“Why didn’t you try to leave that house like you did all the others?”
“Because of Pike. Because for the first time since my dad, I had someone who loved me and cared about me,” I explain through lamenting pain. “I was more terrified to lose him than being locked away and tortured.”
Declan’s muscles constrict when he screws his eyes shut. It’s an anguished display he can’t control, and I suddenly feel guilty for putting that weight upon him.
I reach out to touch his arm and he nearly recoils, causing me to jerk my hand back.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” he snaps, blinking his eyes open. “Don’t ever be sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to upset y—”
“I want you to talk to me,” he says, cutting me off. “I want you to feel safe enough to unload all your pain, because I want to carry it for you. I want it free from your soul, so I can bury it deep inside mine.”
I touch his grief-stricken face and tell him, “I don’t want to be your martyrdom. I want to be the thing that makes you happy.”
“You do make me happy,” he affirms. “You do. I’m happiest when I’m with you—always. Even in our darkness, I’m happier than what I am without you.” He drops his head, kissing me, sliding his tongue across my lips. And with my hands tangled in his hair, he looks intently down at me. “You’re not my martyrdom. You’re my profligacy.”
I listen to Elizabeth as she continues to open up to me more. She tells me a story about the time her father let her put makeup on him. She laughs through her tears as I listen, combing her hair with my fingers and licking away the salts that crystallize her heartache. Each granulated fragment, I take for myself, freeing her a tiny piece at a time.
After a while, her guard is down enough that when I suggest a sleeping aid, she takes it without a fight. I lie with her, watching her lull into a peaceful sleep before going to shower and dress. She still remains in bed, in my sheets. Her red hair splayed over the pillow, her milky skin with faint reminders of her kidnapping, her petite body curled into a ball. One could look at her and never believe the titanic life she’s endured.
She poises herself as strong, but it’s her cracks that cause me to stumble and fall, making me love her even more. I’m a greedy man, and to know that her weaknesses make her more dependent on me feeds my avarice. But at the same time, I get off on her strong-willed feistiness. She’s a mélange that appeals to all my facets and allows me to freely indulge in my nefarious needs that other women would take high offense to. But Elizabeth has this unique way of submitting to me without being submissive in nature.
She’s enigmatic.
My phone goes off, pulling me away from the room where my love sleeps. When I answer, it’s security needing permission to let Lachlan up. I called him as soon as Elizabeth fell asleep because I need to talk to him about why he’s been communicating clandestinely with Camilla.
“’Morning,” he greets when I open the door.
“We need to talk,” I say and then turn to lead him into the office.
I sit at the desk and he takes one of the seats opposite.
“You look like shit, McKinnon.”
“Long night, as you can imagine,” I respond.
“How’s Elizabeth?”
“Anxious. Stressed. Confused,” I tell him. “She’s sleeping now, which is why I called you over to talk.”
“Let’s talk.”
“Camilla,” I state, and when I do, I note a hint of nerves in Lachlan—restless hands.
“Go on.”
“Last week, when I answered your phone, she thought I was you. She called you baby. When I confronted her about how she knew you, she told me I should ask you. So, as a man I hired because of the implicit trust I have in you, tell me why that trust shouldn’t be obstructed by this.”
“Like I told you before, Camilla and I go way back.” He stops his nervous hands and folds them in his lap. “She’s actually the reason I stopped working for your father. We had a long relationship and were engaged when I found out she was sleeping with Cal. She didn’t have the nerve to tell me, but the close proximity in which I worked with your father, it was bound to surface.”
“Jesus,” I mumble under my breath, uncomfortable that I’m having him divulge this embarrassment. But if I’m not only going to put my life and trust into his hands but also Elizabeth’s, I need to know everything to make sure there are no hidden agendas.
“Without question, I kicked her out of my home, and it came as no surprise that she went from my house to Cal’s,” he continues. “That was the last day I worked for him. That is, until a lifetime after all that happened, my phone rang. To my surprise, she was still with the bastard, and an even bigger surprise, I find out he never married her.”
“Why did she call you?”
“For help. Your dad had just been arrested.”
“Wait,” I say, stopping him. “You mean recently?”