The Edge of Obsession (Black Ops Confidential 2.5)

The man had accused her—her—of killing his mother. It was unbelievable. And though she knew Sion had played along with Armand, she also worried that Armand’s lies had taken her opportunity to tell Sion the truth.

She should have spoken up, spoken her truth when she’d had the chance.

The squeak of the door opening behind her stopped her dead. He must have come straight here.

His distinct gait announced him as he moved across the room to her. She dared not turn. She felt his hands land on her shoulders. Dared not turn. The palms of his hands pressed against her, turning her with a gentle push.

She looked into his face and saw a wash of raw and tender emotions. He bent and kissed her, full and deep and possessive.

He pulled back, ran a thumb across her wet cheeks. “Your name?”

“Dada Parish.”

“Please to meet you, Dada,” he said, bending to her lips and whispering against them. “Name’s Sion Bradford.”

She took his lips with her own, moving against them with the same feeling she’d seen in his eyes bubbling inside her.

He began to fiddle with the button on her jacket. “I need to—”

“Yes,” she said and let him steer her back toward his bed.

#

“How do you know Armand?”

Tucked in bed with Sion, Dada was ready for the question. And, for the first time in her life, she wanted to tell someone outside her family. “He kept me prisoner as a child. Well, his mother did.”

The temperature in the room seemed to change as Sion tensed beside her.

She went on before he could ask. Before she could lose her courage. “My earliest memory of when things started to change was when I was nine. Walking home from a doctor’s appointment with my mother, a wealthy man smiled at me. It had been happening a lot of late. I’d grown quickly. So tall. Gangly and thin and uncoordinated. Some men noticed. I remember my mother stopping. I thought she would yell at him, but she introduced me.

“From then on, my mother took me regularly to meet him. He doted on me. I was too young to realize that what he saw in me had nothing to do with me. Nothing at all.”

At his silence, she pulled back. Seeing the fearsome look on his face, she ran a hand along his jaw. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

He exhaled a breath that mingled with hers, then braced his hands on her shoulders and drew her closer. “If you see anger in me, it is at myself, for allowing men like Armand to do what they have done. I have been spared enough, luv. Tell me.”

She dropped her head onto his shoulder, breathed him in, and allowed herself to go back in time. Back to when her beloved black shoes had been taken from the garbage and her dress was handmade. “My mother explained how I was going to go live with…” She swallowed. She couldn’t do it, use his name. “…the Frenchman. I imagined us living in a fine house. Me and her and him. I didn’t understand. He already had a family and had arranged for me to be kept by a woman who ran a brothel. Stoker’s mother. A slight woman, with a breadth of cruelty—all bitterness and bones—only surpassed by her son. After I was taken—”

“After? Don’t skip. I want the details of that day.” He shook his head. “Want is the wrong word.” He took his hand from her shoulder and rubbed his chest. “I need the details. What do you remember most from that day?”

Closing her eyes again, she leaned her head on the pillow, and took a series of deep breaths that smelled of him. “Mother put every piece of jewelry she owned on me that day. My neck, wrists, on my fingers. The bracelets and rings were so big, they slipped off my wrist and down my fingers.

“I probably looked ridiculous, but I felt so pretty, all excited by the jewelry and fancy clothes made from an old dress of hers. I didn’t notice her tension. My first notion that something was wrong was when I saw the man who now calls himself Armand, step out from a truck parked along the city block.

“He was a boy then, a teen, but his eyes were already cruel. They ran up and down my body as he waited for me.

“Before my mother left, she told me, ‘Do what the Frenchman says. He will keep you safe if you please him. It is a better life than starving.’”

“Fuck. How could she—”

Dada placed a hand over his mouth. “Don’t.” Though she knew he only wanted to defend her, she couldn’t bear to hear a word spoken against her mother. “My mother was sick, dying from uterine cancer. She thought if she gave me to him, a man who seemed kind, I would at least be educated, fed, taken care of.”

“No excuse. She—”

“Shhh.” She pressed her fingers to his mouth. “The life she had… She left Suriname during the civil way. She—” She stopped herself, stopped from over-explaining and settled for what she had come to understand. “She could imagine no other choices.”

