So, so tired.

My eyelids felt heavy and I struggled to open them. The whole of my body hurt as I gingerly tried to move my protesting muscles to a more comfortable position. I had no idea how long I had been asleep. Moving my arms, I recognised the sound of sheets moving against my skin and realised I was in a bed. The room was bathed in semi-darkness, so it must have either been late in the evening or the early hours of the morning. I didn’t remember feeling this comfortable in my bed for a very long time. So comfortable, I was sure I hadn’t even dreamt, let alone had a nightmare and that was a miracle. The peaceful room that surrounded me was welcome. I lay appreciating the comfort and silence it had to give. Moments like this were so few and far between that I had learned very quickly to relish every single one. It was only in scarce minutes like this that I could look back at my train crash of a life and wonder about what might have been. However painful that was.

I opened my eyes fully and slowly my bedroom came into focus.

Only it wasn’t my room. How stupid was I? Feelings of panic began to rise inside of me. I needed to think back, what was the last thing I could remember? I willed my body to calm down as I tried to recollect anything that might answer my questions.

Breathe in and breathe out.

I could remember rope? I also remembered bright blue eyes that I saw every day, and in my dreams.

I knew I couldn’t trust my recollections. For about the last year, I had been kept in a drugged stupor, so they could guarantee my compliance. I often wondered just how stupid they really were.

They held the ace card, and I would do anything to protect it.

The rooms I very often slept in weren’t this comfortable. It reminded me of the family home I once shared with my father and my poor mum.

I tightly closed my eyes and I let the memory in.

My arrival home had been met by ecstatic barks from Fox. I wheeled my small suitcase in the front door and knelt down to him. I caressed and rubbed all around his ears. He gave a small whimper of appreciation.

“Hello, Lily,” my mum’s voice travelled over to me. Looking up I could see her stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Good week?”

“Hi, Mum… Yes, a very good week.” I casually ran my thumbnail over the piece of string I was still wearing on my ring finger and buried my fingers once again into Fox’s fur. I knew that I would need to remove it as soon as possible, but the thought of no longer wearing it hurt. I was far away from Jack as it was. I certainly didn’t want to increase that distance by removing the proof that he and I were together and going to be married.

“I’ve just put the kettle on, why don’t you carry your case up? Sort out your washing and come back down?”

‘Thanks, Mum, yes I’ll do just that. Give me a few minutes.”

Quickly, I turned in the hallway and started to climb the stairs in front of me that led up to the galleried landing. A sense of relief coursed through me at not having come across my father first. I knew he would have questioned the new accessory I was wearing.

My father spotted everything.

I pushed open the door to my bedroom and threw my case up onto the bed. Truth be told I had no washing, as it only contained the clothes I wore here at home. But I plunged my hand in and grabbed a few bits. Gathering them up to my chest I walked past my chest of drawers where I could see Anton’s hideous engagement ring. Dropping the clothes in my arms to the floor, I picked it up quickly and pushed it onto my ring finger. With a bit of messing around I managed to get the expensive ring to sit on top of my string one. I knew it was a myth that the Vena amoris vein ran from that finger straight to my heart. But still it made me happier knowing that it was Jack’s representation of betrothal that connected with my flesh and not Anton’s.

I picked up my clothes from the floor and went back downstairs to find my mum.

Pushing open the kitchen door with my hip, I walked into the kitchen to see my mum dancing around to the music that played on the radio in the background. That told me instantly that my father wasn’t at home. Until I had started spending most of my time away from home I didn’t recognise just how much she came into her own when he wasn’t around. If I hadn’t been certain about leaving before, watching her sing and dance around the kitchen as she lost herself to the music clarified my decision.

I couldn’t live the way I now realised she had to. I needed to be able to dance. I wanted to be able to sing. It was vital for me to live with love. It was crucial for me to be in control of my own life.

“I’ll just put my washing in the machine then, Mum.”

She stopped dancing and for a split second her eyes found mine, guilty at being caught out. I smiled at her in reassurance.

“Turn it up, Mum. I won’t be able to hear it in the utility room.”

