“They took my baby,” I whispered hoarsely, tears welling in my eyes, “then they took my ability toevertry again.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry I—”
“Halden made me burn Buyers alive to keep them from hurting me,” I continued, half in a trance, reliving the worst of my memories. “They would count the different ways I screamed, pinned me down with knives through my hands and feet, beat me until—” My fingers ghosted over my indented temple and then my bad ear—“I was deaf, blind, permanently defeated.”
Tears lined his eyes as a sob cracked out of me.
“Caring,” I told him, “cost meme. Choosing to live has been the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.”
He took my shoulders then, bringing his face close to mine and leveling our gazes. “Arden,” he whispered, shaking me slightly.“Caringis what keeps us human. The moment we stop—they’ve won.”
My chin trembled.
“Darling.” He cupped my face, his brows drawn as his thumbs swiped away my tears. “Being loved by others isn’t hell, and being lovedis not your fault.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“No, look at me. Please look at me.”
I shook my head, trying to pull out of his grasp.
“Arden,” his voice broke. “Please.”
Slowly, I peeled my lashes apart, my tears completely blinding my bad eye and blurring the rest. He was close, his nose brushing mine. It wasn’t intimate, at least not sexually. It felt more like a yearning to connect. In that moment, Alexander wanted me to know I wasn’t alone in such twisted, horrible thoughts.
“You are beautiful. You are bright. Youareloved,” he told me sincerely. Then his throat bobbed. “I’m sorry.I’m sorry.”
But something inside me was shifting. It felt as if I was fitting into old shoes, finding who I was before the compound. There oncewasan Arden that believed in escape and retribution. She wanted safety and calm, and maybe what Alexander was offering wasn’t exactly that, but it was the best I’d ever encountered.
Then he did something I thought he never would: he opened up to me.
“Florence and I are half siblings,” Alexander said, and I relaxed against my pillow as he let go of my face and smiled softly. “But she’s my sister. Through and through. Our parents met when I was eight. She was so small and so scared when she was born, and while I’d originally hated the idea of having a sister to compete for attention with, the moment I saw her, I knew I’d never let anything or anyone hurt her.” His shouldershunched a bit and his grin faded. “When I was ten and she was two, our parents died in a car crash.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t remember much about them, to be honest. I mean, I remember some things, like how my mom would make Florence and I gingerbread cookies, even when it wasn’t Christmas, because they were our favorites. I remember that Florence’s dad was a lawyer and was gone a lot, but when he was home, he’d play dress up with Florence.” He chuckled. “It was fun watching a grown man as serious as her dad put on a tutu and fairy wings.”
I smiled at that. “I don’t remember anything before Viktor’s,” I admitted. “I think I was too young when he took me or was sold me. As far as I can recall, I’d always been at that estate.”
Alexander blew out a breath. “You didn’t deserve that. No kid deserves to know that, let aloneonlythat.”
“It is what it is,” I said.
He glanced my way. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So after the crash, was that when you were taken to Viktor’s?”
He nodded. “Florence and I were put in a foster home for about a month. That was when I first met Viktor. He stopped by the house frequently, surveying the kids. He had some kind of deal with the foster parents. Any time Viktor took a kid, the parents told social services they ran away, and with the system the way it is, no one tried all that hard to see if they were telling the truth.”
My stomach twisted.
“The day he took me,” Alexander started. Then he stopped. He cleared his throat, staring down at his twined fingers. Hesitating at first, I tentatively reached over. I clasped my fingers around his with grim understanding.
“I was there,” I told him and shook my head. “I know. You don’t need to feel scared or embarrassed to talk to me about any of it. I promise.”
He brought his gaze to mine, emotion bright. “He took me but he didn’t take Florence. I tried to fight him, but he drugged me. By the time I woke up in that fucking bedroom at his estate, I had no idea what had happened to my sister. I hoped she was there, in the house, somewhere. Then Viktor came to my room and I hoped she wasn’t.”
I grasped his hand tighter.
