His fingers tightened around her thigh, causing hers to clench around his hand. “Is her favorite color still yellow?”
The question caused something to shift in her eyes, and a smile to lift the corners of her lips. “Yeah…”
His eyes fell for a moment, his heart skipping a beat.
“How did you know that?” Mia asked.
He took a deep breath. “My wife told me.”
Her smiled wavered. “Emma’s mother?”
He nodded.
“Oh. So you…” She shifted, her face growing sullen, crossing her arms while looking down into her lap where his hand still covered her thigh. “You’re still married.”
Linc heard the accusation in her voice. An accusation that could only lace the voice of a woman who’d just had a married man’s head between her legs.
She spoke again before he could reply, her voice a little shakier. “Emma has a photo of her too. Keeps it in the book right next to yours.” Even as she tried to fight it, her teeth clenched. “What’s her name?”
“Lisa.”
“She reminded me of that actress, Meagan Fox. God, she’s…” She tightened her crossed arms and shrugged. “She’s really beautiful.”
“She’s dead.”
Mia jolted, her eyes going wide.
“Almost a year now,” he added.
“I’m so sorry.” She uncrossed her arms, using one hand to cover her heart and the other to cover his hand on her thigh. Her eyes dashed back and forth as her mind went a mile a minute, and then they fell closed. “Oh God, Emma. Oh God, it’s going to break her heart.”
He licked his lips. “Guess I’m gonna have to find some way to explain to her why I let her mother die.”
“You can’t possibly blame yourself.”
“Believe me. I can.”
“How?”
He searched her eyes for a long moment as if deciding whether or not to continue. “Because she told me.”
Mia frowned.
He spoke to the confusion spreading across her face. “She told me a sting wouldn’t work. That if she went against her pimp, they’d kill Emma as retaliation. She told me. She begged. But I made her—” This time, it was his own eyes that filled. He looked away in an attempt to hide it from her, voice breaking. “I made her do it anyway.”
Mia’s mouth fell open, sputtering, unable to form a coherent sentence.
“Five years, she was missing…” He shook his head, craning his jaw back and forth. “And when I finally found her, I didn’t fuckin’ listen.” His eyes went to a faraway place.
Mia’s breathing picked up as she considered what he’d told her, making as much sense of it as she could with what little information he’d just given. “So you were a cop.”
Her voice snapped him out of the world he’d been sinking into, and he leaned an elbow on the table, massaging the insides of his eyes before cutting a look at her, letting his hand fall on the table. “Yeah…”
“Your wife went missing, but you found her, and then you set up a sting to catch the bastard who trafficked her—”
“And then she went rogue so it wouldn’t look like she’d betrayed her pimp. Killed my partner and pointed a gun at a rookie, who killed her on the spot. Took her last breath in my arms. She did it to protect our daughter. The same way I should’ve protected her.”
“Jesus, you can’t blame yourself for that.”
“No?”
Mia tightened her hold on his hand, appearing to realize it was no use. Attempting to absolve him from guilt. “Is that how you found Emma? Lisa told you where she was?”
“She told me Emma was in London.” He leaned back in his chair with a shrug. “And after ten long months of infiltrating whore-houses, I never utilized, questioning hookers I never fucked, threatening madams I wanted to kill, and befriending undercover operatives who were just as fuckin' angry as I was—willing to help me however they could… I found her, on the top floor of the fuckin’ mayor’s multi-million dollar mansion in central London. And for two more months, I had to sit in the foreclosed house across the street with a pair of binoculars, waiting with bated breath, every night, for a flash of curly blonde hair to blaze by the window on the top floor.”
She drew in a deep breath.
He looked at her, his chest swelling too. “Same time, every night.”
“She—” Mia cleared her throat when her voice broke, fighting a smile. “She found a laundry chute behind her dresser drawers, covered over with a thick layer of concrete. She’s been chipping away at it with a piece of brick she unhinged from the wall. That’s probably why you see a flash of her hair the same time every night. She probably only gets a chance to work on it when the guards who stand outside her bedroom door do a shift change, leaving it unmanned for a few minutes.”
