Page 62 of Captive Souls

I considered her words. Knox hadn’t shown me violence, not true violence until he laid his hands on Daisy. That was not something to dismiss. It was a giant red flag, waving in my face.

Then there was my father. Beating my mother without remorse as she begged. While his small daughters watched in horror, crying and screaming.

A man capable of violence against women was my line. Always. How had that line become blurry? How could I know that Knox wouldn’t do that to me, or worse, to Daisy?

My heart told me he wouldn’t. Never. But my heart couldn’t be trusted. No one’s could. My mother’s heart believed my father when he begged, when he promised it was the last time, when he poured out all the vodka.

I picked at a hangnail.

“Will you promise to be safe?” I asked my sister instead of addressing the enormity of the situation. “Keep your head down. Pretend with Joey a little longer.”

Her eyes darted to the side, and her posture slumped, as if curling into herself would hide her secrets. “I’m not pretending. Not entirely.”

I nodded. “I know.”

How was it that both of us, different in so many ways, found ourselves in similar situations, tangled up with dangerously wrong men and unable to wrangle ourselves from their clutches? We were our mother’s daughters... That chilled me. You couldn’t escape your genetics. And apparently, genetics had doomed us to love wicked men.

The silence of the forest took over until a light giggle penetrated it. Daisy.

Who else would it be?

She giggled some more, genuine and light. “I really did it this time, didn’t I?”

It was then that I understood her light giggle was covering something heavy, dark and thorny. Her guilt.

I cupped her cheek. “This is not your fault, Daisy. We don’t lay the sins of men at our feet. We leave them where they belong.” I infused my tone with iron.

She pursed her lips, nodding.

“We’ll get through this,” I promised. Even though it wasn’t a promise I could make.

Daisy would get through this. That was nonnegotiable. Me on the other hand? That remained to be seen.

But I’d die for my sister.

In a heartbeat.

Thirteen

Piper

“How will we know that she made it back safely?” I asked Knox, staring at the woods, long silent from the crunch of the car tires.

“We won’t,” Knox replied in a level tone, not bothering to try to placate me.

I stared up at him. He cut such a harsh figure against the green of the woods. “Can’t you call someone to check?”

He hadn’t been looking down the empty road, his gaze was on me. I sensed it had been for a very long time. His mask was back in place.

“Me calling someone and ‘checking’ not only risks a trace on a call but also could blow any kind of cover that Daisy had. The call would put her in even more danger than she already put herself in. And that’s saying something.”

His jaw was rock hard, his posture tight, words clipped. It was not hard to deduce that he was pissed. At Daisy.

Anger of my own bubbled up inside of me, churning like an active volcano, the power ready to decimate anything in its path “My sister did an incredibly brave thing,” I said through my teeth.

“An incredibly stupid thing.” He didn’t seem bothered by my volcanic fury. To him, it was probably less powerful than the flame of a match.

My hands balled into fists at my sides, resisting the urge to smack them against his body, remembering he did just get shot an hour ago.