24
Linc flinched when Mia pressed the alcohol-soaked cotton swab against the second deep gash that had found its way onto his neck—a sharp hiss slithering through his clenched teeth. Mia jolted with him, her face curling into a cringe, big brown eyes soaked in regret.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she said, for the millionth time. “I wish whoever really owns this place had some hydrogen peroxide in the first aid kit but all they’ve got is this concentrated stuff that stings like hell.” She motioned to the table where a white first aid tin lay open next to an unscrewed bottle of clear rubbing alcohol.
A frown crossed Linc’s face, darkened with fury, a perfect compliment to the black storm clouds now swallowing the sky outside. The patter of heavy rainfall against the shingled roofs, the splash of the downpour against the canal waters below, every unforeseen, heart-stopping clap of thunder, and every sharp blaze of lightning. All of it encompassed the storm raging inside him to a tee.
Mia set her hand on the side of his head and gently nudged it to the side, informing him that she was coming in with another swipe of that evil cotton swab.
“You wish they had hydrogen peroxide?” His voice boomed. “Well, I wish I wasn’t stuck with a woman who’s the reason I need it hydrogen peroxide the first place. An insane woman who put a needle in my neck and a goddamn knife to my chest.”
She paused in the midst of cleaning his wound, hand still on his head, and tilted her head at him.
He cut his eyes at her, lips tightening. After discovering that he was Emma’s father and racing into the bathroom to frantically grab a first aid kid, Mia had apologized too many times to count. But her visible regret hadn’t been enough to stop the constant roll of his stomach. It wasn’t because he couldn’t find it in his heart to forgive the repentant woman before him, but, instead, it was because it had all been a lie. Their first soft kiss, the fervent sweep of their tongues that had taken it to the next level. Their trembling limbs giving out from under them as it did, causing them to fall to the ground. The breathtaking sight of her glistening pussy when she’d spread her legs for him on the floor. Her seductive moans when she’d allowed him to lick it. To suck the velvety lips. Her back arching as she came.
It had all been a lie.
His stomach tightened and rolled again. Since the moment he’d taken her, he’d known damn well she’d been using her beautiful face, her outstanding body, and her innate feminine wiles to take advantage of him, in the hope of escape. Not because she really wanted him. He’d known it all along, but he still hadn’t been able to stop.
He drew in a deep breath as his thoughts took him to another world. So far away that he didn’t even feel the pain anymore when she resumed cleaning his wounds. The agony swirling inside him didn’t leave room for any more.
“I thought you were a monster,” she continued trying to explain. “I thought you were a savage.”
“And you let me lick your pussy anyway.”
The cotton swab froze on his neck just as a clap of thunder boomed down from the sky and shook the floor and the walls. She didn’t respond.
He stole another look at her, biting his tongue because he wanted to tell her that the sweet scent of her pussy lingered on his upper lip. That his foolish dick twitched every time he took a deep breath. Perfectly aware of just how foolish his dick really was, he was still unable to stop his equally foolish gaze from falling down her body. Noticing that his too-big shirt was still falling off one of her shoulders, fastened haphazardly since he’d ripped most of the buttons away. The way her bare thighs were spread wide in the chair she’d pulled up next to his, her pussy hidden away behind the long flaps of the shirt. He couldn’t help but flash back to their moment on the floor when she had dug her fingers into his hair to hold his head between those long legs. The feeling of her pussy convulsing around his fingers when she came, proving that, even if her attraction to him had been an emotional lie, it definitely hadn’t been a physical one.
He forced his eyes away, voice gravelly. “Couldn’t even return the favor before you went for my neck.”
“I’m not a selfish lover.”
He cut a look at her again, the smile on his face completely genuine this time.
“And allow me to remind you, men do it to women all the time.” Her voice became defensive as she held her hands out at her sides. “They bust a nut in point-two seconds and then have the audacity to ask the girl, ‘did you come?’ knowing damn well, she didn’t.”
He raised his eyebrows high and looked away, massaging his jaw to hide the smirk spreading on his face.
But Mia was on a roll, her voice rising higher every second. “Knowing damn well, that when she whispers ‘Yes, baby, I came hard,’ that she’s lying through her teeth so he can pass the fuck out with his ego still intact—with no regard for her pleasure. Leaving her to touch herself to finish what he started. All while hating his guts the whole time. Maybe I restored a little balance to the universe tonight. Gave the male race a little taste of their own medicine.”
