Promise to Keep (Vow To Protect 2)

It’s my turn to level him a petulant glare. “So we just let them lord over us all like that? To tell us when we can come and go, all at their bidding? How is that fair?”

He scoffs, and it makes me want to throw a pastry at his face. “Fairness is a concept for children. Life is never fair, and the council is even less fair than that. They work for themselves and themselves alone. Maybe one day we can destabilize their power enough to try to challenge them, but that day isn’t today.”

I stare into my breakfast and refuse to let him see the tears pooling in my eyes. It’s not his dressing down that is making me cry. Again, it’s the thought of us running out of time and quickly. Too quickly.

A warm hand slides against the back of my neck, then down the back of my shirt to ease along my spine. “Angel,” he whispers, then removes his hand and kneels beside my chair. “Things will be okay. You will be okay, I promise you that. And you know I don’t make promises lightly.”

“It’s not even about me. It’s about what they will do to you. Not only for defying them, but for Sal’s death, and if they suspect you, my father’s too,” I say, more to my food than to him.

He cups my chin in his fingers and slowly turns my face to meet his eyes. “They wouldn’t dare take me out right now. Not when the season isn’t for another couple of months. When it opens again, we might have trouble. For now, they want to scare us and set me straight is all.”

I open my mouth to say something, anything to convince him, but there’s a resignation to his gaze that stops me. I have nothing left to use to persuade him. And there’s no one else I can talk to who might interfere to stop the meeting in the first place. God, I hate to feel so powerless. Each second closer strips away more and more of the self-assurance I’ve built up since we married.

Maybe that’s why I hate them so much. They make me feel like a victim all over again. I resent them for it.

He stands with a sigh and returns to his spot on the other side of the table to finish his breakfast. Despite his insistence, I keep going over scenarios in my head, of ways we might be able to escape, of people who might be convinced to help us. I’m not above paying someone less reputable to help, as long as they aren’t as bad as Sal’s family…or well, in the same business. I couldn’t stomach the thought of giving human traffickers those kinds of resources.

“Angel, you’re still thinking pretty hard over there,” he says, almost conversationally, but there’s an edge to his tone that belies the casualness.

“It happens on occasion,” I snip back and shovel another bite of oatmeal in my mouth.

He stands again, marches around the table, draws me out of my chair by my upper arm, and drags me down the hallway. I stumble behind him, my spoon still in my hand. “Where are we going?”

“You used to ask a lot fewer questions,” he says over his shoulder, then opens the door to his armory.

I follow him in because he doesn’t give me a choice, and the smell of the guns sends a wave of nausea through me that might bring up my breakfast.

After he finds the table with the knives, he shoves a few out of the way, lifts me up, and sets me on the stainless-steel table. I squeak and settle against the chill on my bare legs below my skirt. “What are we doing in here?”

He lifts a knife by the blade and slaps the handle in my palm. I jump so hard I almost drop it, but he clamps his hand around mine at the last second. “Calm down. I’m going to show you a few things so you feel safer, and also see that I can handle myself…even if the five aren’t with me.”

I swallow hard and nod. “Okay…what do I need to know?”

He repositions my hand and then lifts my wrist to move up and down. “Hold it like this and always come from below, never above.”

“Or I could just not stab anyone at all.”

He waves behind him. “Do you want a gun instead? I can teach you that next.”

The man has made his point. I stare down at the gleaming edge of the knife. “What do you want me to do with it until I might need to use it? If we get to that point, then I’m pretty screwed already, right?”

His hand tightens, and he locks his gaze to mine. “We made a deal…you protect our child with your life. If I’m down, and they are coming at you, you still try to protect yourself, understand?”