Since he let go the least of all the men on his team, he might have better control of caging his anger, but he had worse control getting that anger back into its cage after he let it out.
“Pretty sure you left because there were more of him out there,” she replied.
“Still. He had his … and after he would have …”
“Wouldn't be the first time someone has done that to me,” she whispered, and the resignation in her voice had him turning to find her sinking back down onto the ground and reaching for the blankets he’d covered her with earlier.
“Tell me,” he ordered before he could stop himself. “Who they are and what they did.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I'm going to kill every single one of them.”
“You're serious.” Her brow furrowed in confusion, making her look adorable.
“Deadly.”
Indigo sighed. “It’s a pretty depressing story.”
“Don’t care. Tell me. I want to know,” he added a little more gently as he ignored the dead body beside him and instead pulled out his canteen of water, offering it to Indigo so she could wash out her mouth.
Which she proceeded to do, and he couldn’t help but grin with pride that even sick and injured, this woman hadn't gone down without a fight. Although that smile slid off his face as he thought of the reason she was likely able to push aside fear and panic to act.
“Pretty typical tragic backstory,” Indigo said with a shrug, and he didn't like how she dismissed her own pain and trauma as if it didn't matter, although it definitely fit with the little he’d gathered about her so far from her insistence that he leave her behind.
“Nothing typical about suffering, honey,” he told her as he sat by her side.
“Dad was an alcoholic, mean, and abusive. Mom was just glad hewas turning his attention to someone else, even if it was her three-year-old. Dad almost killed me when I was five, and CPS got involved. Bounced around the system for a couple of years before being sent back. Things turned sexual when I hit puberty. On the nights he beat my mom too badly that she couldn’t cry when he raped her, he turned to me instead. Then realized he could make some money out of it.”
Unable to listen to her story without offering some sort of comfort, Voodoo reached out and took her hand, entwining their fingers and squeezing gently. After a moment of silence, Indigo squeezed back.
“CPS removed me again when I was thirteen, and that time it was permanent, but not better. For the next five years, I lived in fourteen foster homes, only three of which didn't involve abuse of some sort, and only one family treated me like a real person who mattered and not a paycheck. I was out on my own at eighteen, and so desperate to be loved that the first guy I willingly gave myself to turned out to be a psychopath who abused me for two years before I got free.”
Damn, this woman’s life had been hell. All he wanted to do was haul her into his arms and find a way to heal her heart.
“After that, I gave up on being loved and accepted and focused on myself instead. I got through college, got a good job, I'm an accountant. Met a nice guy who worked there. He treated me well, took me on dates, respected me, bought me flowers, and went on vacation with me. When he proposed, I thought that all the bad was behind me. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a different kind of psychopath. When I started pushing to start a family, he became increasingly distant. Eventually, a year ago, he told me that I wasn't the kind of woman he wanted to have as the mother of his kids. I was dirty and tainted because of the things that had been done to me, and he wanted to divorce me. He kicked me out, I lost my job because he’d been at the company longer and was in a more senior position than I was, and I lived on the streets for months before I signed up for the program.”
“Program?”
“Dr. Gardner’s program. It paid money and offered accommodation while you went through the drug program. Well, it was supposed to anyway. I wasn't aware of many details at the time and didn't care. Aroof over my head, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, and I was going to be paid on top of it, that was all I needed to hear to sign up.”
“Were all the people there homeless?” That could be a great way of finding new victims to experiment on because often times homeless people were all but invisible.
“I think so. They would advertise outside several shelters, and I’d seen their flyers a few times before I decided to go for it.”
“And you can withstand pain, right? That’s your enhancement?”
“Yes. Hence the cuts.” She waved a hand at her body. “He makes me cut myself open and then stitch those cuts back up. The pain … I feel it at first, hot and sharp, but then it just … disappears. I've been here for months now, I think, and he’s upping things, seeing how far he can push them. Hence the hammer to the leg.”
A growl rumbled through his chest. “When we finally find him, I'm going to take a hammer to his leg, see how he likes it.”
“You don’t have to be angry on my behalf,” she said softly. “I'm guessing you and your friends have all suffered just as much at his hands as I have.”
Another growl, and this time he grabbed her face and angled it toward him. The dribbles of blood on her chin, the feverish glint in her eyes, the red staining her cheeks, and her overheated, sweat-dotted skin, all had him in awe of her. After the hell she’d been through she’d still fought, and might even have been able to kill her attacker if he hadn't first if she’d gotten to his weapon after biting him.
“I don’t care if you're ready to believe it or not, but you are not alone anymore. You're one of us, I'm not leaving you behind, and I'm not killing you, but I am offering you a family. One who absolutely gets what you’ve been through and will take out every person who ever puts their hands on you as soon as we have a list of names. All you have to do is find a way to accept it. Accept us.”
January 22nd