“Whatever you gotta tell yourself…”
“Like I said, I thought you were a monster. I thought you had kidnapped me for ransom, not for your…” She didn’t finish, apparently having seen him roll his eyes. “Venice will be flooded before the night’s out. It’ll take days for the city to drain. Can we at least try to get along before then?”
When Linc didn’t respond, staring blankly ahead, she exhaled heavily and resumed cleaning his gash. “Must be nice, sitting all the way up there on that high horse. As if you aren’t the reason we’re in this mess to begin with. As if you didn’t kidnap me and tie me up. As if you aren’t responsible for the bottom of my foot hurting like hell right now. As if you didn’t throw the childish tantrum back in London that left shattered glass all over the floor. Leaving my foot bandaged and bloody. God forbid a day ever comes when you’re forced to climb down from the high horse and walk around down here with the rest of us. I doubt you’d survive it.”
He chuckled softly.
Another long silence fell, and Mia continued tending to his wound quietly. Grabbing gauze and tape from the first aid kit, getting to work covering the gash.
“You know…” Her whispered voice came, softened with contrition once more. “She knows who you are.”
His eyes flew to her.
“She has your picture. Keeps it hidden in a book. She loves to read. She’s waiting for you. She even told me about a plan to run away and go find her mommy and daddy herself.” She bit her bottom lip when their eyes locked. “She’s an amazing kid.”
Linc felt the emotion burning his eyes, probably turning them red.
The whites of her eyes turned crimson too. “He won’t hurt her.”
A lump moved down his throat as his eyes fell to the scar on her thigh. “Same way he didn’t hurt you?”
She pressed her lips together but didn’t move to tug the shirt down over her leg, the way she usually did whenever his eyes happened to travel to that gnarly scar.
“She’s still too young for him. But her sixth birthday…” She breathed deeply as if the next words on her tongue had caused bile to rise up her throat. “It’s coming fast.”
His cheeks went hot. “How could you sleep at night knowing my daughter was in that house? Why haven’t you done something? Why haven’t you called the goddamn police?”
Guilt singed her eyes. “For the same reason, you haven’t called the police.”
He snatched his eyes away, clenching his teeth so tightly it made his jaw roll.
“Because trafficking is a machine that runs on fear. Our most basic and dominant instinct. The instinct that keeps us alive. Keeps us breathing. That basic instinct is the reason why these animals will never be caught. It’s the reason why the ugly world they’ve built will never die. I didn’t call the police because I understand that any man capable of dropping three million for a little girl is equally as capable of killing her. Without a single moment of hesitation. Without a second thought. Because I understand that the police, who are supposed to protect us, are owned by the same Russian mafia that sold Emma to him in the first place. Because I understand that, by calling the police, Emma and I would both end up dead and they’d do nothing but help him hide the bodies. You know it, too. And that’s why you haven’t called them either.”
He shook his head softly, feeling her watery eyes burning into his jaw. The way her fingers now trembled as she continued bandaging his neck.
“If Malik owns the police, why hasn’t he called them to alert them to your abduction?” he asked. “Sounds like a man who’s terrified of the police and hesitant to draw attention to himself.”
“There are leaks in even the tightest operations. If the police got wind of my abduction, the media would too, and he won’t risk his campaign. He won’t highlight that fact that my captor is demanding the little blonde girl he’s grooming on the top floor of his house. He has the police in his pocket, but that doesn’t mean he wants them knowing all of his business. How deep his perversions really run. Besides, even if I wanted to call the police, I couldn’t. Malik never gave me access to a phone or the Internet. Everything is monitored by his security team. Calls going in—calls going out. Every email. Every guest. Everything.”
Linc let her words sink in, still unable to meet her eyes.
Her hands had fallen from his neck before she finished the bandaging. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes finally flew to hers just as the first tear spilled down her cheek. His face collapsed at the sight.
Her lips curled and trembled, voice fractured. “I’m sorry that I was too much a coward to do something to help myself. To help Emma.”
“You’ve been fighting me since the moment I took you.” He paused. “You don’t seem like such a coward to me.”
