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Adelina joined me a moment later, her beautiful body looking even more amazing when it was wet. Her dark hair stuck to her wet skin, and her makeup immediately smeared as it was washed away. She stood under the water and tilted her head back, letting her hair move down the center of her shoulder blades.
I stared at her, mesmerized even though I’d been staring at her all night. My affection for her had quickly escalated since the first time I set eyes on her. I could have raped her then, but I didn’t. I could have forced her to do what I wanted, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I was truly a good man, or she just made me into one.
In either scenario, I respected her. And I knew she didn’t deserve this. A woman as beautiful and warm as she was didn’t deserve to suffer like this, to appreciate my niceness when I wasn’t even a nice person.
It frustrated me.
I wished there was a solution. I wished there was a way I could save her without risking myself and my family. Now that I had a serious opponent on a different frontier, there was even less I could do for her.
Besides helping her commit suicide.
“What?” She must have noticed that I’d been staring at her for nearly five minutes straight without speaking.
“Just thinking.”
“What are you thinking about?”
Things I’d rather not say. “Nothing that matters.”
“Why don’t I believe that?” She wore a slight smile, teasing me.
I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a solution to this problem, that the Barsetti brothers couldn’t figure out a way to save this innocent woman. I succeeded at whatever I put my mind to. “Have you ever used a gun?”
She flinched at the sudden question, her smile disappearing. “What?”
“Have you ever handled a gun? Like a pistol?”
“Uh…no.” She squirted shampoo into her palm then slowly massaged it into her scalp. “The first time I’d ever seen one was when I was captured…but I’ve never touched one.”
I had an idea—even though it wasn’t great. “What if I taught you?”
“What good would that do?”
“What if I trained you to use one, and when I return you to Tristan, you take one with you? Hidden under your clothes somewhere. Then when you’re inside, when you have the opportunity, shoot him between the eyes.”
“What good would that do? He has twenty men in that complex at all times.”
“Kill as many of them as you can. If you kill them all, you can escape.”
“And Lizzie?”
“Make Tristan tell you exactly where she is. If you have a gun pointed to his skull, he’ll talk.”
She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair with a defeated look in her expression. “Cane, I’m not you. I could never pull that off. You’re sending me back in a week. To pull off secret-agent stuff like that, I’d have to train for months.”
Time definitely wasn’t on our side.
“Even if I kill Tristan, they’re going to kill me anyway. Then I won’t know if Lizzie was ever spared or not. At least if I die of natural causes, they’ll forget about me.”
“Lizzie will suffer anyway, even if she hasn’t been killed.”
Adelina’s eyes filled with sadness.
“I respect your loyalty to her, but I bet she would want you to save yourself.”
“We’re in this together,” she whispered.
“But you shouldn’t be in this together,” I said. “She would want you to run. If Crow and I were in this situation, I would want him to run too. That’s the only victory we would have. I could arrange your escape and make it look legitimate. I could even have Crow shoot me in the arm to make it look credible to Tristan. We could leave traces of your escape so they’ll have a scent to follow—”
“No. I already said no.”
I sighed in frustration. “I just want to help you, Bellissima.”
“I know you do. But you can’t. You’ve done enough.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Yes, it does…” She turned around and faced the faucet, hiding her face from me. The water glided down the slender muscles of her back, a few strands of hair clinging to the center of her shoulder blades. “I’ve made my peace with it, Cane. We need to let it go.”
“You told me you don’t want to leave.” My hands moved to her petite shoulders, and I gave them a gentle squeeze. “And honestly…I don’t want you to leave either.”
“But we can’t have what we want. Life isn’t fair. I’m just grateful my life was so wonderful before I was taken. And you’ve been so good to me too.”
My arms circled her waist, and I kissed her shoulder. My kindness was only in her perception. I took her as a bargaining chip, treated her like livestock rather than a human. I pumped her with my come before I sent her back to where she came from. The only true kindness I showed her was hot meals and a place to sleep.
