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He doesn’t release me for a moment, not when he crawls onto the bed, droplets of water seeping into the sheets as he positions us with me cradled in his lap, and not even when he pulls the sheets up around us, making sure my whole body is covered.
Silence envelops us, and I lean into it. The only sounds are our combined breathing. We’re quiet for so long that my heartbeat starts to come down, the tears rolling down my cheeks begin to slow, and the heaving in my chest begins to calm.
Elijah’s hand moves to the back of my neck, holding me securely against him so there’s nowhere I can go, and honestly, I don’t want to go anywhere. I need him right now, no matter how fucked up that is, how much I should want to run a mile from the man who has taken everything from me, I don’t want to.
“I will never hurt you, Snow.” Elijah’s deep rumble startles me slightly, but I allow myself to relax back into his warmth. “I’m not my uncles, and I don’t think you’re dispensable. You are everything.” He pauses for a moment, as if finding the right words for whatever is coming next. “When we met, my father immediately noticed how I looked at you. I was still young, and I hadn’t quite figured out that my family were bad people. I was kept isolated from other children growing up, aside from Everett of course, and I guess even him to a certain extent. It never occurred to me that I should hide my affection for you from them.”
I shift slightly, trying to look up at him. It’s clear that whatever he’s about to tell me is meaningful, and I want to be able to look into his eyes as he tells me the story. But when he steels his arms around me, holding me in place, I don’t fight him. It’s not in his nature to be vulnerable, and if he’s going to lay all his cards out on the table for me, I need to respect his boundaries, even if he hasn’t shown me the same courtesy so far.
“They saw it as a way to attack your family. I’m sure you’re well aware of our complicated shared history and throwing in that Everett chose your family over his own… it made things tense. They thought that if I got close to you, perhaps they would have the in they always needed to bring everything down from the inside.”
Why is he telling me this? The thought strikes me that perhaps this entire thing has been a ruse to avenge his family. That maybe the alliance, taking me, marrying me, it all feeds back into some revenge plot that I’ve found myself the center of.
Elijah brushes his fingers down my spine, silently telling me to relax, and I can’t help but comply. “I had to get sneaky about how I watched you and had to throw them off the scent. One day my uncle Angelo came over with this woman.” He shakes his head, the movement jostling my body slightly, but I make no move, remaining perfectly still so as not to interrupt. “I was about seventeen at the time, I think, and I’d never really found members of the opposite sex that appealing. Apart from you of course.” He tightens his grasp around me, and I almost believe it’s to remind him I’m here and that I’m real, even if the circumstances that brought me here weren’t above board. “I was forced to lose my virginity at the same age Everett was, to become a man, they said, but after that, it just wasn’t something that interested me that much, especially because the women my father and uncles would have around, were there against their will. I wasn’t into it.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind him that I’m here against my will and that he doesn’t seem to have a problem with getting off on keeping an unwilling woman locked up in his house, but I manage to swallow down the comment.
“But this woman Uncle Angelo brought around to the house one afternoon was a test. I knew it the moment she walked in the door because of the way he watched me. They wanted me to prove what I said about you was true, that I had no interest in the littlest Saint James. They wanted to catch me out on a lie because if it was you who I was truly interested in, they would use it, and me, to bring your family down from the inside.”
Elijah is quiet for long moments, but his body vibrates with the unspoken words, and even without him saying another word, it’s clear this story is going somewhere dark, and after all I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours, I’m not sure I can handle it. But I don’t move. I remain perfectly still, leaning into the warmth he emits and finding comfort in the soft circles he draws into my bare back.
“Her name was Serena,” he tells me. “She was taken from her family in France, stolen away in the night, without so much as a goodbye. From what I could tell, her father owed Uncle Angelo some money, and when he didn’t pay, he took something else in return for his generosity. Although the Russo family name doesn’t extend as far as yours, there’s a reason we are known for the atrocities that we are.”
My body stills at his words. I’ve always known the Russo family were involved in some bad shit, way worse than any of the pies my family have our fingers in. But to take someone’s daughter, to steal them away without so much as a thought, it gives me room for pause.