“I guess it brought out my courage—being taken. Courage I never even knew I had. Even if only inadvertently, you snatching me, showed me that I could still be strong. Be free. For the first time in years, I had… hope. Deep down, I knew you would never hurt me. I saw it in your eyes. Something that could never exist in Malik’s. Something innately… different. Something good. I knew if I could escape you, I could escape it all. So I tried with everything I had. Of course, it still wasn’t enough.”
“Even if you had escaped me, you’re one of the most recognizable faces in England. It would’ve only been a matter of time before Malik found you again.”
“You and I have traversed several countries, and I haven’t been recognized yet. If I’d succeeded in escaping you, I would’ve worn a disguise. I would’ve gotten plastic surgery. It worked for Malik, after all. Shortly after he purchased me, he had my nose done. It’s crazy how drastically the right nose job can change a person’s face. Make them utterly unrecognizable. Even to people who’ve known them all their lives. People who wouldn’t recognize their own daughter, sister, brother… even if they were looking them right in the eyes.” She slapped another tear away when it jetted down her cheek, breathing deeply. “If he could make me unrecognizable to my family and friends back home, I could pay a plastic surgeon to make me unrecognizable to him.”
“With what money? Pretty damn hard to build a new life with no access to a phone or the Internet.”
“I managed to take advantage of the precious moments. Usually during events, when Malik and his team were preoccupied. There was once this security guard on Malik’s team, Al. He helped me out a lot. Helped me open a bank account using the name and social security number of an American prostitute he’d once watched Malik kill in cold blood. He got access to her files by sneaking into Malik’s office one night, while Malik was out of the house. He taught me how to hoard money by returning some of the extravagant gifts Malik bought me. By saving the cash he always gave me for mundane, untraceable purchases. Al used to coach me on what I should ask for—what items and what stores—based on which distributors were willing to give refunds in cash. One of Malik’s very few redeeming qualities is that he isn’t cheap. If I asked for it, I got it.” She shook her hair out of her face, sniffling heavily. “Her name was Dominique White—the prostitute Malik killed. She was an orphan before she got abducted and forced into the trade. Al said… he said ‘no one will come looking for her.’”
Linc frowned softly when that last sentence caused Mia’s face to pull tight.
“He helped me save over $500,000. It’s all in an account in Dominique’s name. He lifted her birth certificate, her social security number, and her passport from the file he’d stolen from Malik’s office. Buried it in a field on the outskirts of London. Probably not far from the house you took me to. He told me to flee the moment I saw an opening. I wanted to take Emma with me. For a while, I believed I might actually get the chance. That one small sliver in time would fall upon me where the stars and moon aligned, and we could both escape together. With Al’s help, it wasn’t a foolish dream. He gave me… hope.” She raised her eyebrows. “But Malik got wind of our relationship. He didn’t like how close we were.”
Linc’s voice came in. “You were having an affair?”
She shook her head. “He was also married and faithful to his wife. We had a beautiful friendship, but nothing more. I think Malik would’ve actually been less angry if we were actually sleeping together. It was our deep, genuine, totally platonic bond that bothered him most. So… he killed him.” Her face curled, voice rising as pain stained her eyes. “Right in front of me.” She clapped a hand over her mouth.
With a deep breath, Linc reached out and swallowed up her lower thigh in his big hand. He took a deep breath to fight past the softness of her skin under his palm, but his heart still went into overdrive when she set her free hand on top of his and squeezed. He squeezed back.
She lifted her hand from her mouth and used it to cover her eyes, keeping her face hidden until the tears in her eyes had eased. “I miss him every day. And not just him, but the hope he gave me. The hope he gave me for myself and for Emma too.”
“Do you remember where he buried Dominique’s documents?”
She took another moment before dropping her hand from her eyes. “Yeah. Which was what gave me the fire I needed to jump down that laundry chute. Well, that, and Emma. She gave me the idea.”
“How long has Malik had her?”
“Two years.”
His fingers tightened around her thigh, causing hers to clench around his hand. “Is her favorite color still yellow?”
The question caused something to shift in her eyes, and a smile to lift the corners of her lips. “Yeah…”
His eyes fell for a moment, his heart skipping a beat.
“How did you know that?” Mia asked.
He took a deep breath. “My wife told me.”
Her smiled wavered. “Emma’s mother?”
He nodded.