Linc couldn’t help a small smile. “She’s a fighter, huh?”
“She’s so strong. So smart. So much more than me.” Mia covered the hand he still had on her thigh with both of hers this time, encasing it in warmth. “Tell me your real name.”
He held her eyes, knowing he shouldn’t trust her. She’d given him every reason not to, but still, he answered, “Linc.”
She smiled softly, apparently finding “Linc” and lot more believable than “Harold”. Harold, the name that had graced his phony passport, his phony social security card, and every piece of phony ID he’d carried with him for nearly a year.
“Short for Lincoln?” she asked.
He nodded.
She nodded too, nibbling her bottom lip.
His gaze fell to watch her do it.
“Mine’s Ashley.”
His eyes shot back up to hers, eyebrows jumping.
“Malik thinks I don’t remember that my real name is Ashley Kolinsky, but I do. I remember my real name. I remember my real home. I remember my parents. I remember it all.”
He moved his hand slowly up her thigh, feeling his nostrils flare as fury encased him. Trying to comfort her with his touch the same way hers was comforting him.
But she held herself together. “You know my parents are both black?” She chuckled. “But Malik makes me pretend I’m half Pakistani to pacify his Indian base. I’ve always looked half Asian, anyway, so no one ever batted an eye. My mother always used to tell me that my great-great grandmother was full Indian, but I never saw proof of that. Not even a photograph, so…” She shrugged one shoulder, eyes falling.
Linc blinked softly. “You miss ‘em?”
Her eyes flew back up.
“Your parents?” he clarified.
“Every second,” she admitted, her voice gentle even as her face grew hard as stone. “Too bad the feeling was never mutual. After I went missing, they never bothered to go looking for little Ashley Kolinsky. They didn’t care that she was gone. They didn’t miss her one bit.”
“That’s a lie you were told so the bastard who had you could further control you.”
“Oh, yeah? What makes you so sure?”
“Because when I was a cop, I worked in the Special Victims Unit, and believe me, Mia…” He paused, wondering if she still wanted him to call her “Mia”, or “Ashley”. “They lied to you. I can guarantee that your parents not only miss you but have made themselves sick trying to find you. Sicker everyday that they can’t hold you. Hug you. Kiss you. I can guarantee that every day you’re gone is a day they die a little more inside. Don’t believe the lies. Believe the man who lived it every single day that his wife was gone from his life. Every single day he lives in regret of not doing everything differently the day she went missing. Every single day that he can’t hug his own daughter.”
Her eyes fell once more, lips pulling tight in a dubious pout. She gave another shrug.
Linc nearly screamed but knew it wouldn’t change anything. She’d spent too many years hearing the lies. The lies that no one cared enough to go looking for her. That no one cared about her at all. She believed it down to her very soul. A deep-seated emotional abuse that would be hard to eras
e.
“You should probably…” Her eyes remained lowered, lashes soaked with tears. “You should probably call to set up the trade, right?” Slowly, she lifted her eyes to his.
He shook his head. “Not tonight.”
She shook hers too, voice shattered. “I won’t fight you anymore. Now that I know… now that I know why you really took me, I won’t fight. I’ll go back to Malik if it means you get Emma back. That Emma gets you back. I can handle Malik… but Emma… she’s still a baby. She still has a chance to see the beauty in the world. She still believes there’s beauty in the world. But she won’t believe it for much longer. You have to get to her now.”
Linc took in the shattered look in her eyes, clenched her thigh and then took one of her hands in his. He stood without responding and pulled her up with him, his half-bandaged neck forgotten. As thunder rolled and lightning stuck, they moved toward the bed together, hand in hand. Once they were at the edge of the queen-sized bed, Linc motioned for her to climb in first, waiting until she’d laid down on her back to climb in after her where he laid on his back as well.
