The drifters laughed, baring yellow teeth.
“Please. Who'd want to harass you? With a face like that.”
“We're more worried you'll come after us!”
I gripped my phone tighter, nausea rolling up from my stomach in waves.
Brent turned to face me. He was smiling, but his eyes held nothing but cold.
“So what exactly are you going to tell the police? That I made you rough it for a night? Or that you're imagining things?”
I had no evidence.
The drifters closed in slowly. They didn't touch me. They just stood there.
But they were close enough that my back was already flat against the wall.
“Stay away from me.”
“We're not going anywhere,” the bald one said, mouth splitting into a grin. “Room's only so big. Where would we go?”
A skinny one crouched by my feet, looked up at me, and made a show of sniffing the air.
“You smell real nice, sweetheart. What perfume is that?”
I shifted a step sideways. He followed.
“Don't run off. We're not gonna do anything. Just talking.”
“Your husband's right outside the door. What could we possibly do?”
The bald one flashed his teeth again, eyes sliding over me with open malice.
“You know what your husband said to us out there?”
“He said——”
The skinny one dropped his voice, mimicking Brent's tone. “‘She needs to be taught a lesson. Don't hold back. Make sure she remembers it.’”
“He also said,” the bald one chimed in, “that you're too strong-headed out there, never leave him any face. And yesterday you went and bullied his poor fragile little secretary. Way too much.”
“That's why he hired us,”
the scarred one said with a grin. “To set his wife straight.”
I bit down on my lip until I tasted iron. I didn't make a sound.
I didn't know if they were making it up.
Or if every word was true.
But they seemed to find my silence entertaining, watching me now with real interest.
“Your husband's pretty generous, though,”
the skinny one said. “Paying us to hang around here a full day and night. Wasn't cheap.”
The bald one played along. “How much did he give you?”
The skinny one grinned and held up two fingers.
“Twenty thousand?”
“Each.”
The bald one let out a low whistle. “We hit the jackpot.”
Sixty thousand. Three strange men locked in a room with his wife for a day and a night.
Because I'd spent my own money on a hotel room. A thousand a night. And wouldn't hand it over to his precious secretary.
So he spent all that just to trap me here. Just for revenge.
I finished the math in my head, and then I laughed.
Brent Sanchez, how generous of you.
I stared at him in the doorway. He was leaning against the frame, arms crossed.
Watching like it was a show that had nothing to do with him.
“Brent,”
I said. “You really want to go through with this?”
He didn't even look up. His phone had buzzed twice, and he was already hunched over it, thumbs flying.
I didn't have to guess who it was.
Marian.
Every text I ever sent him got back either a 「1」 or dead silence. If something was actually urgent, maybe he'd reply two hours later.
But Marian, his precious little secretary, got instant replies. Every single time.
Even on a business trip meant for just the two of us, he'd let Marian tag along without a second thought.
The thought made me laugh at myself.
“Marian didn't want to stay at the hostel last night. She ran off and slept on the street. That's her own stupidity.”
“If you're holding a grudge because I refused to switch rooms with her,”
“shouldn't you be holding an even bigger one against yourself?”
