Page 3 of The Bodyguard

“It’s time to let it out, Angela. Shine a light on the ugly, and eventually, it fades.”

She wanted Pham to fade. “Let it out” was so cliché, but it somehow worked. The chokehold on her voice released, and she admitted, “Pham smiled. He cared. He talked to me and asked questions and remembered what I said.”

Ibrahim didn’t tell her she was a fool or explain the manipulation. He listened to her darkest secrets, which she hadn’t revealed in years of therapy—the reasons she couldn’t get over her captor.

“That probably felt nice,” Ibrahim said.

Validated, Angela let the floodgates open. “Pham knew I wanted steak and scalloped potatoes over barbeque chicken and mac and cheese. He knew I liked retellings of classic novels over bubble-gum-cute fairy tales but preferred entertainment magazines—the ones with movies and shows—over everything.”

When she finally stopped talking, silence pervaded Ibrahim’s office. Tears had dried on Angela’s cheeks. The remnants of her near-manic outpouring made her feel lighter, untethered, and honest but far too raw.

Angela sniffed and ran her fingers under her eyes, summarizing in a whisper. “He spent the time to figure me out.”

“No one else did that for you before?” Ibrahim asked, already knowing her answer.

She shook her head.

“Did he do that for you? Or for himself?” An eternity inched by before he added, “He kept you against your will.”

“I know that.” Memories collided with facts. Her tears welled again. Angela wiped her cheeks. “I know he’s a narcissist; I know he’s evil. And most importantly, I know I was a replacement for the daughter he lost. Logically, I’m not an idiot.I know.”

“Logically.” Ibrahim smiled and then cocked his head. “I’m curious; when did you learn that he blamed your mother for his daughter’s death?”

“Early. A man like Tran Pham can’t abduct you and not connect it to your power-hungry senator mother.”

“So you spent years knowing why he treated you like family?”

Angela bit her bottom lip. She was told about Pham’s daughter, Quy Long, almost immediately and then quickly realized that, despite Pham’s career choice and his daughter’s involvement in the criminal world, he loved and missed his daughter. He was a grief-stricken terrorist. “Yeah.” Pham’s relationship with Angela was never real. She was a replacement for the daughter he’d lost and a punishment for her mother, who Pham blamed. “Nothing was real—but itfeltreal.”

“Feelings can be deceptive.”

“That might be, but even now, I can put myself into his shoes and, given his worldview and resources, understand how avenging his daughter made sense.”

“Tran Pham is a narcissist. That’s what narcissists do. They can make you feel things that don’t exist.” Ibrahim’s expression tightened. “You said Pham treated you like family.”

She nodded.

“And that you’ve never had that experience,” he pushed. “But what about your boyfriend?”

She balked. “Paul?”

Ibrahim chuckled. “Do you have another boyfriend I’m unaware of?”

Nope. Paul Bane was her only one. Perfect Paul with the perfect hair and the perfect body had been around for years. Paul was pre-abduction. Angela saw her life that way: everything before captivity and everything after. “What about him?”

“You’ve been together for so long,” Ibrahim prompted. “Would you consider him family?”

No.Paul was practically a stranger. He and Angela were a superficial couple. She pressed her lips together and finallyconfessed, “Pham acted more like family than any other person I have called family. Paul included.”

“How do you think Paul would feel about that?”

“That I don’t consider him family?” She snorted. “If I ever managed to get a hold of him, he would agree.” However, the opposite was true this week. Paul had broken character and tried repeatedly to get a hold of her. She had been busy. Though she should have felt a hint of guilt, his insistence had been aggravating.

Angela sighed, not wanting to dissect her relationship with Paul today. That was more of a conversation to hold with a friend. Not a shrink. Or maybe she would ask Sawyer and not only get a friend’s perspective but a man’s.

Sawyer was one hell of a man. His opinion was like gold. Her cheeks heated. Angela refocused on Ibrahim and tried to lighten the conversation. “So, Pham is more of a family than my flesh-and-blood family. That’s what I’ve been keeping to myself—man, you have your work cut out for you.”

Ibrahim chuckled. “I’m glad you told me.”

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