She anxiously eyed the top of the stairs, rolling her lips inward as she seemed to mull over indecision before canting softly with her head and agreeing to follow.
“So, will you finally tell me the names of the men who did this to you?”
She sighed as we reached the second-floor landing. “I would, but I don’t know. She’s refusing to talk. All I know is they’re from the Belov clan. You may not know who—”
“Of course, I know exactly who they are. They werementioned in James’s document, were they not?” She nodded. “Is that the reason you didn’t call the cops?”
“Maybe,” she whispered, averting her eyes, seemingly withholding something.
We stopped in front of my bedroom door, a slight thrill running through me at the thought of her in my space. Visions of bound wrists and ankles and her limber body bent over the foot of my bed had the seam of my zipper biting into my cock. I stifled a groan and pushed open the bedroom door, motioning for her to enter first. She took tentative steps forward until reaching the middle of the room and turned to face me.
“This is… nice. Immaculate.”
A smirk pulled at the edges of my mouth. “For a single man, you mean?”
“Maybe.”
The slightest hint of a smile lit up her eyes. That was the second time she’d hit me with that response.
“Come on,” I said, letting her insolence slide.
Once we reached the ensuite, I pulled open a cabinet for some ointment, a towel, and gauze. Evangelina slid off her jacket and hung it on a hook before leaning against the sink. The smooth skin on her upper arm had what looked to be reddened fingerprint marks, and I suppressed the familiar waves of anger flaring in my chest because something else caught my eye. Hooking her elbow, I pulled her close, eying a small white device that adhered to the back of her arm.
“What is this?”
“It’s a Dexcom. It measures my glucose levels,” she said, turning in my arms. I towered over her, and she had to crane her neck to meet my eyes at such a close distance. “I’m type 1.”
My thumb brushed her skin beneath the small device.
Evangelina had a chronic illness, and I suddenly felt oddly helpless, an emotion I hadn’t experienced since I was a child. What was more disconcerting was that there wasn’t anyone I could coerce, hurt, or kill to make her better. That thought process was unnerving, but I shoved it down into the dark place where all my errant musings and human sentiments went to die.
“How long?”
“How long since I’ve been a diabetic?” I nodded. “Since I was twelve.” She took a step back and leaned her body against the sink again. “Crushed my Olympic dreams and my little preteen heart.”
“Are you okay?” The question spilled out before I had a chance to stop myself.
She offered me a half-hearted smile. “Yeah, I am. It’s been eighteen years. Pain in the ass, sure. But I can’t even remember my life before my diagnosis.”
I said nothing else and prepared to clean her wound, fully aware she could do it herself. But the need to touch her was a beast with a mind of its own.
Dabbing at her lip with the damp cloth, I lifted her chin, my gaze never wavering from hers. The longer we stared in silence, the more I thought about what she’d just revealed. And the more unnerved I became. I hated the way she made me feel. I hated that I felt anything at all.
“Why did you come here?”
Not expecting the harshness in my tone, she reared back and stammered.
“I told you… I-I didn’t know who else—”
“No,” I said, voice tight. “Why did youreallycome here? To me? You don’t know me. You bring this girl to my doorstep and expect me to just take her in?”
Anger radiated from her pulsing brown eyes. With her lips in a tight line, she wrapped a hand around my wrist and pushed it away from her face. “You know what, you’re right. I should have never come here.”
It was hard to decipher whether she’d meant now or at all, though I felt it was the latter.
Pity.
As if she would have had a choice.
