Though right at that moment, all my love had bought her was freedom from her cell in Fortorus, only to find herself in another one in Switzerland.I had no idea where they were holding her, but I hoped it was somewhere more inviting than the box I’d been tossed into.
Closing my eyes briefly, I considered my next words.“I know I have no right to ask, but is there any chance I can see her?Even if only for a few moments?”
“That is not possible.”She dismissed my request in an instant, dashing my recently elevated hopes.“But on the other matter, maybe there is room for negotiation.”
“What other matter?”
I couldn’t fathom a world where I didn’t get to see Caroline again.Sitting there, staring at the end of our love affair, the idea just didn’t seem possible.
“Your plea deal.”She smiled as she rose from her seat.“I shall speak to my superiors and have an answer for you soon.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Caroline
––––––––
ICOULDN’T STOP CRYING.I’d been sitting by the window, steaming up the glass and watching the rain fall ever since the unknown officer had left me in the impersonal room with only a tissue and an insipid cup of coffee for moral support.And in all that time, as the minutes crawled past on the clock ticking happily on the other side of the space, I hadn’t been able to prevent my tears from cascading down my face with grief.
Pulling in a shaky breath, I accepted that was what my emotion was.I was grieving.For Harper, for the love I bore him and for the relationship I’d thought we’d share.For the future I fucking deserved.After everything I’d been through, all the hardship and suffering I’d seen and endured, I warranted that happy ending, didn’t I?
“Well, don’t I?”I croaked the words into the pane, resting my temple against the cold glass as the pain washed over me again.
So much hurt, and for what?
Harper was gone.Nobody there would let me see him, and I was alone.
Not alone in the ominous Fortorus way, which meant locked up and waiting for a whipping, or alone and hiding from dangerous armed sentries.But alone in a different and somehow altogether more desolate way.Alone in the entire world—a woman cut free from every anchor she’d known.
I was finally emancipated, but what good was my liberation without the man I loved?
I’d always known that his arrest was a hypothetical possibility, but once we’d made it to Zurich and been to the bank, I’d put the idea out of my mind, the threat fading with every passing day.I hadn’t seen the day the police banged on our door coming, or foreseen Harper’s imminent incarceration, and my lack of preparedness made the reality all the harder.
Cuddling the gray blanket one of the police had given me around my shoulders, I imagined it was Harper’s arms around me and regretted the flimsy outfit I’d chosen in the five minutes they’d given me to dress.The truth was, I didn’t really own anything warm anymore.Hell, I didn’t technically ownanything, and in the time we’d had together, Harper had brought me the kind of attire we’d both thought would be playful and sexy while we hunkered down in Fabian’s house.
I snorted at the absurdity of that idea in the shadowy light of the cold police station.There would be nothing playful or sexy about my future anymore.I couldn’t even see anything to muster a smile about.
