Page 22 of Run

Despite my telling myself to be calm, I felt my already raging anger balloon into an inferno.

“Vincent, you don’t get to tell me what to do. Not anymore,” I said, shaking my head a single time. I didn’t have the control to do anything else. Not when I was so angry at his presumptuousness, not when I couldn’t say with certainty that I was as free as I pretended to be.

“Did I ever?” he asked.

There was no anger in his voice, but there was challenge. One that I couldn’t defeat.

I’d somehow convinced myself that Vincent was overbearing, but that wasn’t entirely true. He’d usually given me what I wanted, had almost always in fact.

But he’d never given me the one thing that mattered.

“Why?” I asked, turning my attention back to what he’d said. “Why, after all this time?”

“Orders,” he said shortly like that explained anything. It didn’t, not by a long shot, but it made me wonder, ask a question I couldn’t leave unsaid.

“Have you known where I was all along?” I asked, my voice rising with each word. “Have I spent all these years running, hiding while you and…you and Santo laughed? Stupid Giovanna thinking she’d gotten away when you knew exactly where I was?”

“Is that what you think of me, Gia?” he asked, lifting one brow, his stance and his expression saying he was only barely interested in my answer, the burning fire in his eyes telling me how much he cared.

“That wasn’t an answer, Vincent,” I snapped.

“Is that what you think of me?”

He repeated his question, but his voice didn’t change. His eyes did, though, went even darker, more intense. I was so angry, so vulnerable, that I wanted to think that, needed to think the worst of him if only to make this easier.

“Maybe not you, but Santo,” I finally said. As angry as I was, as much as I wanted to lash out, I couldn’t, not that I would allow myself to consider what that meant.

“Santo didn’t know where you were,” he said.

His voice was flat, and I looked at him surprised.

“So you found me?” I asked, my question reflected in my voice.

He nodded curtly. “Yeah. It took some work too. Nice job covering your tracks like that.”

“Thanks, but apparently I didn’t do it well enough,” I said. At first I’d been certain that they would find me, but as the years passed, I’d started to think that I’d successfully outrun them. It looked like I was wrong.

He shrugged again. “Would have been fine for most. I was particularly motivated.”

I believed him.

Vincent always tried to appear nonchalant, but I knew his mind could give itself to singular pursuits. It seemed that getting me home was his current focus.

“I can’t go back there, Vincent,” I said.

There was pleading in my voice, but I couldn’t keep it out, didn’t even try, really. As I looked at him, I saw the flash of pain in his eyes, pain that he covered quickly with resolve.

“Was it really so bad?” he whispered.

I watched him as he went quiet, waited a moment for him to continue, but he didn’t.

I didn’t fill the silence either, my own thoughts robbing me of speech.

It hadn’t been so bad, not with him. Being with him hadn’t been bad at all.

But the rest of it…

I shook my head. “I can’t go back. I won’t live in a world that he rules so completely.”