The devil baron, p.17
The Devil Baron, page 17
She weaved her arms inside of his, pushing his hold off her body as she took a step backward. “What do you know?”
His brow furrowed at her distancing. “What? Know about what?”
“What do you know about who took Eva? Torrie?”
His head snapped back, his eyes narrowing at her for a long moment.
A moment where she saw the truth of the matter, the tidal wave of realization surging through her body.
The chilly veneer slid onto his face. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
She stomped past him, moving to his room, then slammed the door open. Stupid to do, to place herself alone in a room with him. But she was going to get the truth out of him no matter what it took.
He followed her into the chamber, closing the door quietly behind them.
“Victoria—”
She whipped around to him, fury vibrating off her limbs. “Don’t you dare lie again to me. What. Do. You. Know?”
He stared at her, his jawline ticking. And the slightest crack in the cold mask splintered. “I didn’t intend for this.”
Her arms clasped about her waist in an effort to hold her body upright, her spine straight, for she could already feel his next words were about the break her. “Didn’t intend for what?”
“I didn’t intend for this—you—to happen as it did.” He heaved a sigh, the steely veneer fully falling away as weariness set into his face. But he didn’t look away from her, his dark eyes set on her with resolve. “Kidnap you. Seduce you. Use you for revenge against your father. Nothing more. That was the plan. This was never supposed to be anything more.”
She swayed, black dots filling the outer edges of her vision for several breaths.
He’d known all along.
Knew what was to happen. Knew she’d be dumped on the road, ready to collect. Ready to cling onto anybody with soothing words that paid her the slightest attention.
He knew.
Darkness seeped over everything inside of her chest down to her belly, until it hardened, then cracked, splintering into ashes.
Seconds.
That was all it took for the core of her to turn into a wasteland.
By the time those seconds had passed, her right hand had already unthreaded from her waist and slipped into her pocket. She blinked the black dots away from her vision and regained her footing. Her spine rigid and in place.
Yanking free the dagger she had in her pocket, she stepped forward, thrusting the point of it into the fleshy part at the base of Rafe’s throat. Her words seethed. “You kidnapped my Aunt Evalyn, didn’t you? My Aunt Torrie?”
He’d flinched when the blade came at him, his instinct to knock it out of her hand present, but he did nothing to disarm her. Even let her press the tip hard into his skin.
He held her gaze, the absence of cold, the absence of fire, the absence of everything in his vacant eyes. “I didn’t so much do it, as allow it to happen.”
“What?” The word choked out as she twisted the tip of the knife into his skin, drops of blood starting to seep onto the steel. “You need to help us get them back.”
“I cannot do that, Vic.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Both.”
“You monster.” Her voice went into a screech and her right hand pulled the blade away from his neck only so that she could plunge it through his miserable flesh.
His hand snatched her wrist just as the point met his neck.
With a snarl on his face, he twisted her wrist up high into the air and spun them until she slammed back against the stone wall. He knocked her hand once, twice, three times against the wall, rough shards of stone digging into her skin, before the dagger fell out of her grasp, clanging down onto the floorboards. He kicked the blade away from them, his breath furious on her face, ready to snap her in two.
It didn’t stop her. She swung at his face with her free hand, fingernails clawing and drawing a swipe of blood before he caught that wrist as well, smacking it up onto the stone above her.
“Damn it. Calm down, Vic.”
“Calm? You want bloody calm when you kidnapped two of my aunts and came after me to use me as your little pawn? And you want me to damn well calm down?”
He leaned in farther, his seething words flooding her face. “I want you to do exactly that.”
“Never.” She kicked out with her right leg, her knee going up hard into his ballocks.
He dropped her wrists, doubling over, and she darted to the left, scrambling for the door.
Too slow.
He was on her in an instant, grabbing her about the waist and charging across the room to toss her onto the bed. Landing hard on her back, she tried to twist around to scramble away, but before she could escape, his hands clamped onto her arms, his knees pressing down on top of her thighs, pinning her to the bed.
He hovered over her, rage palpitating in his eyes with every breath he took. Yet he lingered, motionless above her. A drop of blood from his neck dripped, landing on her chin.
Heaving breath after breath, she squirmed, trying to wiggle free, a scream breaking loose. But no one would hear her. No one was in this wing of the castle.
His knees pressed harder onto her thighs at her resistance, grinding more of his weight against the muscle and bone. Heaven help her, her legs were going to break under the mass of him.
No. No. No.
How could she let this happen—any of it? She was a stupid girl, just like her father thought. Naïve and so easy to manipulate.
And the sob of that realization hit her suddenly, threatening upward until she couldn’t hold it back.
She hadn’t been saving Eva. She’d been condemning her with every step she’d taken with this man—with this demon. And now the monster was deep in the safety of Seahorn, ready to ruin them all. With Jules. Sloane. The children.
And she’d invited him in.
Sob after sob twisted with rage from her throat, her body convulsing with each and every exhale of them until she couldn’t see, couldn’t think.
“Vic.”
“Vic.”
“Vic.”
