Until I remembered I couldn’t feel relieved around this man.
Not anymore.
I scrambled back from him and he immediately released me. My back slammed into something behind me and I realized it was a headboard.
Jesus, I was in bed with him.
I lurched away from him and would have fallen out of the bed if he hadn’t chosen that moment to latch onto my arm again. “Don’t!” I screamed and he instantly released me. I’d regained enough of my balance so that this time I didn’t fall, but I quickly got out of the bed and backed up until I was lodged into the nearest corner. I began jerking my eyes around the room to look for Father when my brain caught up to my reality.
Father was dead.
I’d seen his body for myself. I’d felt his warm blood on my skin. I’d stared into his open, empty eyes. Those eyes haunted my nightmares, just like Vaughn’s eyes dominated my dreams.
Father was dead. I knew that.
Vaughn was here.
He’d kidnapped me.
I knew that too.
But that was all I knew.
I looked down at my hands and saw they were no longer bound. Not like they’d been in the car.
I fought to remember the events after he’d told me he wasn’t taking me home, but there were only bits and pieces.
“Where are we?” I managed to get out, despite my ragged breaths. The room was dim, but not dark. It had old-looking wallpaper and there were just a few simple furnishings including a bed and dresser with a vanity mirror on it. There were two doors. One that was closed, either for a closet or a bathroom. And one that led out of the room. It was currently open and I wondered if I could make my escape through it.
Don’t run, Aleks. Just do as you’re told and you’ll be okay.
I felt bile rise in my throat as Brian’s voice filtered through my head. I actually had to close my eyes because I felt so dizzy. I hadn’t heard his voice in years, but it was like he was standing right next to me.
“In a safe place,” Vaughn responded as he slowly got up off the bed. He moved around the foot of it, his eyes wary, like he was waiting for me to try and get past him. I wanted to laugh at that because not only would my body not respond to the instinct, but I knew he’d catch me with next to no effort.
“Why?” I bit out as I looked at the bed, then myself. I was still wearing all my clothes. All except my shoes, and I could see those sitting on the floor next to the bed. I looked at the bed again. There were no restraints of any kind.
But all he’d need were plastic ties like the other guys. They could easily be in his pocket. And in truth, we both knew he didn’t needthem. He was much bigger and stronger than me. He’d have no problem subduing me, assuming I could even find the courage to fight back.
And since I couldn’t find the guts to even try and run, I knew there was no chance of me fighting him. I had no doubt he knew it too.
“Is it you?” I asked. “Or someone else?”
“No one is going to hurt you, Aleks.”
He had the audacity to actually look pained as he said the words, but I didn’t believe him or the imagined emotion. I might be a coward, but I wasn’t stupid. I’d long ago learned that the master manipulators were the ones who knew how to use the words you wanted to hear against you.
I took a moment to study him. He looked the same, though there was a certain tiredness to his eyes that I’d never noticed before. Like his soul had aged at a considerably faster rate than his body. I guessed him to be in his mid-thirties or so. He was taller than me by several inches and outweighed me by maybe sixty pounds. He wasn’t a muscle head, but he was really well built with a broad chest and trim hips. The muscles of his thighs flexed beneath the black dress pants he was wearing as he moved a little closer to me. He was wearing a light-blue button-up dress shirt but had taken his jacket off at some point. I didn’t see his gun, but that didn’t mean anything. It could easily be at his back.
Vaughn’s black hair was a little longer on top and trimmed short on the sides. His beard was also a touch longer than it’d been two years ago. I’d always had this weird obsession with wanting to know what the neatly groomed hair would feel like beneath my fingers. I’d only ever seen Vaughn dressed in suits, so it had always fascinated me to see the single black earring he wore in his left ear… I always imagined it to be some kind of silent “fuck you” to the world.
My gaze dropped to Vaughn’s muscular forearms. He’d rolled his shirt sleeves up so I could see that his right arm had a tattoo on it, but his left didn’t. Another silent act of rebellion? Or was that who he really was and the suits were the fake part?
Why did I even care?
He wasn’t real.
At least not the version of him I’d imagined in my head. The one who’d saved me two years earlier.
