by Penny Dee
I shake him free.
“Don’t you touch me.” My voice is cold. Sharp. Unmistakably demanding. “You need to leave.”
“Leave?” His face darkens. Everything is unraveling for him. He scrambles to put all the pieces back together again. “You’re kidding me, right? We can work this out.”
“You’re delusional if you think for one second that any of this is forgivable.” I couldn’t believe his nerve. “Now get out.”
And just like that, his crown of niceties slips right off his head and shatters to smithereens. “You’re not ending this.”
“Are you deaf? I just did.” I walk to the dressing room and begin packing clothes into my suitcase while he stands there watching me with a dumb look on his face. His mind is racing. His mood darkening with every second that passes as he realizes the situation is unsalvageable.
When I walk back into the room with my suitcase, Vince looks at it in disgust.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Back to where I belong.”
“You’re going back to him?” He spits. “That hillbilly who lives like a hermit on this goddamn mountain?”
I hurl around to look at him. “I had more with him than I ever had with you.”
Vince storms across the room.
“You’re not leaving me, you ungrateful bitch.” He yanks me by the arm. “I’ve invested too much time in you and this arrangement.”
I wrench myself free. “Arrangement? Of course, that’s all I ever was to you.”
His face darkens, his eyes gleaming with wickedness.
“Did he fuck you? Is that what it is? Did he stick his cock in you and make you call his name?” He grabs me hard. “Did he make you come? Did he thaw that cold pussy of yours? Or was it only cold because you didn’t want to fuck me?”
He doesn’t wait for a response and throws me onto the bed.
Ripping his belt from his pants, he unzips them and climbs on top of me. I fight him. But he overpowers me.
“Get off me,” I scream.
But he ignores me.
“You wrap those long legs around him and let him fuck that tight little pussy of yours. Well, bad news, baby. I’m going to fuck him out of you. Do you hear me? And then you will never mention him again.”
He rips open my shirt, popping the buttons, his eyes glittering over my breasts. I see his erection pressing against his slacks. This is turning him on.
“I told you to stop,” I yell, struggling beneath him.
“And I told you I’m going to fuck him out of you. Keep struggling. It’s only going to make it hotter.”
When I spit in his face, he slaps me hard across mine.
That’s when I hear the growl.
The ferocious roar.
Suddenly Vince is lifted off me and thrown across the room. Axel stalks toward him, lifts him off the floor and pins him to the wall by the throat. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right here, right now.”
Vince struggles against him, but is no match against Axel’s brute strength. He’s turning red and his cold eyes are bulging in his head. It looks like Axel is going to choke the life out of him, but thinks better of it and lets him go.
Vince falls to the floor, grabbing his throat and gasping for air. “You should know I am going to sue the fuck out of you for this,” he rasps.
I cross the room and pick the gun up off the dresser. Standing over him, I point it at him. “And you should know that I am going to kill you if you ever come near me ever again.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LAUREN
I shove the rest of my clothes and shoes into a suitcase.
“You’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” Vince seethes from across the room. He is still slumped against the wall, his face red, his arrogant mouth slack with disbelief.
I stop what I’m doing to look at him. I can hardly believe I let this man touch me, let alone talk me into marrying him. “That train left the station when I agreed to marry you, you spineless fuck.”
He sneers. Axel stands in front of him, waiting for him to make a move. His fingers twitch at his side. He is itching for Vince to give him an excuse to put his fist in his face.
I zip up my suitcase.
“I mean, who actually pays for his fiancée to be kidnapped and then held for ransom?” I ask, dumping my suitcase on the floor before walking over to him. I crouch down so we are eye level, and a smug smile curls at his lips. My gaze burns into his. “A weak nobody, that’s who.”
His smile vanishes. Replaced by a look of contempt.
“You think I can’t do without you, you fucking bitch?”
I feel Axel move behind me. Vince just gave him the invitation he’s been waiting for, but I put my hand out to stop him. I just scoff at my ex-fiancé and shake my head. He’s pathetic.
Rising to my feet, I look down at the piece of shit.
“Enjoy prison, you asshole.” I go to walk away but stop. “Oh, one more thing before I go…” With an almighty thrust, I kick my foot into his balls. “That’s for paying those men to kidnap me. Hope you make nice friends in jail, pretty boy.”
Without looking back, I leave Vince and my past life behind me in that overpriced hotel suite, my ex-fiancé’s cries of profanities slowly disappearing as we make our way through the lodge toward the front foyer.
Outside, I follow Axel to his Jeep where I kiss him like a woman quenching her thirst with his lips. Love and lust collide with relief inside of me.
Relief because he is alive.
And relief because I am with him.
But suddenly, in the absence of fear, I start to cry. “He said that you were dead.”
Axel’s big fingers gently sweep over cheeks to wipe them away.
