Page 34 of Stolen Vows

"And I knew I had to try and strike out and make a life for myself out there," she continues, her voice dropping again. "I couldn’t get everyone out. God knows I wanted to. But I knew if I got out, I could work against him. I’d been with him for years. I had seen him burn through some of his most trusted generals, and I had information on him that could get other women out of his grasp, too..."

It’s clear she has told herself this particular part over and over again—repeating it like a mantra until she truly believes that there is nothing more she could have done to get those womenout of there. She trails off for a moment, but it doesn’t take her long to gather herself, shifting back into the story.

"And I ran away," she finishes up. "That’s the night you saw me, the night I left, the night I promised myself I would never go back. I shopped around a few of the people I knew to be his enemies, and I encountered Max’s father, and..."

She shrugged.

"Rest is history."

"And you’re working to bring him down?" I whisper, barely able to get the words out of my mouth. It seems so impossible, even acknowledging that I am standing in a room with people who are so willing to work against my father—the same one who was going to marry me off to Mario as soon as he got the chance.

"That’s why we took you," Max mutters, as he finally steps in. "Needed a bargaining chip. We were going to distract him long enough to hit his major centers and free as many women as we could, and take out some of his men to boot."

I stare at him for a moment. I can still remember the day we met, when he wrapped his arms around me and carried me out of that corridor, forcing me to climb out of the window to his waiting car before bundling me in the back seat and speeding off into the distance with me. It seems insane to me now, to think that I would ever have seen it as a good thing, but I did now. If I’d known that his plans were to end my father’s business, maybe even his life, that would have been a whole different story.

"Why are you telling me this?” I manage, finally. I don’t know why he would spill something like this to me. I don’t get why he would willingly lay his family’s secret plans on the line in such a fashion. Doesn’t he know that I could just go back to my father,and tell him all of this, warn him before they can do anything and bring all the things they’re accusing him of to an end...?

"Because I know you’re starting to see him for what he is," Max replies evenly. "And when you do, I want you to understand everything about where we’re coming from. And how powerful an ally you would be to us."

I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head. I can’t stand any of this, I can’t stand hearing it. I feel as though I am going crazy, my mind pulling apart at the seams as I try to wrap my head around it. The way that his eyes feel, burning into mine, I know that he is serious. This isn’t a game for him—this isn’t some kind of play—he really wants me on their side.

But do I just switch that easily? Do I have such little loyalty to my father that I would allow myself to be twisted without any protest, without any data to support these claims? They could have found out about that night and strung something together to convince me—he had seen my scar, after all, so maybe he had put the pieces together and dug out Veronica to force me to believe him.

"I... I need some time to myself," I protest, my voice still shaking hard.

Max catches my arm, but I pull it free swiftly. I don’t want to have to do this with him right now, I don’t want to have to think about where this leaves me. Because everything that Veronica is telling me is making a whole lot of sense. I am starting to wonder if all the stories I have heard about my father...

If they are only just scratching the surface.

I rush back to my room voluntarily, pulling the door shut behind me and drawing in a long gasp of air. I sink down to the ground,head in my hands, as the reality of it sinks in. The gunshots in the forest, the woman in the living room, the revelations about my father—I don’t know how much longer I can keep blocking out the truth.

Or what is waiting for me on the other side if I don’t.

17

Cara

I’m not sure what time it is when I hear a knock on my door. It’s dark out, and has been for a while—a few hours, at least. I’ve barely been aware of the time passing, too caught up in my thoughts to really give a damn.

I haven’t been able to stop going over what Veronica told me when I saw her sitting there—the story she spun to me, and how much it makes sense with everything I know about my father, about the kind of man he is. I might have wanted to believe, to tell myself that he’s not all that bad, but everything he is, everything he has done, it all adds up to the image of a man who would be capable of doing the things that Max and his family are accusing him of.

What Veronica told me chilled me to the bone, and I know that it’s barely even scratching the surface. I don’t want to know how young she was when she was pulled into that, nor how long she spent in that hellish place. I want to just lift all those memories from her mind and cast them somewhere far away where they can’t hurt her or anyone else.

But if it worked that easily, none of this would be happening.

"Come in," I call out to whoever is on the other side of the door, though I already have the feeling I know who it will be.

Sure enough, Max steps in, haloed by the warm light in the corridor outside. He looks me up and down, concern written all over his face.

"Are you okay?"

"What do you think?"

He smirks slightly. I guess he can tell that it’s a redundant question, given what is going on.

"Okay, my bad," he concedes. "How are you feeling?”

"I don’t know," I confess, finally.

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