The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror and I dipped my chin at him.
He didn’t need to be told where to go. He didn’t need my order to get Claire the hell away from here.
On the ride back to my building, I held her in my lap and stroked my hand over her back. I smoothed her hair away from her face, but mainly, I could only focus on keeping her close. Hugging her soothed my soul, but as we neared my building, I wasn’t relaxed. I needed more time to come down from the raging high of killing those men who threatened her. I wouldn’t be able to ease up onthis tension until more time had passed, until I could see with my own eyes that she was unharmed and could get over this trauma.
We arrived, and I didn’t think twice about carrying her inside. Martin was there at the entrance with an entourage of staff to help. Andre likely had called him to give him the heads up that I was en route with Claire.
He didn’t speak, waiting for my command.
I shook my head, dismissing his offer to assist. Claire was my responsibility. She was mine to help. Carrying her up the stairs to my room, I shouldered the duty of giving her whatever she would need to breathe and realize that she was alive. That she had been saved.
Blood stuck to both of us, on our skin from the morbid ways I’d killed those two men. Our clothes were stained as well. Usually, we shed our soiled clothes that could be evidence on the first floor, in a room where evidence could be destroyed, but I wasn’t even worried about that right now.
Martin would have someone collect our garments and handle it all.
I set Claire down in the bathroom. She hunched over, only raising her face to glance at me. Her eyes were vacant, and the lost look destroyed me. Her chin trembled, and her fear sliced at my soul.
My anger at her leaving faded as I accepted that I would always be more furious at her ever being in pain or harmed. Inside or out. Her well-being was a priority I couldn’t negotiate on.
While she sat on the edge of the vanity, I began to strip. I turned on the water to the shower and then came back to her, gently but efficiently removing her clothes. She stood now, albeit on shaky legs, and followed me into the shower, steaming with the hot water cascading down.
No words were necessary. The silence between us was needed.
Then as we stood together, in a tender but nonsexual embrace, I started cleaning the soil and grime and blood from her hair and skin.
“You have one of two choices, Claire.”
She let out a shuddering breath and stared at me while I cleaned her up.
“You can walk away and never see me again. You can leave with the proper measures planned for. That will include changing your identity so my enemies can’t track you. It will require your accepting my funding to relocate far from here. And it will mean starting over in a new place, with a new life, no fragment of your past allowed.”
She hung her head and rested her brow against my chest.
“It will mean never seeing me or my men ever again. No second chances, no visits, no expectations that I’ll come running again after I’ve given it my thorough and careful effort to help you escape so you won’t be found.”
She cleared her throat and peered at me. “What is the other option?”
I let out a deep breath, stopping my hands and finishing with cleaning her up. Staring into her vulnerable eyes, I said, “Or youcan stay with me and know this is the world you will always be a part of.”
Watching her gaze at me without blinking, I braced myself for her immediate rejection. I knew damn well she would choose to go. It was precisely what she’d been insisting on all this time I’d had her here as my guest.
Yet, something in her stare gave me pause. She wasn’t telling me her decision, and she might not be able to soon. A haunted look blazed in her eyes, and it saddened me and broke my heart that she still couldn’t view me as someone she could want, someone she could learn to live with.
Unlike Olga, she was set in her ways to avoid me and distance herself from me because she wanted to. Not because she’d be expected to.
I cleaned myself off, unwilling to push her for a reply now. Giving her time to think it through was more than fair because in a way, it was like asking her if she wanted a reset on life or to dare for a future with this one, with me.
After I shut the water off and got us both towels, I led her back to my bedroom. She didn’t protest, moving numbly like she could barely stay upright. As I guided her into my bed and covered her up, she closed her eyes and curled onto her side.
By my estimation, she had been held captive for almost two days. Food and water would be wise. But as she evened out her breaths, I considered that she might need to sleep instead. When I washed her up, I noticed no cuts, bruises, or tender spots, which convinced me she might have been spared physical abuse. I hoped that was the case.
I left her in my bed and went to get dressed. Again, I was mindful of giving her space. I returned and found her deep asleep, and I watched her for a moment, waiting for some semblance of peace to soothe my soul.
It didn’t come.
I couldn’t be at peace when I was now stuck in a waiting game of her telling me that she’d take the first option I’d offered.
Defeated and hating that I couldn’t be enough of a good villain, a gray hero for her, I left my room to meet up with the others.
