Page 33 of Stolen Vows

"Oh my God," she repeats, but this time, she adds words that change everything.

"It’syou."

16

Cara

I can’t believe what I am seeing.

There is no way that I can be taking this in right—my brain is playing tricks on me, bringing me back to that night the woman with red hair tried so hard to escape—escape my father.

I’m hallucinating. All the stress has sent me back in time to the evening I crept out of my room and peered down over the banister and saw her running from Dad, running like her life depended on it.

And here she is now, sitting in this cabin as though it’s exactly where she belongs. I feel as though I have plucked her straight from my memory and set her down in front of me again. The same eyes, the same hair, though she looks a little older, and she is far less panicked than on the night I first saw her.

As she sits before me now, she is self-possessed and looks sure of herself, even if she can’t figure out why I am looking at her like she’s a long lost puppy come home to me.

"What does that mean?” she shoots back, her voice defensive.

I don’t blame her. I heard gunshots in the woods, and I know something has gone down. My father’s men sent to get me and bring me back… and failing—I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, all things considered. Because if I had gone out that door myself after making the phone call, I would never have been here to see her, and I get the feeling that her presence here is going to change everything.

"I know you," I continue, trying to gather as much of my strength as I can. "I... I saw you. You were at my father’s mansion, maybe ten years ago. You were running. I remember. I was sitting on the balcony at the top of the stairs in the entrance hall, and I saw you running. There were men after you. I never knew if they found you, but..."

I can’t string my words together properly. I feel as though my head is going to burst at any moment. That same woman is here, standing here before me, looking at me as though I’m talking nonsense. But as I speak, I can tell that she is starting to understand where I am coming from. It might not be easy to put it into words, but she remembers that night, too. Probably even better than I do.

"Jesus Christ," she mutters, as she turns to face me fully.

Max steps forward beside me. Even though I know I will have a lot of explaining to do, there is something comforting about having him so close to me.

"What is it?” he demands. "Veronica, how do you know Cara? I thought you said?—"

"I don’t know her," she replies. "But I... I remember that night. I remember running from that house. I went through the main hall, I remember, because I had to cut back on myself andgo through the garden when I ran into guards on the walls. I thought I wasn’t going to make it, I thought they were for sure going to catch me in there, but..."

She shakes her head.

"But they didn’t. I got away."

I step towards her. I have held questions about that night for all these years, needing to know how all the pieces fit together, needing to know if I can make them fit.

"What were you running away from?" I ask her.

I hardly even know if I want the answer, not when I have a feeling of what it might be. She gazes back at me for a moment, and the look on her face scares me. It is almost as though she feels sorry for me, sorry that I might, for a moment, believe a single one of the lies my father has spun to me over the years. But she is not going to be the one to hold back. Flicking her tongue over her lips, she speaks at last.

"I was running away from your father, Cara," she replies, as calmly as she can.

My jaw tightens. It doesn’t feel right that she can speak to me like this—her words are lies. They must be! Suddenly, it doesn't feel as though I belong here, where I can be talked to in this way, lied to like this. As though my father is some kind of monster, when I know he’s not, I know...

"Tell her what he had done to you," Max prompts quietly. "Tell her why you didn’t want to go back."

Veronica pauses for another moment, and I see a dozen memories flash across her face in a single second. She’s having a hard time hiding the intensity of her emotions right now, and Ifeel a twist of sadness and anger, already knowing where she is going to go.

"He was... using me," she replies, carefully. "He was selling my body. He bought me from my father when I was young. I didn’t know any better back then. Hell, I thought all of that was normal. It wasn’t until I got older, and I saw some of the other girls who were being brought in, that I started to question it at all."

She shakes her head slightly.

"They were all so... vulnerable," she admits, after a long silence. "All so unaware of how much trouble they were in, how badly all of this might go for them. They’d had lives before this, and they told me what those lives had been like, what it had been like for them to give up on everything they thought they knew—to pay off a drug debt, because one of their family members got into trouble, whatever it was."

Her eyes mist slightly. These memories are still fresh to her, even though the night I saw her fleeing from the mansion feels like a thousand years ago now, another world, another life.

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