He lets out a quiet breath like he’s been holding it for years.
“It was never meant to be art,” he says. “Only a map. But she was brilliant in that way.”
“A map to where?” I ask, voice catching.
“To me.”
Fucking Meera.
He releases my hand and picks up a sketch from the floor. It’s the one of rain. Or maybe tears?
My eyes lock with his, and I know. I know exactly what he’s showing me. It’s the same artwork that’s on my skin.
“She’s an incredible artist, isn’t she?”
He smiles with a quiet kind of pride, and the chills crawl—arms, spine, soul.
I feel hunted. Haunted. Both.
“America made her escape when she was sixteen,” he says. “She didn’t just find a way off our yacht—she found a way out of the rain.”
He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, as if the memory is still floating there.
“She found her way to you.”
He grazes the edge of the puzzle piece again, and the touch sends a current through my skin.
“It only took her three weeks,” he continues. “Three weeks to get the documents she needed, track down your whereabouts, and board a plane to New York City. You see, Alex… when you live your whole life with a criminal, you learn to think like one too.”
His voice shifts—heavier now. Weighted with memory.
“The moment Erica boarded that plane, her sketches were already in transit to the Paris authorities. Drawings—hundreds of them—detailing the abuse I endured. She captured everything. Every bruise. Every scream. Every silence. He was done. We had him. There was no way he could talk his way out of it. It was all right there—in pencil and paper. Unmistakable. Undeniable. Laid bare for the world to see.”
He swallows. His jaw tightens, as does mine.
“Unfortunately, there were no sketches of her abuse. But it didn’t matter. She was still taking him down—the same man who sexually abused both of us.”
Silence.
“And within twenty-four hours of that plane landing in the United States,” he says quietly, “the French authorities surrounded our yacht.”
“ThankGod.” I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. I didn’t think I could take any more grief. “So, they arrested him?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just looks away—somewhere distant, unreachable—and slowly shakes his head.
“They never found him.”
36
NOAH
They never found me either.
And it wasn’t until I turned seventeen that I finally made my escape.
I’d been planning that day for as long as I could remember. I was ready. Nothing could catch me off guard. Every scenario, every possible outcome, had been played out in my head a thousand times. Burned into my brain like muscle memory.
It was supposed to be easy. A no-brainer.