“Oh. So you…” She shifted, her face growing sullen, crossing her arms while looking down into her lap where his hand still covered her thigh. “You’re still married.”
Linc heard the accusation in her voice. An accusation that could only lace the voice of a woman who’d just had a married man’s head between her legs.
She spoke again before he could reply, her voice a little shakier. “Emma has a photo of her too. Keeps it in the book right next to yours.” Even as she tried to fight it, her teeth clenched. “What’s her name?”
“Lisa.”
“She reminded me of that actress, Meagan Fox. God, she’s…” She tightened her crossed arms and shrugged. “She’s really beautiful.”
“She’s dead.”
Mia jolted, her eyes going wide.
“Almost a year now,” he added.
“I’m so sorry.” She uncrossed her arms, using one hand to cover her heart and the other to cover his hand on her thigh. Her eyes dashed back and forth as her mind went a mile a minute, and then they fell closed. “Oh God, Emma. Oh God, it’s going to break her heart.”
He licked his lips. “Guess I’m gonna have to find some way to explain to her why I let her mother die.”
“You can’t possibly blame yourself.”
“Believe me. I can.”
“How?”
He searched her eyes for a long moment as if deciding whether or not to continue. “Because she told me.”
Mia frowned.
He spoke to the confusion spreading across her face. “She told me a sting wouldn’t work. That if she went against her pimp, they’d kill Emma as retaliation. She told me. She begged. But I made her—” This time, it was his own eyes that filled. He looked away in an attempt to hide it from her, voice breaking. “I made her do it anyway.”
Mia’s mouth fell open, sputtering, unable to form a coherent sentence.
“Five years, she was missing…” He shook his head, craning his jaw back and forth. “And when I finally found her, I didn’t fuckin’ listen.” His eyes went to a faraway place.
Mia’s breathing picked up as she considered what he’d told her, making as much sense of it as she could with what little information he’d just given. “So you were a cop.”
Her voice snapped him out of the world he’d been sinking into, and he leaned an elbow on the table, massaging the insides of his eyes before cutting a look at her, letting his hand fall on the table. “Yeah…”
“Your wife went missing, but you found her, and then you set up a sting to catch the bastard who trafficked her—”
“And then she went rogue so it wouldn’t look like she’d betrayed her pimp. Killed my partner and pointed a gun at a rookie, who killed her on the spot. Took her last breath in my arms. She did it to protect our daughter. The same way I should’ve protected her.”
“Jesus, you can’t blame yourself for that.”
“No?”
Mia tightened her hold on his hand, appearing to realize it was no use. Attempting to absolve him from guilt. “Is that how you found Emma? Lisa told you where she was?”
“She told me Emma was in London.” He leaned back in his chair with a shrug. “And after ten long months of infiltrating whore-houses, I never utilized, questioning hookers I never fucked, threatening madams I wanted to kill, and befriending undercover operatives who were just as fuckin' angry as I was—willing to help me however they could… I found her, on the top floor of the fuckin’ mayor’s multi-million dollar mansion in central London. And for two more months, I had to sit in the foreclosed house across the street with a pair of binoculars, waiting with bated breath, every night, for a flash of curly blonde hair to blaze by the window on the top floor.”
She drew in a deep breath.
He looked at her, his chest swelling too. “Same time, every night.”
“She—” Mia cleared her throat when her voice broke, fighting a smile. “She found a laundry chute behind her dresser drawers, covered over with a thick layer of concrete. She’s been chipping away at it with a piece of brick she unhinged from the wall. That’s probably why you see a flash of her hair the same time every night. She probably only gets a chance to work on it when the guards who stand outside her bedroom door do a shift change, leaving it unmanned for a few minutes.”
Linc couldn’t help a small smile. “She’s a fighter, huh?”
“She’s so strong. So smart. So much more than me.” Mia covered the hand he still had on her thigh with both of hers this time, encasing it in warmth. “Tell me your real name.”
He held her eyes, knowing he shouldn’t trust her. She’d given him every reason not to, but still, he answered, “Linc.”
She smiled softly, apparently finding “Linc” and lot more believable than “Harold”. Harold, the name that had graced his phony passport, his phony social security card, and every piece of phony ID he’d carried with him for nearly a year.
“Short for Lincoln?” she asked.
He nodded.
