Love the Way You Lie (Stripped 1)

If I go with my father now, I’ll never see Kip again. And that’s a good thing. He’s a bastard, just like he told me he is. I have the strangest thought that I should have let him bring me in. At least then he’d get the bounty on my head. After all his work finding me…fucking me…

A tear rolls down my cheek.

“There now,” my father says, pulling me up by my arm. “Everything will be okay. You don’t have to stay here anymore.”

That’s why he thinks I’m crying. Because I don’t want to live in this motel. What he doesn’t know is I’d give anything to go back to the way things were a week ago. Clara and I safely in the motel. And me walking with Kip after work, having no idea he was only there to betray me.

Maybe it could have been enough, to return to that life. If only. “Why did you kill her?” I whisper.

“Portia?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know where you got this idea, bambina. I would have killed her. Should have, maybe. But I never hurt one hair on her pretty head.”

“You expect me to believe her death was an accident? The wife of a mafioso, an accident?”

He looks sad suddenly. And incredibly old. I can see in him the pain in his joints and his back from chasing me. I can see the toll these months have taken on him, searching for me—missing me? “I never told you the truth. I thought I was protecting you. But maybe I was only protecting myself.”

I swallow hard to hear him admit it. “Then you did kill her.”

Pain flashes through his eyes. “I didn’t kill her. No one did.”

“Liar,” I say, shaking with fury.

There’s no way she’s alive. That was just a childish dream.

And I think, I won’t need a Taser to bring a man down. A swift, hard kick to the nuts can do that. And God, my legs are strong. My thighs are fucking weapons after dancing onstage every night. I left my father on the ground. I am practically a black widow, leaving men broken and in pain wherever I go. In those seconds I feel powerful.

And then he says something that is my downfall. “I won’t let Byron touch you again,” my father says. “I shouldn’t have let him touch you at all.”

It was what I always wanted from him. Protection. Caring. I guess a little girl never stops wanting her daddy. But mine is just an illusion. I know, because a second later Byron appears behind him.

I would have expected him to grow scarier in my mind, as if my fears could morph him into a monster. But he seems almost more sinister in that suit and that smile, cat got the cream. “You found her.”

My father’s hand tightens on me. He turns halfway, caught between us. “Byron. I need a moment with my daughter. Then we’ll talk.”

He advances on us, and both my father and I shrink back. There is a new confidence to the man. I’m assuming it has something to do with the gang of muscle-bound men behind Byron, armed and cold. Mercenaries.

“The time for talking is over,” Byron says. “And so is your usefulness. I’m sorry your daughter shot you, though. That’s a rough way to go.”

I scream and yank my father down, but Byron is fast. His aim is perfect. He blows a hole in my father’s head, and the blood spatters on my hands.

Chapter Sixteen

You have to look on the bright side. I learned that early. There’s always a bright side. In this case, the bright side is that Clara definitely got away safe. If I wasn’t sure before, now I know she’s definitely gone. Her books are missing, and the Madonna is gone too.

And I know Byron doesn’t have her. Because he’s torturing me trying to find her.

It’s such a relief that I have no fucking clue where she is.

Thwack.

I can’t be sure I wouldn’t give her up. I love her more than anything. More than my life, not that it’s worth much. I would gladly die for her, but the thing about death is, it’s not easy. Not when I’m tied up in a motel room. I can’t exactly swallow some pills I don’t have or slit my wrists when they’re tied down with rope. I can only endure every strike of Byron’s belt. I can only survive.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Two of the men sit at the table where Clara and I ate meals together. I have the unsettling feeling they are waiting for Byron to be finished with me. That they are waiting for their turns.

“Where is she?” Byron says. I almost think he knows I don’t have the answer. I think he doesn’t care.

I shake my head.