I can't keep it down, even when they cajole me into eating it.

We're withering away anyways. There's
no
such thing as going out fighting here, only illusions that Marquel and Allen tell themselves to get through the days.

The nightmares plague me, little demons laying eggs in my skull with the faces of my dead friends, the wreckage of my world. Still, the favorite part of my days are those few moments, right after I wake up, when I could swear I smell Milla's musky, feminine aroma, as though her arms were wrapped around me.

I know it's all in my head. That I shouldn't obsess over it. That I shouldn't close my eyes, over and over again, praying she'll be there when I wake up and clinging to any imaginary trace of her as though she
is
.

Milla's
dead
. If
any
bit of her is with me, it's her ghost, punishing me for letting her die. Punishing me for letting my feelings for her get in the way of my promises to watch out for her.

I never wanted to
say
I had feelings for her; she had her own issues, and though she never told me
what
her situation back home was, it obviously held her with iron chains. I told myself, over and over again, that it was about comforting her this time, even as the chemistry between us veered frighteningly sexual. Still, I told myself—and her—that it was a momentary loss of restraint, from the forced intimacy.

But I never told her that I watched her while she slept, even though she rarely let me lay with her. I never told her that I wanted to do away with the excuses, and kiss her just to kiss her.

I never told her that I wanted to love her, that I would have
tried
to love her if she'd let me.

No wonder her ghost hates me. No wonder I lust after any reminder. No wonder I need to peel the scabbing off the wound, over and over again, because anything's better than letting it close up, letting myself forget all that could have been—all that I naively believed I had the time to pursue with her later.

I never told her anything. Maybe because I never really told myself.

Shit
. I had feelings for her.

How fucked up is that?