He’s one of them and he made me love him. I didn’t realize it until I had to hate him, but it’s true. I love him. He said he loved me, but I know it was a lie—and I know I have to kill him.
I start shaking so hard that I have to put my head down on my knees.
I know there are things I should be thinking about, things I should be doing, but I used up all my energy and focus calling Noah. I have nothing left. I can’t even think about the fact that he’s coming here. I just can’t.
Time must pass, but I lose track of it. I jolt at the sound of a knock and the distant glow of my motion-activated doorway light.
I use the kitchen island to pull myself to my feet. I walk through the dark converted warehouse to the door, realizing that the door has been open this whole time, ever since the Valenci men broke in. Noah knocked on the doorframe, and he’s standing outside it, waiting.
I halt at the sight of him. He’s wearing a brown canvas jacket and worn-out jeans. His brown hair is threaded with gray and so is his beard. His body language is carefully neutral, but I can see that he’s ready for anything I might do.
“Hello, Andre,” he says.
My chest starts heaving. I start shaking my head.
Noah closes his eyes for a second. “I just want to help you.”
Rafael said that too, about Noah, and I know it’s true. Noah has only ever wanted to help me. But that’s why I can’t handle being around him. Because he knows that I need help and heknows that I can’t be helped and, most of all, he knows what I look like while I’m being raped. He knows because he killed the man who was doing it.
But that was only one man and only one time. It wasn’t the first.
But Noah … he made it the last.
Noah is the one who saved me. He’s the one who saved all of us.
Fifteen years ago, Noah was an FBI agent. He was investigating the Society and he got too close. So they took his son.
I’m not sure how long it took Noah to find the Island. Long enough to destroy his career. Long enough that his son was dead by the time he got there.
But he saved the rest of us.
And I … I was tied to a bed when he and a team of mercenaries stormed the resort. It was Noah who broke into that room and shot the man who was fucking me. It was Noah who saw … too much.
And that’s why I can’t see him. Because when I do, that’s what I see. Myself, through his eyes.
And I can’t.
I fuckingcan’t.
He makes me into that boy again.
That’s why, when he would come see me in the group home where I got placed after returning to New York, I would just scream and scream until he left.
“Please,” Noah says, his voice breaking. “Let me help you, Andre.”
I need his help. I have two bodies in my apartment and I don’t have any choice. I don’t have anyone else to call.
Who would come to help me with this?
Only Noah.
It doesn’t matter that almost fifteen years have passed. It doesn’t matter that I said terrible things to him the last time I saw him.
He’s here. For me. He’s never written me off.
I don’t understand it, but I can’t deny it, so I say, “Okay. Yes,” and I turn aside to let him in.
But then I see who’s leaning against Noah’s truck.