“He sent two suits with guns to my cabin. I’m pretty sure they wish they hadn’t shown up. I’m guessing they’re on their way to the hospital right now. Via the sheriff’s office, of course. I dumped them outside on the way. One looked like he was coming to, but the other one was definitely down for the count.” His lips curl with amusement, but then it fades, and he looks at me with so much affection it’s almost too much for my heart to handle. “Nothing was going to stand in the way of me getting back to you, baby. And nothing ever will.”
It’s ridiculous, but I start to cry again.
“I’m so sorry I left—”
But he steals my apology with a kiss. A deep, luscious kiss I feel all the way from my head to my toes.
“I’m in love with you, Lauren. All I need to know is if you love me back.”
“Yes,” I moan against his lips. “I love you so, so much.”
His big hands cup my jaw as he sears a new kiss to my lips.
When he releases me, I’m breathless.
“How did you get past security?” I ask, noticing the security officers standing across the parking lot at the front entrance of the lodge.
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “The security in this place is incredibly flawed. It only takes someone with security experience to find the holes.”
“Someone like you.”
He nods. “Yes, someone exactly like me.”
I melt into him again. Grateful he’s here.
“They told me about Anastasia, about the ransom demand,” I murmur against his broad chest.
“I figured.”
“Is it true?”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be coming with me now.”
“No, I suppose you’re right.”
He gently lets me go and places two gentle fingers beneath my chin. “I’ve never laid a hand on a woman in my life, and I never will.”
“I know.”
Looking into his heavily lashed eyes, I can see what a good man he is. He is strong and righteous. And he’ll spend the rest of our lives protecting me and what we have together.
A hint of a smile tugs at his beautiful mouth. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
Home.
/> I like how that sounds.
Because wherever he is, I am home.
He loads my suitcase into the Jeep and we take off in the direction of his cabin. Ahead, the sky rumbles with swirling gray clouds. A storm is on the way. But it could rain and storm for a million years, and it still wouldn’t come close to dampening the happiness I feel in my heart as I turn my back on my old life, and run excitedly toward a new one.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
AXEL
Inside the cabin, I take her in my arms and kiss her.
There is so much I want to tell her.
We need to start with a clean slate, and that can only happen if she knows everything. Before she left, I had already decided to tell her about my past and who I am. Because I’m so crazy in love with her, and if we have any shot at making it, she needs to know the truth.
The ugly truth.
“What they say about me kidnapping Anastasia… it’s not true.”
“I know.” Lauren’s eyes are warm and filled with understanding. “Tell me about her. What really happened?”
“I was her bodyguard.” I draw in a shaky breath as I lay all my cards on the table. “And her lover.”
Lauren nods and I can see she is bracing herself.
“When I first started working for her, I was young and foolish. Not to mention, a bit starstruck. She was much older than me, worldlier … and for an ex-Marine who really hadn’t seen much of anything other than the wet canopy of Washington state and the desert of Afghanistan, her glittering world of celebrities and wealth was very bedazzling. And Anastasia, she was unlike any woman I had ever known. She was very beautiful and she knew it. Like I said, I was young. I wasn’t smart enough to see what was coming. Or strong enough to stop it from happening. She was hard to say no to, and by the time I started my affair with her, I was so taken with her I didn’t care that I was making the biggest mistake of my career. Of my life. I didn’t love her. I mean, I tried to, but Anastasia was very hot and cold. Very demanding. And very, very jealous. Once, when she saw me talking to another woman at a gala she was hosting for the mayor, she threw a drink in the other woman’s face and slapped me hard across mine. It didn’t matter that I was advising the woman that someone had just sideswiped her Town Car outside. Anastasia had decided I was cheating on her and that was that.”
I shake my head at the memory. I could say that was the beginning of her mental decline, but it wasn’t. In my honest opinion, Anastasia had been spiraling way before I came along. I just wasn’t experienced enough to recognize it.
I look at the woman I have fallen crazy in love with and feel a surge of emotion move through me. I don’t want to hurt her. Knowing it would be hard for her to hear this, I take her hand. “Should I go on?”
Her fingers tangle with mine. “Yes. I want to know all of it. You don’t have to hide anything from me.”
I nod and try to find the right words.
“I broke it off with her. But she didn’t like it. She threatened to fire me. So I beat her to it. I quit and she went crazy. She started to show up everywhere I was and cause chaos. At my home, my gym, my new assignment. She would leave ten, twenty, thirty messages on my phone a day. And they would bounce between declarations of love, to violent declarations of war.”
I can still hear her outbursts. Her sobbing. Her angry, hateful words.
“Then it all abruptly stopped. And I thought it was done with. She was over it. But then she disappeared. It was all across the news. Shipping heiress kidnapped! Socialite missing!”
When I first saw the news broadcasts, my heart had ached for her. I knew her deepest fear was being taken and held for ransom. And I had told her that if anything like that ever happened to her, I wouldn’t quit until I found her.
“The next thing I knew, the cops were banging down my door and I was arrested in suspicion of her abduction.”
Lauren presses her hand over her mouth. “They arrested you?”