She nodded too, nibbling her bottom lip.
His gaze fell to watch her do it.
“Mine’s Ashley.”
His eyes shot back up to hers, eyebrows jumping.
“Malik thinks I don’t remember that my real name is Ashley Kolinsky, but I do. I remember my real name. I remember my real home. I remember my parents. I remember it all.”
He moved his hand slowly up her thigh, feeling his nostrils flare as fury encased him. Trying to comfort her with his touch the same way hers was comforting him.
But she held herself together. “You know my parents are both black?” She chuckled. “But Malik makes me pretend I’m half Pakistani to pacify his Indian base. I’ve always looked half Asian, anyway, so no one ever batted an eye. My mother always used to tell me that my great-great grandmother was full Indian, but I never saw proof of that. Not even a photograph, so…” She shrugged one shoulder, eyes falling.
Linc blinked softly. “You miss ‘em?”
Her eyes flew back up.
“Your parents?” he clarified.
“Every second,” she admitted, her voice gentle even as her face grew hard as stone. “Too bad the feeling was never mutual. After I went missing, they never bothered to go looking for little Ashley Kolinsky. They didn’t care that she was gone. They didn’t miss her one bit.”
“That’s a lie you were told so the bastard who had you could further control you.”
“Oh, yeah? What makes you so sure?”
“Because when I was a cop, I worked in the Special Victims Unit, and believe me, Mia…” He paused, wondering if she still wanted him to call her “Mia”, or “Ashley”. “They lied to you. I can guarantee that your parents not only miss you but have made themselves sick trying to find you. Sicker everyday that they can’t hold you. Hug you. Kiss you. I can guarantee that every day you’re gone is a day they die a little more inside. Don’t believe the lies. Believe the man who lived it every single day that his wife was gone from his life. Every single day he lives in regret of not doing everything differently the day she went missing. Every single day that he can’t hug his own daughter.”
Her eyes fell once more, lips pulling tight in a dubious pout. She gave another shrug.
Linc nearly screamed but knew it wouldn’t change anything. She’d spent too many years hearing the lies. The lies that no one cared enough to go looking for her. That no one cared about her at all. She believed it down to her very soul. A deep-seated emotional abuse that would be hard to erase.
“You should probably…” Her eyes remained lowered, lashes soaked with tears. “You should probably call to set up the trade, right?” Slowly, she lifted her eyes to his.
He shook his head. “Not tonight.”
She shook hers too, voice shattered. “I won’t fight you anymore. Now that I know… now that I know why you really took me, I won’t fight. I’ll go back to Malik if it means you get Emma back. That Emma gets you back. I can handle Malik… but Emma… she’s still a baby. She still has a chance to see the beauty in the world. She still believes there’s beauty in the world. But she won’t believe it for much longer. You have to get to her now.”
Linc took in the shattered look in her eyes, clenched her thigh and then took one of her hands in his. He stood without responding and pulled her up with him, his half-bandaged neck forgotten. As thunder rolled and lightning stuck, they moved toward the bed together, hand in hand. Once they were at the edge of the queen-sized bed, Linc motioned for her to climb in first, waiting until she’d laid down on her back to climb in after her where he laid on his back as well.
They stared at the ceiling in silence with their hands clasped over their stomachs, eyes following the blades of the ceiling fan that spun overhead.
“Tomorrow,” Linc said, turned his head on the pillow, meeting her eyes just as she turned her head too. “The city will be flooded by morning, anyway. Malik wouldn’t be able to get to us even if he wanted to. And I want him to sweat.” He reached up and ran his knuckles softly down her face, watching her eyes fall softly shut against his touch. “I want him to feel it down to his bones… the agony of knowing he’s lost an amazing woman like you.”
Her brown orbs blinked open, and they held each other’s eyes for a long while. Studying each other’s faces until their eyelids grew heavy, eyelashes fluttering softly, lulled by the tranquil pattering of the rainstorm raging beyond the open window. Mia was the first to submit, her eyes falling closed under the soft strokes of his knuckles. Linc waited until her eyes had been closed for several minutes—until the rise and fall of her chest grew deep and slow—before he let his eyes fall closed too.
They sank into a dream world together, momentarily freed from the darkness of the real one, their bandaged wounds still pulsing but a little less painful than they had been when they’d started.