She directed a smile at me then that I knew I would always remember. In that moment, for probably the first time in my life, we saw each other, really saw each other. I loosened my hold on the clothes I had brought down and kissed the fingers on my right hand. Pointing them at her I blew her over an imaginary kiss. Her smile grew broader as she grabbed in mid-air and brought her hand up to her mouth. Looking back now, I recognised that was the split-second moment that changed our relationship, irrevocably.

“Tea’s been poured, Lily. Hurry up and we can have a good talk about your week before your father gets back home.”

As we sat opposite each other in the warm kitchen, I told her things about my life at university. I carefully watched and gauged her reaction as I told her how I felt for the first time since I had entered adulthood. As our hands found each other’s over the top of the breakfast bar, she squeezed my hand willing me to continue. I then took a deep breath and I told her all about Jack.

In the space of an hour, she listened to me as I opened my heart and poured out all my hopes and dreams. In that short segment of time I had basically handed my life to her on a plate, for her to do what she would with it. She could have gone either way, much to my relief she promised to get the documents that I needed. I couldn’t marry without my birth certificate and I couldn’t go to America without my passport. She wanted to help, we didn’t discuss her life with my father. I think it was then that I fathomed out it was less than she wanted, but she refused to go into detail. All she acknowledged, was that she wanted more for me, and Anton could only offer the same life as my father offered her. I told her that I didn’t want her risking her own safety, but she assured me that he would never find out that she had helped me. She decided she would remove the documents from the safe in my father’s office within the next two weeks. For the first time, the feeling between us was stronger than that of just a mother and daughter.

We had a secret between us that I had no doubt could subsequently cost either, or both, of us our lives.

Tears welled in my eyes at the memory, but they never fell. I had cried enough tears and it didn’t help remove the tightening pain that constantly seemed to be constricted around my chest. Tears were a waste of time. They say that time erases pain. Whoever had come up with that, had obviously never lived through what I had.

I brought myself back to the present.

I didn’t move as I made my eyes travel around my accommodation. The bed I was in was large and so was the room I was in. I made my body freeze while I took in my surroundings. I quickly fathomed that no one else was there. It wasn’t a bed I had been in before and the unknown in that frightened me. There was a long, brilliant white net curtain covering each of the large windows in the room. Occasionally they moved a little on the summer breeze that was blowing through the small window openings. As the breeze blew in, I could smell the aroma of a summer meadow in the early morning. It permeated my senses and I could almost picture it in my mind. As the curtains lifted here and there, little by little the room was shown to me.

The house was old, the two large sash windows disclosed this. The room I was in was sizable and it appeared only sparsely furnished. The stripped wooden door was only pushed to, not closed and locked. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been in a room that I could leave at any time I wanted, that realisation alone was thrilling. The walls were freshly plastered and turning my head to the side I could see that the high skirting boards and the floor were stripped back to their original wood. It seemed to be a room that was in the middle of being done up.

Placing my arm under my head I changed the angle of my view. There was next to no furniture in the room. An empty chair sat on either side of the bed and an old-fashioned wash stand was placed against the wall between the two large windows. I could see the back of an oversized leather settee that was positioned in front of what looked to be a very grand fireplace.

I thought with a small audible laugh what a different person my life had made me become. In my previous life, I was so mollycoddled that I let others look after and protect me. Now, the only person I had to rely on was myself. I used every sense I had in a bid to stay one step ahead of my enemy, to protect me and the person I loved. I hoped he was ok. Luckily, he was used to me not being with him every day, although it was my deepest wish that I could be. I lay my head back down onto the soft pillow at the back of my head, flinching slightly at the dull ache that seemed to have settled in.

Lifting the sheets carefully, I took in the fact that I was wearing shorts and a camisole-top. They weren’t mine. I smelt clean, soap clean. I could no longer smell the repulsive scent of the overwhelming perfume that Tony insisted I wear. I hated it, it made me feel like a cheap whore, but then again that’s exactly what I was, so why shouldn’t I smell like one?

I inhaled again and the feeling of pleasure overtook me. Funny how something as simple as soap, clean clothes and a bed could make you feel on top of the world. They all meant one thing. Wherever I was, I was being taken good care of and I couldn’t remember when that had last happened. I pulled the sheets up to my chin, and snuggled a little at the thought.