“Everything pointed to me. She had kept texts. Photos. Ones I didn’t even know she had. Same with the CCTV footage of us together in her apartment. It was all proof that I was more than her bodyguard. But they were all out of context. She had deleted messages that put things in perspective, and kept ones that were damning.”
“She set you up?”
“She knew if I was a suspect, I would be taken off my new assignment until I was cleared of having any involvement in her disappearance. She knew it would motivate me to find her.”
“Did you find her?”
“She found me. Sent me a message telling me to meet her at her apartment. When I arrived, she was waiting for me, barely dressed and acting… strange. I knew something was wrong. She was full of frenetic energy. She told me we could disappear together. That she’d give it all up to be with me. But I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t want her to do any of that. I wanted her to be happy with a man who wanted to be in her world. A man who would love her. And that wasn’t me.”
“And you told her?”
“I did and she didn’t take it well.” For years, I’ve blocked out what happened next. But now, I can see it as clearly as if it happened only yesterday.
Anastasia disappearing into the bathroom and reappearing completely naked.
Her desperate cries as she frantically tries to kiss me.
Her attempts to get me to touch her.
Her sobbing when I tell her it’s over.
The final act of desperation as she plunges the knife into her neck.
“She killed herself and I couldn’t stop it.” An all-too-familiar pain snakes its way through me. “I tried to stop the bleeding. Tried to keep her alive. But by the time the police came, she was already dead.”
My remorse is a cold lump in my throat and I struggle to swallow. What I would give to go back and hide every goddamn knife in that house. And get Anastasia the help she desperately needed.
Lauren’s beautiful face is full of empathy. “Oh my God, that poor woman.”
I nod. Why hadn’t I seen it coming?
It’s a guilt I carry around with me every day.
It’s in every breath.
Every heartbeat.
Lauren takes my hand. “What happened next?”
I shake off the memory of her face disappearing as they zipped up the body bag.
“They arrested me,” I say calmly, although my insides are tight and aching. “They said it was a ransom kidnapping gone wrong … some crazy bullshit like that. I had a great defense team, but her family was angry. Even if I didn’t kill her, they still blamed me for her death, and they were determined to make me pay for it however they could. The trial was biased. The family name had influence, and the fact that I’d broken code and had an affair with my client painted me in a very poor light in the court of public opinion. I was found guilty and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Anastasia Crawford.”
Lauren gasps. “Oh, Axel…”
“My defense team immediately appealed. But it was going to take a lot to overturn. I even remember my attorney pointing to a stranger walking past and saying, ‘He has more chance of winning the lottery than you do in overturning this conviction.’”
The feeling of hopelessness I’d felt then was still as raw today.
“What happened next?”
“I was being transferred to a prison just outside Jacksonville, Florida, when a deer ran out in front of the bus, and we veered off the road and down an embankment into a pond. There were seven of us onboard. The driver and three other prisoners were killed in the crash. Two others and I survived and escaped. One got caught, one got killed on some train tracks. But me, somehow, I got out of there and I ran. I ran because I knew I would never win that appeal, and I didn’t want to die for a crime I never committed. I saw my chance and I took it.”
Some days I wonder if that makes me a coward.
Other days, when I’m freeing a deer from a snare trap or tending to an injured bird, I figure I am doing more good
on the outside than I ever would on the inside.
The way I see it, God gave me a second chance and I took it. And as long as I live well, then I’m respecting the opportunity to live my life as I should.
“I’ve been on the run for almost ten years,” I say and Lauren’s eyes widen.
“How have you managed to stay hidden all that time?”
“It’s easy to create a new identity if you know the right people. I was fortunate. I had a few trusted contacts. And after a few years of moving across the country, I found Mirror Lake and knew it was home.”
“And you’ve been here ever since.”
I nod. “Everybody on the mountain has a story. It’s a good place to live. No one asks questions and no one cares about your business. Anyway, as far as the world is concerned, Calder Christofferson was eaten by a gator after the prison bus he was traveling in crashed. They found parts of his prison-issued jumpsuit bloodied and ripped to shreds on the banks of that pond.”
I saw the report in a Florida newspaper a few days later.
The blood had come from a nasty gash to my shoulder where I’d been impaled on the metal handrail of a broken bus seat. There was a decent amount of blood, enough to suggest I had been eaten.
And a few years later, I saw a TV report about some remains they’d found in a lake near the crash site, and they were questioning if they were mine or not. It was weird to watch. But it was also proof that there were some real questions about whether or not I had survived. I stopped watching news bulletins after that, and never bothered with the Internet or newspapers since because I didn’t want to know about the world that had turned its back on me.
After leaving the crash site behind me, I’d hid out until nightfall in an abandoned house. Thankfully, I was able to steal clothing from a clothesline, and some basic medical supplies from a closed veterinary office to dress the wound to my shoulder. I spent three days in that old house before slipping into the shadows and disappearing from society forever.
Lauren squeezes my hand. “You’re innocent.”
I raise an eyebrow in her direction. “Turns out that’s subjective. If you ask Anastasia’s family, I’m sure they’d disagree with you.”