Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
A contingent of twenty-some guards meets us at the white, colonial-style mansion and follows us into the tastefully decorated living room. Esguerra leaves me and Kent with them and disappears upstairs—presumably to wake his newly post-partum wife.
With a traitor on the loose, he couldn’t wait until morning.
For a couple of minutes, all I hear are the guards breathing and shifting from foot to foot. Then a baby’s cry pierces the silence, the sound strong and sweet and so familiar my heart clenches in my chest.
Pasha used to wail like that when he was an infant. It was his hungry cry—a demand for food that was always met within minutes.
The grief that hits me is as sharp as in the beginning, during those dark days when rage was the only thing that kept me going. For a second, I can’t breathe from the pain of it, from the agony so acute it feels like a blade through my spine.
My son. My little boy who never got the chance to grow, to go from toy cars to the real thing.
If I had any qualms about what I’m doing, they evaporate in this moment. I’m double-crossing a client, but it’s worth it. Even without the deal I made with Esguerra, I’d never hurt that helpless baby.
Not with Pasha’s face fresh in my mind.
It takes a couple of minutes before the crying stops and nearly a half hour before Esguerra returns, his arm wrapped around a petite, dark-haired girl dressed in a thick terrycloth robe that covers her from head to toe.
Esguerra’s very own obsession.
Nora, his wife.
Her small face lights up when she sees me. Unlike her husband, she bears me no ill will for the rescue that endangered her—nor should she, as it was her idea.
“Peter!” She makes as though to come forward to greet me, only to be restrained by her husband’s possessive grip. Sheepishly, she stops and smiles instead. “How have you been?”
“Fine, thank you.” Despite the guards all around us and my face feeling like a giant bruise from Esguerra’s pummeling, I can’t help smiling back. It’s hard to believe someone this young and delicate-looking could be a mother—or survive someone as ruthless as Esguerra. “Congratulations on the recent addition to your family.”
Her smile widens. “Thank you. I’d introduce you, but you know…” She glances up at her husband, whose thunderous expression grew even more forbidding during our exchange.
Sure enough, he’s reached the end of his patience. Tucking his small wife tighter against his side, he asks with lethal softness, “Are you going to tell me who it is or not?”
This is it. Time for me to give up my trump card. Despite Nora’s presence and the deal we made, he might still order me killed as soon as he learns the name.
Oh, well. No risk, no reward.
Meeting Esguerra’s icy gaze, I say calmly, “I don’t know her name, but it’s your pediatrician. She is Novak’s asset.”
35
Sara
“You know, Joe’s been asking about you,” Mom says, smearing the honey I brought from the farmer’s market on her toast. “You haven’t heard from him recently, have you?”
“Mom, please.” I fight the urge to roll my eyes like an overgrown teenager. For whatever reason, our Saturday morning breakfast is when this topic inevitably comes up. “He’s just being nice, that’s all. There’s nothing between us, I promise.”
“But why not, darling?” Lines of concern crease Mom’s forehead as Dad sighs into his coffee. “You’ve been back for almost nine months, and you have yet to go on a single date with anyone. You don’t owe that criminal anything. You know that, right? Clearly, whatever you two had is over, and you have to move on. He won’t be back.”
He will, judging by that note, but I can’t tell my parents about that. Despite my best efforts to convince them that I was with my abductor voluntarily and the whole FBI manhunt was a big misunderstanding, Peter will always be “that criminal” to them. I don’t know if it’s because they somehow caught wind of my official story to the FBI, or they just have a normal law-abiding citizens’ distrust of anyone on the outs with the authorities, but they’re convinced that Peter is evil and whatever feelings I had for him were of the Stockholm Syndrome variety.
Not that they’re all that wrong—at least, they wouldn’t have been wrong nine months ago. My attraction to Peter was unnatural and toxic, and I fought against it with everything I had. I fought up until the very end, when I nearly lost my life in that crash.
No. That’s not entirely true.
It was up until he put my needs above his own and let me go. That was the true turning point for me, though it’s only recently that I’ve let myself think about that… about the fact that I’ve somehow managed to accept the feelings I’ve developed for my husband’s killer, that when I think about him now, he’s “Peter” in my mind.