Page 45 of Stolen Vows

My father smirks.

"You might live to regret that?—"

Max lifts his gun again, aiming it directly at my father’s head.

"Or, we might not," he growls. My father lifts his hands. It's clear that he is starting to understand just how serious Max is about this. Veronica jerks her head towards the car.

"Get in, and fucking drive," she commands him. "Out of the city. Out of here. I don’t want to see you again as long as I live. You show your face around here again, and you’re dead, you hear me?”

I can tell he’s furious. In fact, I don’t think I have seen him so full of rage since the night that I saw Veronica fleeing from our house, the night all of this kicked off. The scar on my leg throbs, though I know it has no reason to. It’s years old now, but there is still a part of me that aches, knowing I could have done more.

He slams the car into reverse and takes off down the road. I watch as he vanishes into the distance, my hands clenched into fists at my sides, my heart thudding against my chest. All things having gone to plan, his men will already be gone—killed or driven back to the city, given a chance to get out of this before it really blows up. All that’s left now is to break the women he has been holding out of their cells in the brothels he has been selling them from, and all of this will be over.

As soon as he is out of sight, something gives way inside of me, something so heavy, so powerful, it feels like it might have been the only thing propping me up. With a gasp, my knees buckle out from underneath me, and Max wraps his arms around me, catching me just before I hit the ground.

My ears are ringing, but somewhere at the back of my mind, I am distantly aware of the way he is talking to me.

His comforting voice, his hand on the small of my back, his touch trying to bring me back down to earth as he tells me over and over again?—

"It’s done. It’s over. You’re safe, Cara."

20

Cara

I gaze up at the apartment block in front of me, my eyebrows raised.

"This is where you live?”

"Where we’ll both be living, for the foreseeable future," he reminds me as he slips an arm around my waist. "You think you can handle that?”

"Uh, I think so," I laugh. "This place is amazing!”

"You haven’t even seen inside yet. Come on..."

He leads me through the doors of the building, and I glance around, trying to drink this place in. My new home. It’s still a lot for me to make sense of, but I know it’s where I belong. It’s so far removed from everything that I’ve known before, it’s hard not to feel like this is the new start I have been waiting for all this time.

The apartment building is modern, all glass and polished metal. As we step into the elevator, the glass walls give me a view of the city below, and I draw in a sharp breath.

"Oh, I’m going to have to get used to this," I mutter, as I grab the railing to steady myself.

"Scary?”

"A little," I admit. "But in a good way, I think."

I mean it. I have spent so much of my life living in that stuffy mansion that my father called home. It wasn’t until I got out that I really started to see the kind of home it was. More a prison than anything else, at least for me. He might have thought it the height of luxury, but what does luxury even mean if you can’t walk out of those front doors any time you want?

I cast my gaze towards the mansion. I can’t see it from here, it’s too far out of the city for that, but it still feels too close. A shiver runs down my spine, and I wonder if he has already fled back there, plotting some evil revenge against Max and his family for dragging me away from him.

"What’s going to happen to the mansion?" I ask quietly. "I mean, where I used to live. He could just go back there."

"We’ve got men staking it out right now," Max assures me, as he wraps his arms around me from behind, resting his head on my shoulder. "If he tries anything, we’ll drive him straight back out."

"And what are you going to do with it? Burn it to the ground or something?”

"Something like that," he replies as the doors slide open.

The apartment that waits for me on the other side is just as beautiful and bright as the elevator. I step out, glancing out, and make my way over to the large bay windows that look down over the city.

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