She ignored his voice for long minutes. Her name from his lips again and again. Utterings that meant nothing except for pain. Every exhale of her name a knife slicing into her, over and over, ripping her body to shreds.
“Vic.” Keeping one hand clamped around both of her wrists above her head, his right hand slid onto the side of her face, his thumb swiping at the sheen of moisture from her tears.
Her head jerked deep into the mattress, trying to escape his touch. He didn’t let her, his fingers, one by one, clearing away the tears from one side of her face, then the other.
“Vic.” His voice had sunken, low and raw and soft. So very soft.
As much as she wanted to keep her eyes closed, hiding away in the darkness until death took her, that wasn’t practical. It was selfish. Selfish when Eva and Torrie were being held somewhere—maybe even dead.
Her heart stopped at the possibility. No. She wouldn’t allow that thought. Hadn’t allowed herself up until this point to imagine it, and she couldn’t start now. Eva wasn’t dead. Torrie wasn’t dead.
They were missing. That was all.
And the man above her was the key to finding them.
She had to convince him to help her.
Her eyes cracked open to find him watching her. Gone was the cold. The anger. His dark brown eyes only held concern mixed with a large dose of heart-wrenching pain.
For the devastation that had just wreaked havoc deep in her soul, the look on his face disarmed her.
He wasn’t hiding anything from her. And that, she realized, she’d never seen in him before. There was always part of him he kept far from her reach, hidden beneath that barrier of cold.
He claimed he couldn’t feel emotion.
But there it was, plain to see.
“Are they alive?” She hated that she had to ask the question, hated that second before he answered.
He nodded.
Her eyes closing, she gasped in a breath, relief expanding her chest. It took her a long moment to open her eyes to him.
“You used me.” Her words croaked through the hard swell of tears still in her throat.
He shifted his body atop her, his knees still trapping her to the bed, but all his weight now adjusted back and off her legs. “I used you? What about how you used me, Vic?”
“I never.”
“You did.” His voice was still soft, haunted. “You wanted out and I was your escape. Don’t think I don’t realize that. Don’t think that I don’t know that you never wanted me, you just wanted out from under your fathers any way you could get it.”
“No. Dammit. I cared for you, Rafe.” Her eyes closed as she drew in a deep breath. “I stupidly, ridiculously, still care for you, even now, in this moment when there is nothing but a wasteland of ash in my belly. I look at you and I cannot not want you—and that sullies everything in me I thought was good and honorable. I know what you did, and I hate myself for still caring, but I do.”
“Vic.”
Her gaze went to slits at him. “Care for you or not, I will walk away from you if you hurt my family. That is, if you don’t kill me first, for I will do whatever it takes—happily die—to keep them safe.” Her words slowed, each one drawing a line in the sand. “My family is everything to me. And you. You will just have to be a footnote of my past if you hurt them. There will be no way forward for us.”
The clarity of her words were stark, even to her own ears. But she would stand by them to her dying breath.
He flinched hard at her words, the concern blinking away, a cold chill snaking onto his irises.
Bloody hell. This wasn’t just a game he was playing with her. It was a game he was playing with her whole family, and she was merely a pawn. And he still intended to go through with it. She could see it in his eyes.
He wasn’t going to give this up for her.
She wasn’t enough.
Why had it taken her so long to ask obvious questions? All things she should have known, should have asked before digging herself in so thick with him that there was no way her heart would let her untangle herself from him.
He released her hands, shoving himself away from her and off the bed.
Leaving her.
Her head on the bed swung to him, a boulder pressing her down on her chest, making her limbs useless. “Don’t…please, Rafe. Don’t.”
He turned away from her and just when she thought he was going to stalk out of the room, he spoke, but didn’t turn around to her. “You don’t know the whole of it.”
He’d paused. Was he actually considering her pleas?
She wedged her elbows under her torso to prop herself up. “What haven’t you told me?”
“I’m working with someone else, and there is no stopping this. Not now. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Who?”
Both of his hands curled into fists, his head bowed. “I can’t tell you that. But I am forced to see this through to the end. There is past to atone for.”
“Please.” She jumped out of the bed, grabbing his upper arm, rounding him. “Please don’t do this, Rafe. Please.”
His chin jutted upward, his look going to the ceiling. “I don’t have a choice, Vic.” He wouldn’t look down at her no matter how hard she yanked on his arm.
“I am begging you.” She grabbed his other arm, tugging at both of his wrists. “Begging you, please don’t do this. Please.”
His look dropped to her without the slightest hint of emotion. “You don’t beg.”
