I had my arm around London’s waist, and her head was tucked into my chest. Fuck. I didn’t want to let go, but I had no choice. There was a chance for her without me. A chance to bring the lightness back, the laughter, the sweetness. I was her destruction and I kept falling back into that rift and suffocating her in my darkness.
Deck nodded. “Probably better. Georgie would’ve gotten herself killed with that mouth of hers.” Deck stood. “Police will be here shortly. You better go.”
I peeled London away from me. I hadn’t intended on looking at her again. I should’ve just walked away. Instead, I had to look at her one more time and my heart stopped. Broken. The compassionate, brilliant woman with stubborn determination no longer existed.
Jesus, baby. You need to find your way back. You can’t do that with me.
I had to get out of here. “You need to stay with them. Deck will take you home.”
Her eyes widened and her face paled. Then she did what I never expected. She fell to her knees in front of me and grabbed my leg. “Please. Please take me with you.”
I remained motionless.
Fuck, London.
I’d never cared before. In order to care, you had to give a shit. I didn’t. Now I did and it was worse than any physical pain. It was acid eating away at my insides and feeling like there was no way back from the hell I lived in.
I belonged in the darkness and London belonged in the light.
I sighed and then nodded to Deck. He stood, took two steps then snagged London’s arm and pulled her away from me. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound.
Then I jogged away and didn’t look back.
ERASED.
The word lingered in my head. I became a ghost after ending all communication with London. She was better without me. She was safer.
It had been a year and seven months since I saw her in the warehouse on her knees begging me to take her with me. I pretended it was business as usual, but it wasn’t. What I did had nothing to do with business. It was personal as I became the silent killer.
I killed instead of satisfying any sexual needs. I killed to stop the nightmare of seeing her on her knees. And I killed to ease the pain. Weaving in and out of the sex trafficking industry, I killed those who deserved it.
It was my outlet.
My link to keeping my sanity.
Ernie still watched her, but I’d insisted on not hearing updates. He ignored the order and sent me emails anyway, to which for the first couple weeks my finger hovered over the delete button without opening the file. But I always read them.
Shit changed a year ago when she ran away. My first thought had been Vault and after feeling that out, I knew they didn’t have her. From Ernie’s take on it, London simply left with nothing.
And since she had nothing, there was no trail. No trail meant she was making it one fuck of a job for Ernie to find her. The only good news with her missing was that if I couldn’t find her, neither could Vault and they’d been looking because a couple of months earlier, Mother asked me to bring London in. And for the first time, I didn’t lie when I told her I couldn’t find her.
I had a suspicion that they thought I might even be hiding her. Of course, I wasn’t. And even if I were, I’d never bring her in. I was part of Vault, but I didn’t submit to them, although they thought differently. I just knew how to play their game and lie really well.
I knew why London ran. She was running from herself from—Raven.
And I fuckin’ hated Raven.
My brave London had submitted and that pissed me off more than anything else because they’d broken her so badly that she had no choice but to fracture and yield.
She’d become Raven and Raven was not a scientist. She wasn’t strong or stubborn or a smart-as-fuck girl who would do anything to save her father, who cared about others and wanted to save lives.
She’d become nothing.
Her freedom hadn’t freed her at all. It trapped her in a world she no longer knew how to survive in and she ran from it.
My disposable phone vibrated and I pulled it from my suit jacket pocket, and then leaned my palm against the glass window as I stared out into the city. “Told you I don’t want to know.”
“Too bad,” he said. Asshole kept me updated on his search for London whether I wanted to hear it or not. “Christie shelter. Found out she often goes there. Although, it’s all women, so I can’t get in.”
For the last six months, Ernie incorporated himself into the streets and lived with the homeless. London had always helped them and no matter who she was now, Ernie and I thought she might gravitate to them, meaning live on the streets.
But the homeless didn’t like to share information or were too drugged up to share, and the homeless shelters definitely didn’t share. Not when a guy, a guy like Ernie, was looking for a girl who was completely inside herself. It screamed abuse.