My happy bubble was suddenly burst as a sound hit my ears. Straining them again I caught the end of the sound, it was a noise I had heard before. A sudden burst of adrenalin exploded inside me and made my heart accelerate until all I could hear was the sound of my pulse beating against my eardrums. I willed myself to calm down so I could listen again.

Nothing came to me.

I lifted my head from the pillow. My eyes darted over to the one place where someone could go unnoticed in the room. I tried to hear anything to give me a clue that my ears hadn’t been deceiving me. I needed to know if anyone was lying down on the settee.

Still, no sound filtered over to me.

The only detail that made its way to my overworked senses was a subtle smell of spice and as the curtains shimmied a little more the smell of tobacco was carried over on the light breeze.

It couldn’t be?

I dreamt about him so often, he repeatedly seemed real.

This time however he wasn’t a dream. I inhaled more of the tobacco, and with my eyes getting used to the half-light, I watched as a wisp of smoke curled and danced up from the settee to the ceiling. I felt my body relinquish itself to his presence.

Jack was in the room with me. My soul, although I had long before and several times over sold it to the devil, now recognised the devil himself.

He was the only man I had ever loved.

He had lied to me, and for that I would never forgive him.

My memories of him haunted my dreams and it appeared now he haunted my very waking moment.

Night after night I had lain here listening to her soft shallow breaths and at times her fucking screams into the dark.

Unable to believe that I was once again with the only woman who I had ever loved. The one woman who had taken my heart, run with it and never fucking returned it. I mulled over the fact that fate had thrown us together again as I worked out what the fuck I was going to say to her that might convince her to stay this time? I willed her to wake up and come back to me. But the thought of her opening her eyes and watching her, as she grasped that she was here with me against her wishes, manifested feelings of terror that coursed up and down inside me.

I knew that the time she was asleep was the easy part.

My dad had run her blood work. The results had indicated that she was generally given medication to sedate her. He decided, thank fuck, that we could look after her at home. He was still sedating her but gradually decreasing the amount given to her daily. I had been told yesterday to expect her to wake up properly within the next few days, well let’s call it warned. Both of my parents were now fully aware of the strength of feeling I had for Lily.

Mum and Katy had been expertly looking after her in the daytime whilst I worked on the farm, in the gym and studied. Last week, I had met with John, my brother-in-law who headed up his own security firm. I had told him how we had come across her and what I knew about Lily’s situation. He had listened carefully, and without hesitation he had decided that it would be his pleasure to pull apart the Vasiles’ dealings. This wasn’t his first rodeo, as it was mostly down to him and the Blackmores that we had managed to previously bring down the Antonescus. John had also made sure a couple of men were keeping an eye in and around the area we all lived, just in case they started sniffing around here looking for us. It shouldn’t happen, as it would take longer than the week and half they’d had, to liquidate their assets. I hoped that by tying her up when we had removed her from them, they wouldn’t have grasped that she meant something to me. Charlie was talking to people for me, quietly in the background, as we needed as much information on them as possible.

But, I was starting to think that perhaps the information that John needed might have to come from sleeping beauty herself.

I had agreed willingly to take the night shifts, while my mum and Katy cleaned and fed her in the daytime. Doing those jobs meant they had to be hands on and we all felt that, to offer her a sense of privacy, I should do none of those things for her. Even though I wanted to do everything for her.

The night-time had quickly become the worst and very best time of my whole day. Lying on the settee in my room night after night, hearing the small noises she made as she stirred in her sleep, made my body ache for her. I had fought with myself, over and over again, not to hold her in my arms. A few times when she had shouted out in her sleep, she had shouted out for Harry, but the bastard wasn’t here and I was. So, I took his place. It killed me to take her in my arms, when I knew she wanted someone else, but she needed to be held and soothed. So, like the fucking fool I was, I would wrap her in my arms and stroke her hair until she eventually calmed down.