They stared at the ceiling in silence with their hands clasped over their stomachs, eyes following the blades of the ceiling fan that spun overhead.
“Tomorrow,” Linc said, turned his head on the pillow, meeting her eyes just as she turned her head too. “The city will be flooded by morning, anyway. Malik wouldn’t be able to get to us even if he wanted to. And I want him to sweat.” He reached up and ran his knuckles softly down her face, watching her eyes fall softly shut against his touch. “I want him to feel it down to his bones… the agony of knowing he’s lost an amazing woman like you.”
Her brown orbs blinked open, and they held each other’s eyes for a long while. Studying each other’s faces until their eyelids grew heavy, eyelashes fluttering softly, lulled by the tranquil pattering of the rainstorm raging beyond the open window. Mia was the first to submit, her eyes falling closed under the soft strokes of his knuckles. Linc waited until her eyes had been closed for several minutes—until the rise and fall of her chest grew deep and slow—before he let his eyes fall closed too.
They sank into a dream world together, momentarily freed from the darkness of the real one, their bandaged wounds still pulsing but a little less painful than they had been when they’d started.
25
The dull yellow light glowing overhead made Emma’s curls seem even more golden. It made her eyes even greener as they expanded to twice their size in response to the sight before her. It made her already milky skin lose even more color until her cheeks were ashen white. Her chin and lips took on a tremor as her wide eyes flew back and forth between the two steel cages in the dark basement of the palatial Ali estate. In one cage was a naked man who shook almost as badly as she did, his teeth chattering in time with hers. In the other, a python, slowly slithering through the small door that separated the two cages. A door that one of Malik’s goons had just opened up, seconds earlier.
The naked man leaped when the twenty-foot naked snake called Princess slid her massive body into his cage and slowly lifted her head and recoiled back, causing her body to morph into several S shapes.
When the snake struck, both Emma and the man gave a primal scream. Emma looked away from the sight, her heavy gasps swelling her chest and flaring her nostrils.
“No!” Malik’s harsh, whispered voice came in from where he was crouched behind her, followed by his hand, which he used to seize her jaw under a grip so tight it made sinkholes in her cheeks, forcing her tear-filled eyes back toward the cages. “Look.”
The tears in her eyes made her vision blurry, but Emma could still see that the man had escaped the snake’s first strike and was now scurrying all over the cage in fear, which only seemed to agitate Princess even more, her head still reared back, preparing for strike number two.
“See, that man in there?” Malik’s whispered voice warmed her ear once more. “He’s a bloody rat. Do you know what a rat is, Emma?”
The first tear jetted down her cheek and soaked into his palm where he still clutched her jaw. Still gasping, her every breath ragged with a lump blocking her throat, all Emma could do was nod.
“Well, just like a real rat, a human rat is one of the most contemptible living creatures on the face of the Earth. The type of creature who’ll do anything to survive. Even if it means betraying their friends and the people they love.”
Princess struck again, sinking her razor sharp teeth into the man’s neck and bringing him to his knees.
Another tear jetted from Emma’s wide eyes as the man screamed for his life.
“Are you a rat, Emma?” Malik asked.
She shook her head rapidly as the man’s screams moved to wails, his broken voice begging for mercy as Princess bit in deep, causing his body to convulse as she wrapped herself slowly around his writhing form until every inch of her body had encased his.
And then, she clenched.
Emma gasped at the sound of his bones breaking under the squeeze.
In turn, Malik squeezed her cheeks harder. “Do you love me?”
Emma hesitated, her gleaming eyes now almost entranced as she watched the man wheezing for air, as Princess’s scales pulsed down her body, stealing every inch of life from him. Even as a cold chill raced down Emma’s spine, making the hairs on her neck stand tall, she nodded.
“Say the words,” Malik said.
“I love you, Papa,” she wheezed, her voice almost as weak as the man’s as he managed one last, croaking plea for his life.
