I shake my head, tears spilling faster, because I don’t know if he means Roberto or the memories, and I’m terrified it’s both. He shifts closer, still on his knees, and his thumb brushes tenderly across the back of my hand. "Look at me," he murmurs.
It takes everything I have to lift my gaze.
His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them, but there’s no anger there, not for me. Only a kind of aching determination that scares me in a different way. Because if he means it—if he really will do anything—then what will be left of him when it’s done?
The next day…
The next morning, she still moves through the house like smoke, thin, untouchable, impossible to hold on to.
I watch her at breakfast, eyes down, eating like it’s a chore she’s forcing herself to get through. She answers me when I speak, but it’s always clipped and distracted, like half her mind is still trapped somewhere I can’t follow.
I hate it.
I hate seeing her like this, wrapped in that haze. I hate that I don’t know how to pull her out of it without breaking something fragile in the process. I talked to Lexy about it yesterday; she's been with me long enough that I trust her word. She used to work for MI5, specifically their trafficking unit. She saved abused kids and teenagers for a living. Now she runs a shelter when she’snot working for me. She knows this kind of damage, knows what it looks like, what it takes to heal.
She told me it will take time; for some victims, it takes years.
Fuck that. I don’t like it. Not at all. I’m willing to give Sophia all the time in the world if that’s what it takes, but hasn’t she suffered enough?
Lexy just shrugged and said,Sorry, there’s no crash course.
We’ll see about that.
Because I don’t want Sophia to hurt one more second.
Lexy mentioned a therapist she knows who specializes in intimate-partner violence. I offered the woman two million dollars to come stay at the house and take care of Sophia for as long as necessary. Gray picked her up early this morning, blindfolded her, and brought her to our place.
I was there to greet her when they arrived.
"This is highly unusual," Esther Bonnet said.
"Lexy vouched for you. Said you'll be discreet," I verified.
"Everything I do is confidential, even the… not so savory information." She inclined her head.
The woman was in her fifties; her eyes said she'd seen and heard a lot of ugly stuff, but there was a kindness to her that wrapped around even me like a mantle. And I don't get wrapped, ever.
"Good," I showed her to her suite, located on the east side of the house. It has its own entrance, kitchen, washer and dryer, and office, whatever she needs. Also, there’s a guard to ensure that she won't leave the premises, and a laptop provided for her that is hooked up to my surveillance team, just in case she has any funny ideas.
"Where is my patient?"
"I'll bring her by in a little bit; make yourself comfortable." I excused myself, wanting to get coffee going before Sophia got up.
Now I watch Sophia over the rim of my mug, mentally mapping out my day. In a little while, I'll go visit with Roberto some more. He's slowly learning what it means to be at the mercy of someone else. I go by for a few hours each day, just enough to make him wish I’d kill him quickly. I make him tell me every detail of what he’s ever done to her—every slap, every bruise, every twisted thing—and then I pay him back in spades. But even that satisfaction is poisoned. Hearing it makes me sick.
After the plates are cleared, I ask if she’d like to go for a walk. She blinks at me, like she’s not sure if it’s a suggestion or an order, but when I grab my jacket and step toward the back door, she follows. I watch her move right past the rack of jackets and sigh. I grab one and put it on her, like I would with a child.
The air outside is crisp, the kind that wakes you up whether you want it to or not. The yard stretches behind the house, and dew still clings to the grass. The forestbeyond stands tall and shadowed, its canopy breaking the morning light into gold and green shards.
We step under the trees, and for the first time in days, I see something shift in her. Her shoulders loosen. Her eyes lift from the ground. She breathes deeper, slower.
By the time we’ve gone a few hundred yards in, she’s touching the rough bark of an oak with her fingertips, looking up through the branches like she’s taking in something she forgot existed.
It’s not much, but it’s more than I’ve seen from her since I brought her here.
And I’ll take it.
I slow my pace so she can walk ahead of me, letting her set the route and the speed. When she glances back, there’s the faintest ghost of color in her cheeks.