“I am begging you on this score.” She stepped in close, setting her body against his as she stared up at him, both of her hands moving up to clutch his biceps. “Please don’t do this, Rafe. Whatever has happened long in the past, it has happened and there is no changing it. My family…”
Her throat suddenly choked closed and she had to swallow hard before she lost the ability to speak, to beg. Words started to fly, tumbling out of her mouth in pure panic. “Eva is a mother—a mother. And you are taking her away from those children, a boy and a girl—Dunkin and Elsbeth, and she loves them so much. Torrie is a mother too, her babe, little Quinton is just one year old. An innocent little boy that deserves to have his mother. You don’t know what it’s like. Elsbeth. Elsbeth is six. I was six when I understood—truly understood what it meant not to have a mother. To have this terrible loneliness aching in my chest all the time. No matter that Sloane came into my life and became my mother—she always loved me so hard—extra hard, for she knew about that little black spot on my heart that had shriveled up into nothing long ago. I know what it is and it cannot happen again. Don’t let that happen to the children. Please. Don’t set little black spots on their hearts that can never be healed. They are innocent. They. Need. Their. Mothers.”
She held her breath, her eyes meeting his.
Miraculously, and out of nowhere, the tiniest spark of recognition appeared in his dark brown eyes. Warmth and pain, where there had only been cold. A slight tremor entered his voice. “I do. I do know what it’s like.”
She blinked through tears she hadn’t realized had gathered along her lashes.
He’d never talked about his mother, only his father and so little at that. Anytime she’d asked, he’d given her the stony stare she’d grown so accustomed to. Her words choked out. “You do?”
He offered a slight nod. “I recognize that feeling in your chest. A hollow.” His eyes closed to her, and his head stayed bowed. “For me it always gaped open wide when I was in the village market, and I would see this other little boy, my age, grabbing onto his mother’s hand. And I would instinctively raise my hand just like him, mirroring his actions. Only my hand clutched onto air, while his clutched onto skin and bone. I hated that boy. Hated what he had. Hated that I had nothing—only air—when he had everything.”
Her soul both crumbled and surged at his words. Crumbled for the pain he’d lived with, never letting it surface. Surged, for he understood exactly what he would be taking from so many children if he let Eva and Torrie die.
His eyes opened to her, his jaw set hard. “I will find out where Eva and Torrie are being held, but it will cost.”
“Anything. We will pay—trade—anything. Anything.”
His hand lifted, sliding along her chin, cradling it. “I’ll have to deliver you.”
{ Chapter 22 }
Victoria swallowed hard. “No.”
Rafe looked pained for a breath and his hand dropped away from her face. “It is the only way I can find out where Eva and, presumably, Torrie, have been taken. You’ll be put in the same place with them. It was the plan all along—all of them, Reiner, Lachlan, Desmond, Roe—all of them on their knees. Trading away their worlds. Those men, all of them so hard to break. But they had one weakness in common that would destroy them—their wives.”
She had to gasp at the sheer viciousness of the plan, and her head spun for a long second before she could still her mind. “That is despicable. And you want me to put myself in the middle of it?” She had to force herself to breathe. To keep her heart from beating so hard it exploded in her chest.
“It is despicable. But that is who I am, Vic. A monster. And this is the only way I can see to get Eva and Torrie out of it. I have to deliver you. To Reiner and Desmond, it is clear you are worth everything. You are their child. And we cannot tell anyone what we plan.”
Warning bells clanged loud in her head. “We cannot tell my father? Uncle Reiner?”
He shook his head, his face hard stone. “They can’t know. There cannot be the slightest hint that they are closing in.”
She exhaled a long breath, trying to order her thoughts. “So all of them are in danger? Sloane and Jules as well?”
He nodded, his look grave. “Though I imagine they’ll have a hard time taking Jules, from what I’ve seen.”
She looked to the door, her hands shaking. “I need to warn them. Save them.” She started toward the doorway.
Rafe stepped in front of her, blocking her exit. “You cannot.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“Those mothers of yours, they will lock you up in a room—just as quickly as your fathers would—before they let you leave this place. One of them will go, maybe both, to Desmond and Reiner. And that is a mistake, believe me. You don’t want them out on the roads. This is the safest place for them, here in this fortress of Seahorn. It’s well protected.” He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “And if things go wrong out there…”
She stilled, her voice a whisper. “They are mothers.”
And she was not.
He nodded, his look grave.
Her eyes closed for a long moment.
“This is the way. My partner cannot suspect anything or he’ll move Eva and Torrie. He already has plans in place for that. All he needs to know is that I’m delivering you. We find out where he’s putting you and we will find Eva and Torrie. And then I will get all three of you out. It is as simple as that.”
“Or as complicated. Or as dangerous. Or as stupid.” She bit her bottom lip, staring up at him. “You won’t leave me behind?”
His hand slid in along her jaw, clutching the side of her face. “I would never leave you behind. Never. For what you are worth to all of them, you are worth ten times more to me, Vic. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
He said the words with such raw vehemence, her breath caught in her throat. She bowed her head for long seconds, running through all the possible scenarios in her head. But this, this was the way. She would be put with Eva and Torrie and in the process, discover who the man was that had abducted them. Then they could send her uncles and her father after him.
She just had to be ready to do what she’d always known she would. Put her life on the line for her family.
She lifted her gaze to him and nodded. “I am trusting you, Rafe.”
“And I am trusting you, silver bell.”
~~~
Rafe left Seahorn.
He rode off on his horse under the guise of taking care of his business in Portsmouth, with the understanding that he would return in a fortnight.