Then, his eyes fell closed, and Princess opened her mouth wide over his head, engulfing him in seconds.
Emma cringed, her rapidly beating heart nearly exploding from her chest as Princess glided over her dinner. Emma held her breath, her stomach going rock hard.
When Malik released her cheeks, took her shoulders and turned her body to face him, Emma’s gaze was still locked to the cage. Too shocked now to tear her eyes away.
Malik took hold of her jaw once more and made her look at him.
“I love you too, my darling,” he said, brushing her fallen tears away before tucking her curls behind her ears. “I’d hate to discover you really are a rat when your birthday is coming so soon. All the gifts and surprises I had planned… ruined. Do you want that?”
Emma shook her head.
He smiled, moving his hands to her waist. “Is Mia the one who gave you the book I found under your pillow?”
Emma searched his eyes, pressing her lips together.
“I know she did, but I admire that you’re not willing to tattle on her. That proves you really are loyal. I understand she’s your friend and you don’t want to see her get in trouble.” He squeezed her waist. “Did your mother give you those pictures? The pictures hidden in the books?”
Emma nodded. “Yes, Papa.”
“Did she give them to you before you and I met?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss her?”
Tears filled her eyes again. “Yes.”
Malik shushed her when the emotion in her eyes spilled down her cheeks once more, wiping them away as they jetted down her face, one after the other.
Her voice came, soft, but still laced with the same pain that watered her eyes. “When can I see my mommy again?”
He gave a tight smile, still wiping away tears and brushing blonde curls away from her sweat-dotted face. “Your mommy’s dead.”
Emma’s mouth fell open but no words came, just raspy, unintelligible squawks, her face curling as emotion overtook her.
Malik nodded. “Your mommy is dead and so is your daddy.”
A sob left her trembling lips.
“I’m all you have now.” He rubbed her back and pulled her in, letting her bury her tear-stained face into his shoulder, her cries warming the crook of his neck. “Before they died, I promised them that I’d always love you and take care of you. And I meant it, alright?”
When she didn’t respond, he pulle
d back, met her shattered green eyes, and smiled again. He kissed both her reddened cheeks, tasting her tears, reveling in their saltiness, his eyes shining even as hers overflowed.
——
He would never kiss her again. Of that much, Mia was sure. She couldn’t even blame him for it. If it had been her that had gotten a nail to the neck, seconds after giving him a blowjob, she would never bother kissing him again, either. If anything, she’d make a silent vow to hate him for the rest of her life. Add in the idea of him neglecting to return the sexual favor she’d just delivered—quite eagerly in fact—with her mouth, and she might just have to kill him! She looked across the small wooden dining table, where Linc sat in nothing but a towel. He leaned forward on the table with the phone they’d tussled over the night before in his hand, frowning at the screen.
She frowned at him.
Did he hate her guts?
Could she even blame him if he did?
Sure, they’d woken up that morning hand-in-hand in bed, but that didn’t mean anything. It was human nature to crave to touch of other humans, after all. The fact that their hands had found each other in the deepest depths of sleep when neither of them had any control over it, didn’t matter. What mattered were the choices he’d made once they were fully conscious. And, in his consciousness, Linc had yet to touch her. He’d barely even looked at her. Not after they’d both showered, leaving only white terry-cloth towels donning their bodies—Linc’s tied around his waist and hers at her breasts. Not even the thought of her naked underneath that towel seemed to erase the memory of the nail she’d put in his neck.
She wondered if anything would. If she’d ever know the feeling of that beard—still slightly damp from his shower—tickling her upper lip. Of his long mane, also still damp and stretching past his collarbones, tangled in her fingers. As her stomach raged with butterflies at the memory of his tongue, lashing with hers during their first kiss, she nearly cursed herself for screwing up so badly. So badly that not even the breakfast she’d cooked for him after waking up a few hours earlier had gotten her back on his good side. A breakfast that he’d destroyed, leaving both their plates empty on the table after he’d finished his plate and hers.
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