Page 12 of Stolen Vows

He returns a few moments later, and sinks down onto the bed, pulling my leg into his lap and setting the first aid kit he brought with him down beside me. I turn my head to the side so I don’t have to look at him at work, but I can’t help but let out a yelp of pain as I feel the sting of the antiseptic on my skin.

"It’s okay," he murmurs, as he briefly rubs his hand against my thigh. I didn’t expect him to be quite so...tender. He’s careful with me, maneuvering my leg this way and that so he can clean off all the blood, and then bandaging up the cuts before they can bleed any further.

He pauses for a moment when he’s done. I look over at him once more, and breathe a sigh of relief when I see that my leg has been tended to.

"Thanks," I murmur, and I go to pull my leg away, but, before I can, he tightens his grip on me slightly.

"What’s this?"

My heart drops. He’s gesturing to an old scar on the back of my calf—the very same scar I got the night that I saw that woman fleeing from our house. It’s a reminder of that night, and it has left me unable to forget everything that happened, no matter how much I might want to put it behind me.

"Nothing," I mutter. "Just an old cut. I got it in an accident when I was a kid."

He glances over at me, studying me for a moment, and I can tell that he doesn’t buy what I am saying to him right now. And, for a moment, one crazy moment, I almost want to spill it all to him. I want to tell him what happened that night, how it felt to see something like that go down—how strange it was for me to see my father in such stark reality.

But I shove it aside, staring him down, refusing to give him any more than that. He releases my leg, and I pull it up and tuck it under me, hiding it from him before he can ask any more questions about me.

"I’ll get you some new pants," he tells me, rising to his feet before he looks down at the bed.

He leaves the room, and I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as soon as he’s gone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when he’s around, how I’m supposed to act. Or how I’m meant to make sense of how gentle he can be with me, but how harsh at the same time. He’s my kidnapper, so shouldn’t he be going out of his way to terrify me, to leave me to struggle in pain when he can tell that I have tried to escape? Why did he take care of me like that? Who is this man...?

I glance down at my leg once more, at the scar that drew his attention, and I reach down to brush my finger over it. The memory of that woman flashes through my mind, the woman who had been fleeing from the house that night. I have no idea if she got away. I have no idea where she went, if she managed to go anywhere.

And maybe I’m better off not knowing the answer to those things. Maybe it’s for my own good.

Because there are some truths I know I’m better off without knowing. I close my eyes, and let out a long breath. I find it hard to breathe around Max, hard to think.

All I can think about is the way his hands felt on my leg. And how much I craved them somewhere far more intimate.

7

Max

Days have passed—days without a word from anyone. And, though it should be a relief, I can’t help but wonder what is waiting for me on the other side of all of this.

I glance towards her bedroom door, which has the lock pushed across it. I’m glad that she seems to have quieted down in there, especially after the accident she had the other day.

"I know what you were trying to do," I told her once I had patched her up. She narrowed her eyes at me, as though daring me to call her out.

"Oh, and what do you think that was?”

I gazed back at her, incredulous.

"You really need me to say it?”

"If you’re making assumptions about me, I want to know what they are," she replied, cocking an eyebrow.

"Assumptions?” I scoffed back.

"Yeah," she replied, lifting her chin slightly, meeting my gaze. And there was something in the way she looked at me that told me that she was willing to dig her heels in about this—even if she was wrong, even if she knew it.

And there is something about that which excites me.

I don’t like this. I don’t like any of it. I thought I could handle being alone with her. Hell, I insisted on it, telling my family in no uncertain terms that I could manage this side of our operation without a hitch. But the longer I spend here, the more I wonder if I was telling the truth or not.

I know the shit her father is involved in—the filth attached to her family name. The sex trafficking. And I know that there are few people in the world I loathe more than Lucio. I’ve heard what he does to people, to the women who fall into his grasp. It’s not enough for him to use them. He wants to break them—to make it so that they have no choice but to do what they do for him, to make them his for life. It’s beyond evil, and, worse than that, he doesn’t even bother to hide it anymore. He doesn’t have to. He is too powerful to stop.

But what does she know about it? That’s the part that gets to me. I’ve skated around the question a few times, talking with her about her father, but she has always been quick to deflect.

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