I swallow hard before pulling out a fresh alcohol swab. This one I have to touch closer to the wound, on the burnt skin itself. “Not mercy for me.”
He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even move. “For who? For whoever your precious leader sent to scare Candy at the club? Because that’s the first question Ivan’s going to ask you when we stop.”
My heart squeezes. Candy—is that her name now? I knew her as Sister Candace. I clenched my fists every time Leader Allen talked about her, half-praying he’d never find her. Half-praying he would find her so that he’d leave me alone. And the worst part is he sent my brother. His best soldier.
When the wound is clean, I pull out clean gauze and tape.
It doesn’t seem like enough for a bullet wound.
“Will this be…okay?”
“Don’t worry,” he says, sounding amused. “I won’t die anytime soon. Not before I’ve had a chance to find out your secrets. Not before I pay you back.”
I shudder, smoothing the tape over his skin. His muscles ripple under my touch.
And then I’m finished, except I don’t move away. I set the bloodied wipes aside and kneel at his feet. We’re in the car, but I have enough experience in this position to hold myself with grace. I have enough experience in this position to know what he’ll want from me.
My hands are stained red from his blood, dark and dry. I move them to his pants, opening the clasp. His large hand covers both of mine, stilling me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he demands.
I flinch at the word fuck. It’s a plea. A prayer. I’ll give him this in the hopes that he’ll be soft with me. Because it isn’t only me he’d hurt. Isn’t only my brother. There’s another life at stake. “I’m pregnant,” I whisper.
I hadn’t wanted to tell Leader Allen, but he noticed my lack of courses. He noticed the small bump during prayers. And he declared the baby a child of God.
Luca showed no pain during the entire time I cleaned his gunshot wound.
Now he sucks in a breath. “Whose child is it?”
I meet his emerald gaze, certain of this much. “Leader Allen.”
Fury flashes across his face. “He forced you.”
He didn’t have to. There are no choices in Harmony Hills—not for women, not for children. Not for me. “I’m not sorry he’s gone.”
“No,” he murmurs. “You were ready to shoot him. Instead you shot me, because you think I’m the same.”
I see the way he looks at my body beneath the shift. I see the hard ridge in his pants when I’m near him. He wants the same thing that Leader Allen took from me. And maybe I could have survived that, if I didn’t have someone else to think about.
We stop in a city so large it takes my breath away.
There’s a hotel room with windows that look out over the buildings, so high it makes me dizzy. In that room Luca steals some of my secrets. He makes me tell him who Leader Allen sent. My brother. Alex. I don’t know whether Alex deserves to be punished, to be killed, for what he’s done, but I don’t want to be the one to cause it. My only solace is that he never returned after his last mission. Luca will have to find him first.
It’s a shock that Luca doesn’t take my body, even though I see the way he looks at me. I feel the way he tightens whenever he touches me. It’s only a matter of time.
Only a matter of time before I escape from him, too.
I have to, because I’ll never trust a man again. I can’t risk it, because more than anyone I know what they’re capable of. And I have someone else to protect.
So I run from him. Candace helps me with that.
No matter how hard he tries, he’ll never catch me. I’ll run until my legs give out, until my dying breath. There’s a child inside me, one who deserves a life without violence. Without pain.
Maybe I deserved that too.
Chapter Three
One year later