Serena and I are not alike. Our situations may as well be worlds apart. Elijah has taken me from my life, that much is true, but it’s not because of some revenge plot, or because my family owes him money. It’s because he wants me, and if I’m really honest with myself, if I allow myself to put all the reasons this situation is fucked up to the side, I want him too.
When we come together, it’s like thunder and lightning. Two forces that move in a symphony despite themselves.
The revelation has my heart stalling in my chest, but I force myself to remain relaxed as Elijah continues. “She was a nice enough girl, intelligent. She would have had a great future if she’d been given the opportunity. But being taken by Angelo Russo may as well have been a death sentence. Hell, death would have been far kinder than the fate Serena met.”
I squeeze my eyes closed, tears pooling behind the lids that I can’t allow to fall against my cheeks. If he realizes how much the story is upsetting me, he might stop, and my morbid curiosity is getting the better of me. Whatever he’s about to tell me, whatever his uncle did to this poor girl, was caused by me. Regardless of whether I knew it or not, I played a part in someone else’s pain.
“What happened to her?”
42
Elijah
The story playing on loop in my mind isn’t one I ever thought I would think about again, let alone tell another living soul. They say there are great defining moments in life that shape who you’re meant to be, and this is one of mine.
Perhaps if I had walked away from my family before this point, just the way Everett did, I would be able to be saved. Perhaps there would have been some part of my soul that was redeemable, but not after the things I saw and the things I was forced to do. No soul can survive that much darkness.
I press her harder against my body, using her to weigh my own down. The reminder of her warmth, of her presence, is enough to keep me grounded. From the way she tensed, I know she’s realized this could have just as easily been a story about her, and although it makes me an even shittier person than I already am, I’m glad I have my little Snowflake safely in my arms.
It doesn’t matter how she came to be here, or that she still hasn’t accepted her place at my side. All that matters is that she walks this earth, that she breathes the same air I do. For that, I will always be grateful.
“Uncle Angelo presented Serena to me as if she were a gift. She was so young, and so broken by the time she got to me. For the most part, I was kept away from the trafficking side of things. Not really for any other reason than it wasn’t something dad had a lot to do with, and therefore my exposure was minimal. She was bruised from head to toe, and she looked as if she hadn’t washed for at least a week. Her hair was matted, and she had this look in her eye.” I pause, trying to put my finger on exactly what it was about her eyes that had even the blackest of souls hurting. “She looked dead inside. It was like when she looked at me, there was no one behind the gaze. I don’t know what they did to her before she was presented to me, and honestly, even I don’t like to think about it.”
The memory slams into me like a steam train that has lost control. So much that I saw as a child and as a teenager was dark and gritty, but the way this girl was used, as a pawn in a war she had nothing to do with, even I can admit it was fucked up.
“My father told me that I was to make a decision. Either I married Serena, or I killed her. I’d never killed a woman before, only men who I was told deserved it, but at the time I didn’t think there was anything a woman could do that would lead to such a punishment. The look of resignation she gave me as they laid out my options, neither of them were better than the other for her. One would lead to her becoming a plaything for the men in my family, and eventually bearing my children, and the other would put her out of her misery, even if it meant never taking another breath.”
Snow’s breathing picks up. She keeps saying I’ve taken her from her life, but if this story is teaching her anything, it’s that that’s simply not true. Not in the way she likes to think it is. Despite the fact I kidnapped her, I’ve allowed her access to her siblings, she’s been allowed to leave the house at times, and I didn’t take her until I knew she wanted it, until her body craved me just as deeply as mine does her.
“What did you choose?” Her words are barely above a whisper, as if she’s afraid of the answer.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I bury my face into her neck, breathing in her sweet scent. It pulls me back to the present as my mind threatens to drag me into the darkest corners of itself. “I told my father I needed time to think about it. I’d barely made sense of my attraction to you, and I wasn’t prepared to give that up. I always knew it would take a lot to get you here, that you’d fight me with every last breath, and I couldn’t do that with a wife. But I wasn’t prepared to kill an innocent woman who had done no wrong aside from having a father who borrowed money from the wrong man.
