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His chin jutted upward, his look going to the ceiling. “I don’t have a choice, Vic.” He wouldn’t look down at her no matter how hard she yanked on his arm.
“I am begging you.” She grabbed his other arm, tugging at both of his wrists. “Begging you, please don’t do this. Please.”
His look dropped to her without the slightest hint of emotion. “You don’t beg.”
“I am begging you on this score.” She stepped in close, setting her body against his as she stared up at him, both of her hands moving up to clutch his biceps. “Please don’t do this, Rafe. Whatever has happened long in the past, it has happened and there is no changing it. My family…”
Her throat suddenly choked closed and she had to swallow hard before she lost the ability to speak, to beg. Words started to fly, tumbling out of her mouth in pure panic. “Eva is a mother—a mother. And you are taking her away from those children, a boy and a girl—Dunkin and Elsbeth, and she loves them so much. Torrie is a mother too, her babe, little Quinton is just one year old. An innocent little boy that deserves to have his mother. You don’t know what it’s like. Elsbeth. Elsbeth is six.I was six when I understood—truly understood what it meant not to have a mother. To have this terrible loneliness aching in my chest all the time. No matter that Sloane came into my life and became my mother—she always loved me so hard—extra hard, for she knew about that little black spot on my heart that had shriveled up into nothing long ago. I know what it is and it cannot happen again. Don’t let that happen to the children. Please. Don’t set little black spots on their hearts that can never be healed. They are innocent. They. Need. Their. Mothers.”
She held her breath, her eyes meeting his.
Miraculously, and out of nowhere, the tiniest spark of recognition appeared in his dark brown eyes. Warmth and pain, where there had only been cold. A slight tremor entered his voice. “I do. I do know what it’s like.”
She blinked through tears she hadn’t realized had gathered along her lashes.
He’d never talked about his mother, only his father and so little at that. Anytime she’d asked, he’d given her the stony stare she’d grown so accustomed to. Her words choked out. “You do?”
He offered a slight nod. “I recognize that feeling in your chest. A hollow.” His eyes closed to her, and his head stayed bowed. “For me it always gaped open wide when I was in the village market, and I would see this other little boy, my age, grabbing onto his mother’s hand. And I would instinctively raise my hand just like him, mirroring his actions. Only my hand clutched onto air, while his clutched onto skin and bone. I hated that boy. Hated what he had. Hated that I had nothing—only air—when he had everything.”
Her soul both crumbled and surged at his words. Crumbled for the pain he’d lived with, never letting it surface. Surged, for he understood exactly what he would be taking from so many children if he let Eva and Torrie die.
His eyes opened to her, his jaw set hard. “I will find out where Eva and Torrie are being held, but it will cost.”
“Anything. We will pay—trade—anything. Anything.”
His hand lifted, sliding along her chin, cradling it. “I’ll have to deliver you.”
{ Chapter 22 }
Victoria swallowed hard. “No.”
Rafe looked pained for a breath and his hand dropped away from her face. “It is the only way I can find out where Eva and, presumably, Torrie, have been taken. You’ll be put in the same place with them. It was the plan all along—all of them, Reiner, Lachlan, Desmond, Roe—all of them on their knees. Trading away their worlds. Those men, all of them so hard to break. But they had one weakness in common that would destroy them—their wives.”
She had to gasp at the sheer viciousness of the plan, and her head spun for a long second before she could still her mind. “That is despicable. And you want me to put myself in the middle of it?” She had to force herself to breathe. To keep her heart from beating so hard it exploded in her chest.
“It is despicable. But that is who I am, Vic. A monster. And this is the only way I can see to get Eva and Torrie out of it. I have to deliver you. To Reiner and Desmond, it is clear you are worth everything. You are their child. And we cannot tell anyone what we plan.”
Warning bells clanged loud in her head. “We cannot tell my father? Uncle Reiner?”
He shook his head, his face hard stone. “They can’t know. There cannot be the slightest hint that they are closing in.”
She exhaled a long breath, trying to order her thoughts. “So all of them are in danger? Sloane and Jules as well?”
He nodded, his look grave. “Though I imagine they’ll have a hard time taking Jules, from what I’ve seen.”
She looked to the door, her hands shaking. “I need to warn them. Save them.” She started toward the doorway.
Rafe stepped in front of her, blocking her exit. “You cannot.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“Those mothers of yours, they will lock you up in a room—just as quickly as your fathers would—before they let you leave this place. One of them will go, maybe both, to Desmond and Reiner. And that is a mistake, believe me. You don’t want them out on the roads. This is the safest place for them, here in this fortress of Seahorn. It’s well protected.” He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “And if things go wrong out there…”
She stilled, her voice a whisper. “They are mothers.”
And she was not.
He nodded, his look grave.
