Page 32 of Reckless Woman
“All I’m saying is you can’t make judgment calls about a man likeEl Asesino.” She shrugs in that careless, cavalier way of hers. “The same way you can’t break down a wall with your bare fists.”
“Maybe you’re right.” My gaze wonders again, drifting back to the kitchen door.I miss his stillness. I miss the certainty he brings to my brave new chaos.“But sometimes the unexplainable is the only thing left that makes sense.”
“Parcera—”
“A bad reality, to me, is a place where I don’t feel safe.”
“That’s no reason to stay with a man like him. Get a dog.”
“I don’t want a dog, Vi.” I stop and take a short breath before I lose it.How do I explain that to love a shadow is to love all of his darkness?
“Dogs are more endearing.” She shovels another spoonful of granola into her mouth. “They talk even less than he does, though.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.” I flash her a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. “Look, I know we’re not a typical love story. I get that. We’re dirty, raw and bruised. We put the ‘D’ in dysfunctional, and we wear it like homecoming crowns. But Ifeelhim, Vi…”God, I feel him so much.“Even though I don’t really know him.”
“Youfeelhim?” She laughs, as if I just told a bad joke. “Is that a sex reference? I don’t need to know how big his dick is, Anna.”
“Do you know how amazing it is to sit here and feelanythingafter what happened to me?” I say, bristling. “To feel is to love, to laugh, to dig your toes into the warm sand…to wake each day dying to live, not living to die.”
The mocking grin slips from her face. Mine is a story I’ve hinted at, but never shared.
“I was taken,” I blurt quickly, before my courage slips back under the table.
“Taken?” She drops the spoon, her sharp gaze homing in on me again.
“Last year.”
“Who took you?”
I stare down at the table’s surface, seeing black instead of white.
“Parcera?” she says, more urgently. “Who took you?”
I see his face so clearly—the pinched skin, the cruel mouth. The memory still cuts like a knife, hemorrhaging fear and self-loathing.
“They were waiting for me in my apartment. I was on the phone with Eve, Dante’s wife, when they—” I shut my eyes and feel her hand slipping over mine. Encouraged, I spit the next words out of my mouth before they have a chance to poison me. “He was Russian. Bratva. Some enemy of Santiago’s who decided to break me on his quest to breaking him. They used me up. Sold me. But Joseph tracked me down to Amsterdam. He never gave up on me. He freed me from a place that was worse than hell, and that’s something I…”
Her hand tightens painfully, before pulling away. “What was this man’s name?”
“Does it matter?” I open my eyes to find her unusually still. There’s a raw violence shadowing her expression.
Just like Santiago.
“He’s dead now anyway.”
“His name,parcera.”
I shiver.
“Sevastien Petrov.”
The widening of her dark eyes is unmistakable. I see it all—the shock, the pain—before her composure slams shut on her secrets like a pair of French shutters in a storm.
Recognition.
But that’s impossible.
My heart starts thudding painfully. “Vi, did you know—?”