Page 63 of Beg Me Angel

How could he have been so good, but so evil at the same time?

It didn't make sense, none of it added up to give me the answers I was looking for. I knew it might be hard to hear the truth, to feel the burden of my lost memories, but I never expected it to be this.

Am I really that gullible?

All I could think about was how he refused to take me to call my mom and how he didn't get me help after he found me. He had told me that he was protecting me from himself. . .

Could he really be the one who did this?

There was a feeling of embarrassment that started to erode my muscles, forcing me to slink down in my chair. I felt stupid and crazy for trusting him, for allowing him to infiltrate my brain the way he had.

You didn't just let him in emotionally. . .

You gave yourself to him.

My stomach churned at the idea of giving myself to the man who they said had shattered my world and taken my life from me. He had twisted the truth, altered my brain and mind-fucked me from day one.

I already wasn't the same person I had been; now. . . Now I didn't know how the fuck I was going to crawl out of the pit that had swallowed me whole.

I had actually trusted him, I had let him touch me, tend to me, and I had given myself to him in the most personal way.

“Does she remember the whole night?” I asked, balling the tissue in my hands, then plucking it back open only to ball it up again.

My fingers were shaking, my muscles surging with a hatred I hadn't felt before. I hated knowing, I hated having forced images in my brain of what it might have looked like when he stole me away.

“She remembers quite a bit, it took her some time to put it all together, but she never forgot their faces. We're thinking you must have been given a larger dose, one that really rattled your brain.”

Staring at the table, I let out a weak laugh.“You think?”Rolling the ends of the tissue into small tornado-shaped funnels, I asked, “And how can you know for sure it was Pax? I mean, couldn't she be wrong?”

I wanted so badly for all of this to be a mistake. Was I in denial?

Probably, but all of it was too much. The answers weren't the ones I expected, they went far beyond the possibilities my mind had conjured up.

Flipping a page in his notebook, he ran the pen down over his notes, stopping at a line I couldn't read from where I sat. “The description she gave us when her memory came back matched him perfectly. Tall, shaved head, tattoos. . .” Inhaling a deep breath, he pinched the ends of his pen and spun it between his fingers. “It's not just that, we have more too, Vera, we have video.”

“What do you mean you have video? Video of what?”

“One of the stores in town, it has surveillance video that supports her statement.”

Shaking my head, my jaw hung open. “Are you saying you have video of him taking me?”

Leaning over the table, the detective tilted his head. “Let me ask you this—if he had found you like he said and if he knew we were looking for you, why didn't he call us?”

What the fuck does that mean?

Either they had video that showed he took me or they didn't. How could there be an in between?

What did it show? Did it show him with me and it's just another memory I forgot?

I had to know, I had to see it for it to be real. The detective just telling me there was some form of video did nothing, it didn't prove shit to me.

“Show me.”

Smiling through thin lips, his eyes sparkled with a satisfaction that made me sick. “Soon, Vera, soon. Let's get your memory back first, then we can help you close the gaps.”

Why won't anyone just tell me what the hell happened?

The doctors at the hospital were so adamant about no one saying a damn word. They did a physical exam, they poked and prodded me until I had no more blood left to give and in the end, they said I was going to be okay.

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