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A memory of Emma in our room, her hand pressed to her belly, as if she were protecting it, came to mind, and I went hot all over.I’m going to be a father, I thought and almost smiled…but then the rest of what David said hit me. “She’s leaving?”
Lili sniffled and wiped at her face. “She’s scared,” she said. “She’s not thinking clearly.”
Something dark crushed my chest. Rage made my vision hazy. “Did she say that she wanted to leave?” I asked slowly and carefully, like the words didn’t fit in my mouth.
Hesitantly, Lili’s head dipped in a nod. “But she didn’t mean it!” she said. “Emma’s just —”
I was on my feet and moving before I realized it. I rushed past her, ignoring her calls for me to stop and think about what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was doing; everything was rimmed in red, and there was a ringing in my ears.
Emma was in the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans, as if she was going to make another meal for the family. It would have been a welcome sight, but it only stoked my anger further. She turned, and the sight of her face pushed me over the edge. I stalked across the kitchen and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her to follow me.
“Angel, that hurts,” she said, trying to pull herself out of my grasp, but I tightened my grip. I could almost feel the bones of her wrist rubbing together. “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t speak. There weren’t words for what I was feeling. I could hear her struggling behind me, to keep up with my pace, to free herself, but I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. I half-dragged her through the house, through doors that she must have remembered going through because her breathing became tight and panicked.
“Angel,please,” she tried again; her voice was pained. I’m sure that if I looked down at where I held her wrist, I’d see the beginnings of bruises. I wasn’t sure that I cared. We stopped outside of the room that had been hers when she first came to the compound; we both knew that it locked from the outside with a keypad. Once she was in, she wasn’t coming back out until I let her out. Emma’s eyes were wide with terror. “Don’t do this,” she begged. “Please don’t do this.”
With one hand, I opened the door and shoved her inside. Before she could round on me, I pulled the door shut and keyed in the pin. I heard the lock fit into place. Only then, when I knew that Emma wasn’t going anywhere, did the anger drain out of me.
I could hear Emma crying and begging from behind the door. She asked over and over what she had done wrong, and I scoffed. She knewexactlywhat she’d done. She was trying to manipulate me into letting her go. Fat fucking chance of that. She wasn’t going anywhere.
I walked away from her cries, back down the row of rooms that we’d outfitted as holding cells; I had calls to make. I needed to check with Ademir about his European connections. By the time I reached my office, Emma was almost entirely out of my head…until I saw Lili standing by my office door. Her mouth was twisted in a bitter frown. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “You could have talked to her; it wasn’t like you found her packing a bag. She was making you dinner!”
Irritation and bile rose in my throat. “Métete en lo tuyo.” I walked past her, shutting the door behind me.
* * *
Even through the monitor, I could see Emma’s agitation. She was pacing; she had been since she woke up this morning. If I wanted to, I could zoom the camera in and get a proper look at her face, but I resisted the urge.
I rang for Lara, and a few moments later, she appeared at my office door. “It’s time for her breakfast. Send it in with Lili.”
Lara sighed. “Can’t she come to the dining room, at least? It’s been three days.”
“No.” I hadn’t so much as said a word to Emma since putting her away, and I wasn’t planning on it now. The only people that were allowed anywhere near her was Lili and Lara, and they were on strict instruction to keep conversations brief.
“You’re torturing her,” Lara said, tone brittle. I looked up, and it was almost a shock to not see the warm smile that I associated with the older woman. Instead, there was a deep frown cut across her face. “You keep her penned in like a dog and wonder why she would ever want to leave.”
I gritted my teeth. “She wasn’t going to tell me.”
“How do you know?” Lara shot back. “You didn’t give her a chance to explain anything. You took what David said as gospel and locked her away without even telling her why.”
“She knows,” I said, eyes going back to the computer monitor. Emma had stopped pacing; she was sitting on the bed again, head in her hands.
Lara made a sound like a sob, and when I glanced back at her, the older woman had tears in her eyes. “You are not the boy I helped to raise,” she said.
I stood, squaring my shoulders. “Send Lili in with Emma’s breakfast,” I commanded. “Her lunch goes in at noon.”
Her lip curled, disgusted with me. “I know the schedule,jefe,” she said and left.
There was an inventory for the clubs that I needed to approve, and Padre had a doctor’s appointment that I was meant to attend this afternoon, but everything was pushed to the back of my thoughts. My eyes kept dragging to the monitor.
I saw when Lili opened the door and brought in Emma’s breakfast tray. Although I didn’t keep the sound on that often, I reached over and switched on the volume. “Emma,please, I didn’t —”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Emma replied. Her voice was ragged in a way that I hadn’t heard before, not even when I was threatening her life when we first met. “Just drop the tray and get out.”
“No, you have to listen to me,” Lili said.
Emma laughed, and it was an ugly sound. I was fascinated by this side of her; I had seen her annoyed, even angry, before, but this was another level that I had never experienced before. “I don’t have to do anything,” she sneered. “Run back to your brother, Lili, just like you did before.”