“I’m sorry, luv. So very sorry, but I can’t bear to think of you as that child, dressed in your finest, feeling beautiful, only to experience some of the worst the world had to offer.”

She brushed a tear from his face. “I have also experienced some of the best the world has to offer.”

His eyes dropped to hers. She saw him hesitate, fearful now that he knew part of her truth.

She waited.

He dipped his head, gently kissed her lips. “How long....”

She felt him tense. Heard his heart pounding.

“How long did you live that way?”

“Four years.”

“Fuck.” He rolled her into his arms, then ran a hand along her back. “How did you get out?”

She breathed in his musk, his warmth, his concern and compassion. “When I first came to be held prisoner, I was conditioned to want and long for… this Frenchman. I was not allowed out of my room. I rarely saw anyone else. I was given the food and gifts he sent or brought to me. By the time he would come, I was desperate for company. He would bring me books, give me lessons. He became everything. Years passed that way. And then I got pregnant.”

Sion’s breath rushed past her ear. “He stopped coming, didn’t he?”

“Yes. But he still he paid for me to be kept.”

“So you were left alone in that room?”

Alone? She drew back, angled her head, tried to understand. “No. I wasn’t alone. I had my child inside me.” She held up the arm with her leather bracelet on it. “I made this for my child from an old hair band. I placed it on my wrist but promised the baby that one day it would be his. I sang and read to him every day. I had never been so bored, and hungry, but so very content.”

He ran fingers gently over her bracelet. His mouth tightened. “Hungry?”

“The man you know as Armand was in charge of bringing me food. He was diligent when he knew the Frenchman would come, but when he stopped coming, Armand became sloppy. He stayed away for long days. I believe he was trying to kill me. He wanted my room.”

“Luv,” Sion choked out. “Please…Come closer.”

Hearing his anguish, she put her head back into the crook of his shoulder, let him hold her as tightly as he needed. She rested herself against him, curled into him.

Softly, she said, “I screamed for food sometimes for days. Sometimes he would sit right outside the door laughing as I cried of hunger. I survived only because my room had a bathroom and water.”

“Sinister fuck.”

“Yes. Until that time, I hadn’t sought to escape or rescue myself. It had never crossed my mind. But then I had the child. And we were starving. I began to drop notes from the bathroom window of my prison. Sheer desperation.”

“No one saw?”

“Someone did. A boy. He came into the alley every day, picked up my notes, and ran off. I thought he’d bring me food. Help. What I didn’t know, what I learned later, was that he’d kept the notes. He stored them in his house.”

“He kept them?” Sion’s voice was disbelieving and horrified.

“When I went into labor, I cried for help, but no one came. I couldn’t understand what was happ

ening to me. A few blocks away, the mother of the boy who had taken and stored my letters, was murdered by her husband.

“The police were called. While investigating, an officer found my letters. He read them. Right then and there. Something in him motivated him to act. Not in a year. Not at the end of the week. Not even when he was done his shift.

“He ran out of the house, down blocks to where my letters told him I was imprisoned. He burst into the home, bullied his way past Armand, raced up the stairs, searched, came to my locked door, broke it down, and found me bleeding to death on the floor.

“Dear God.”

“Yes. And on that same day, a day when I should have died, a day when another woman had died, a day when my son also died, I lived. Armand ran away but his mother was arrested. And I was taken to the hospital.”

“Oh, luv,” Sion’s voice was ragged, choked with tears. “A bit more luck than being rescued by a dog. A bloody miracle.”

She began to laugh gently, even as the tears rolled from her eyes, down her face to combine with his tears. “That is not the most miraculous part. What happened next delivered me from hell to heaven.”

He squeezed her. “Tell me that, because I need to hear the part where you were safe and loved.”

Chapter 21

Sion reminded himself again and again that Dada was safe. Safe in his arms. But as many times as he repeated this to himself, he could not let her go. Thankfully, she put up with his embrace.

He kissed away her tears, grateful for her in a way that he thought might make him a fan of God. “What is the miraculous part?”