Katy and my mum found us just like that on most of the mornings they had come in to relieve me. They never said a word. Each time I swore to myself that I wouldn’t let it happen again, as it hurt so fucking much. But, I slept better with her in my arms and I knew that although she may be calling out for someone else, she did too.

All the time she was sedated, it meant she was with me, in my bed and my house. I knew the second she came to and started to put things together, the situation would change. I had lost her before and I just wasn’t willing to watch her fucking leave me again, without her first giving me some answers. Even after I had been given some answers, I knew I was going to take it hard when our ninety days were up. But eighty-one days was all I had left, all I was guaranteed, and for now they had to be enough.

I heard the sheets rustle as she stirred. My body sparked to life hearing her move. Although I’d only had a couple of hours of light sleep, I knew I wouldn’t get anymore.

Reaching down to the floor next to the settee, I found my Zippo and a cigarette. I tapped the end on the floorboards beside me and placed the filter in my mouth. The sparking of the flint-wheel ignition broke through the semi-darkness. As I pulled my first drag, I knew she had woken up at the sound and I let out a sigh. There I lay, dragging on the filter of my cigarette much harder than I should have done. I watched as the red glow travelled quickly downwards and smoke drifted upwards towards the ceiling. I just knew she was lying on my bed with her eyes wide open, watching the smoke rise and curl, too.

I rolled my neck around, desperate for the feeling of release it normally gave me. I was just waiting for her to come to her senses and wonder where the hell she was.

I wondered if she remembered it was me who she had been forced to her knees in front of. Me who had watched a solitary tear fall down her face, and that it was me that had demanded Charlie bind her wrists.

I knew I was about to find out. I held my breath with apprehension.

‘Jack?’ She said my name with a question and with disbelief in her voice. I closed my eyes, letting the sound of my name on her lips wash over me. It appeared she had already worked out she was with me. I had gone over this very scenario in my head so many fucking times. In none of them had she realised it was me here with her, until she had seen me. I had played it over and over in my head, about how Katy would tell her that it was my house she was in… how she was safe and being looked after. But never did she, in any of my dreamt-up situations, know it was me that had taken possession of her.

My dad had already explained to us all that having been drugged for some time she would not initially have her memories sorted in the correct order. Some things in her head may seem like she had dreamt them. As other things came back to her, she might possibly wish they were a dream and not fucking real life. I already knew she was having night terrors.

We knew that she would wake up not having the jigsaw of her life complete. Slowly, hopefully everything would fall into place.

We weren’t to prompt her in any way, but only answer her questions.

I couldn’t fucking reply to her. I was so fucked up. My throat was so constricted from the emotion of hearing her voice say my name. I had to swallow down a few times to move the knot in my throat, before anything could be released from my mouth.

‘Yes, Lils.’

Silence met my words. Then the sound of springs flexing met my ears as the bed shifted and I knew she had sat up.

‘Oh my God… IT IS YOU!... YOU! I can remember now… You took me… I can’t remember how long for, but… YOU took ownership of me. I can’t believe it! You and Charlie were there… Oh my God!... You’re everything he ever said you’d become.’

So much for not remembering, the pain in her words cut me open.

I could hear the shock and recrimination in her voice as she slowly had flashbacks to nine days ago. I could see her in my mind’s eye, sat up in my bed, staring at the settee I was cowering behind, with her eyes open wide in disbelief. Her anger, mistrust and then finally her hurt came out in her words. I thought about what she had said, the pain and rage wrapped up in her accusations. This wasn’t the way I hoped our first conversation in over three years would go, of that I was sure.

What I was unsure of though, was who the “he” was, that she spoke about?

I was going to ask her who the fuck she was talking about. But when I heard the sobs as they started to wrack through her body, I heard my dad’s words about not questioning her and couldn’t stay any longer.

I stubbed the cigarette out on the floor. The beautiful wood that only a couple of months ago I had so painstakingly restored. I knew that the searing heat would scar the newly exposed wood, just like her sobbing was now scarring my heart.

I padded my bare feet across the room and went downstairs. I couldn’t look at her in my bed. The agony of realising that I had inadvertently triggered more pain for her, the fact that I had caused her to sob her heart out, was more than I could deal with, for now anyway.