Page 61 of Liberated By Sin
“I’m sorry. I should have gone home and changed, but I needed to see you.”
I gently touched her wounded shoulder, feeling the bandage beneath her sleeve. “You don’t owe him an explanation.”
“I don’t, but he’s kind of insistent.”
My head jerked back as I searched her eyes. “What the fuck does that mean?” I hadn’t realized I’d backed up toward the door or when my hand had flown to my holster.
Amara grabbed my collar and shook her head. “No, Santi…not like that. He wouldn’t be breathing if that were the case.”
I believed her, but it didn’t make the urge to kill him lessen in the least.
“Elaborate.”
“I came home one night and found his little boy wandering the floor. He’d escaped while the detective was asleep, exhausted from a tough shift, or so he said.” She sighed and shrugged, pulling me toward her living room, where a cat with an exotic fur pattern resembling that of a tiger or leopard was perched on a windowsill. His large green eyes watched me intently as I sat across from it on a sofa.
“So now you’re friends with a homicide detective.” I scoffed humorlessly at the irony.
“No, but he comes around. Thinks he owes some kind of loyaltyfor saving his kid. And…”
She hesitated, her eyes lifting toward the cat.
“And what?” I asked, itching for my weapon again.
“He reminds me of…home in a way.”
“Home?”
Amara offered me a nod. “My home from a long time ago, in Rio.
“Brazil.”
I’d suspected her origins by her last name, but for her to confirm and share a piece of herself that not only brought some sense of nostalgia and comfort, but one also very clearly accompanied by pain.
As if responding to Amara’s mood shift, the cat hopped to the floor and trotted toward her feet, rubbing its fur against her socks before leaping onto her lap.
“He’s from your hometown?”
“Not exactly,” she replied, reaching for the animal. “But close enough. And the language. There was a time I was terrified to forget. But now, sometimes I think things would be easier not knowing.”
I brushed my fingers against her cheek, and her eyelids fluttered. There wasn’t anything I desired more than to get inside her head and learn all the ways this world had broken her. While I’d never be a man worth redemption, I’d fill the jagged edges of her heart with mine.
“One day, when you’re ready, I want you to know you can trust me.”
She seemed to study me briefly, as if turning my words over in her mind, but said nothing more, bringing her attention back to the little leopard in her lap.
“That’s an interesting looking cat.”
“She’s a Bengal. Poor thing was near death when I found her. I’d never been much of a cat person, but since her piece of shit owner had the misfortune of swallowing my blade, well, I couldn’t just leave her behind.”
Amara peered at me, amusement in her eyes, as if gauging my reaction. “What’s her name?”
“Phoenix.” She pressed her forehead to the side of the cat’s face asit purred. “I thought it was fitting.”
Rising from the ashes.
There was a deeper meaning there, not just for the cat, but for her.
“One day,preziosa,” I said, tilting her chin so I could lose myself in her eyes, hoping she saw sincerity reflected in mine.