Page 63 of Captive Souls
“Doing something to try to save someone you love is not stupid.”
He looked at me for a long time, long enough to dump a bucket of cold water on my hot fury. “Yes, it is, Piper.” His voice was featherlight. “The only thing dumber than that is loving someone in the first place.”
The air flew from my chest at the heaviness of his words. He believed them. Solidly. That love meant weakness.
“Don’t you have someone like that, who you would do anything to protect?” I asked, desperate to find a heart in the cold enclave of his chest.
He stared at the trees, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me.
“My brother.” He spoke so quietly, I barely heard it over the whisper of the wind against the trees.
A brother. Knox had a brother. And not just a person with whom he shared the same parents. Someone he obviously cared for, the admission of his existence seeming as if I’d wrenched it from his throat.
“And more recently, my niece,” he added, voice even lower than before, his posture tighter, as if that were even possible.
I studied his profile, shocked at the admission and warm with knowing he was giving something to me. He was shedding his skin of armor and hinting at the human that lay beneath. The human who was capable of love.
He jerked his gaze back to me almost violently. His eyes were a sharp blade, cutting into me.
“But I am capable of keeping them safe,” he uttered, voice sure and cold and cruel. “By staying away from them. By making sure that I can and will do anything to keep them that way. Neither you nor your sister are capable of doing the things required to keep each other alive.”
He slung the words to hurt, to pile up on my shoulders and drive me into the ground with hopelessness, with terror. I knew he wanted me to be afraid because he thought that scaring me was the only way to keep me alive. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Maybe he wanted me to be afraid because he liked scaring me.
I chewed on my lip. “You’re wrong. I would do anything possible to keep Daisy safe. I’m prepared to marry a monster in order to ensure that.”
Knox’s arm shot out so quickly, I barely noticed him moving until his hand was circling my neck. He squeezed enough to make it hard for me to breathe.
“You’re not marrying him,” he gritted out. “You’ll never breathe the same air as him again. He’ll never so much as lay a fucking eye on you.”
I rasped against the pressure and the pain against my windpipe, Knox’s hands on my skin a scalding brand. And the words... The promise in them.
He was planning on saving me. That’s what lay underneath his words. He didn’t deem me or Daisy capable of the depraved acts required to get out of this situation. Although having a self-professed killer declare he was going to do horrible things in order to keep me safe should’ve been unnerving, I felt … safe. Even with his hand wrapped around my throat, obscuring my air flow.
The man who was tasked with breaking me had at some point decided he was going to save me instead.
With his hand around my throat, his eyes searing into me and my heart pounding in tandem with his words, I knew I was not being saved. I was damned. Because even though I might not have to marry a monster, I was tangled up in one, nonetheless.
“You can’t promise that,” I croaked, barely able to grind out the words with the pressure on my neck not letting up.
I should’ve been clawing at his hands, fighting him, hating him for only being able to touch me in violence. Just like he had my sister. Instead, I leaned into his touch. Into him.
“I can’t make many promises to you, Piper.” He bent forward so our mouths were almost brushing. “But I can promise you that you won’t be going near him the rest of your life. And that I’ll ensure that your life will be a long one. You’ll die warm and wrinkled in your bed, with the memory of this being nothing but a nightmare.”
The promise threaded through the air, slithered down my throat then squirreled its way somewhere deep and permanent. Not only that he’d save me but that this situation—him—would be nothing but a nightmare.
My chest heaved up and down as my breath came in short bursts.
Knox’s hand was still around my throat.
For a shadow of a moment, I thought he might not let go. Thought he might just keep squeezing until the darkness at the edge of my vision crept further and further until it swallowed me up, releasing me from this world.
I was sure the thought had crossed his mind. It was clear he was fighting whatever feelings he had for me. That those feelings made him question his whole existence, made him feel weak. And men who felt weak would do anything to delude themselves into feeling strong again. Even if it meant hurting a woman. Especially if it meant hurting a woman. The moment lay in thebalance, of whether he was like my father or not, whether he’d use me to feel big.
His hands released a second later. He stepped back, running his hand across his jaw in a rare gesture of unease.
I rubbed at my neck, not hating the pain, even though it served as more evidence that he could hurt me. That he was the kind of man I’d spent my life ensuring I’d never get close to.
“My father killed my mother when we were young. I was thirteen,” I blurted in a hoarse voice.