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“That’s what makes you a good mother,” he ground out. “The best. Because you’ll never do what’s easier, you’ll always do what’s right.”
And that’s why he didn’t lie to Nathan.
“I don’t know, buddy,” he said honestly. “But I promise you I’m gonna find her. And you know that men never break their promises.”
Nathan nodded. “I know, Captain.”
He trusted him, that kid. He trusted Lance so completely, with a purity he didn’t deserve. A dedication he didn’t deserve. But he’d work to earn it. He’d keep his promise. He’d get Elena back, for the both of them.
He crouched down so he was eye to eye with Nathan, who was sitting on the same sofa his mom had been in waiting for him in the Greenstone Security offices. Fucking full circle.
Karen and Eliza had been against him coming here, telling him it would be better for him to be in his own surroundings.
It probably would be.
But Lance wanted him close.
To her credit, although her eyes narrowed, Eliza had conceded, her and Karen in the kitchen preparing supper for Nathan.
“But she’ll be back, right?” Nathan asked him.
“Yeah,” Lance ground out. “She’ll be back.”
Nathan nodded. “Okay.”
Lance got his strength then. From a five-year-old. From the woman he loved. The woman he would be getting back. Whatever it took.
Elena
Robert had lost it.
That much was very clear.
But I didn’t think he ever had anything to lose. He was just excellent at pretending.
Pretending to be human.
“If you’d just let me have the kid, if you’d just come back and didn’t act like a total cunt, then we wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be here,” he hissed. “We’d be a family.”
I glared at him. “We were never a family.”
That got me another backhand.
The sting reverberated through my skull but it wasn’t as effective as I knew Robert wanted it to be, because he was focusing on the road.
It was getting darker now.
That was a good thing.
It meant a lot of time had passed. I wasn’t sure how long Robert had been driving around with me drugged in the seat beside him, or if he’d taken me somewhere. It had been light when he took me.
Nathan would be out of school. I wasn’t there to pick him up. But Lance would have been. He would’ve known something happened. Logan and Esther would have called him as soon as I didn’t turn up for my shift, with my car in the parking lot. He would pick up Nathan, keep him safe. Robert had used an easy lie to get me to go with him. But I was okay with that. I’d never be more okay with a lie in my life. Nathan was safe. He was safe.
I had to chant that.
Because it became clear that Robert didn’t have Nathan when I got in the car. When he rattled on about “Greenstone Security fucks keeping me from my son.” That was before he’d plunged a syringe into my neck, when I was still conscious.
It was then I got it. He’d used the weapon he knew would shatter me, without lifting a finger. He couldn’t get to Nathan. We’d protected him. Lance protected him.
And Lance would find me. I would try to escape if I could, I would fight. But I was cuffed, still struggling with the aftereffects of whatever he’d injected into my body. I couldn’t move my hands properly, or my legs. I guessed that was the point.
“You’ve changed,” Robert said, slowing so he could pull into a parking lot. I couldn’t move my head to see where we were. “That fucker has changed you. You’re not going to be a good wife anymore. A good mother. I can’t change you back. But I can get you back for what you did to me.”
“What I did to you?” I laughed, it was weird and slurred but I got my point across. “You’re insane.”
He smiled, it was unnerving. This whole situation was unnerving. But the smile, it was empty, unhinged, the face of a man watching things burn.
“Remember our first date, honey?” he asked instead of lashing out with the insult that I expected him to. “You were trying so hard not to look like the white trash whore you were, we had a nice dinner, then we came out here where you let me put my hand up your cunt, showing me what a whore you were.”
I did remember. I remembered not having anything nice enough to wear to the restaurant he took me to, so I wore a secondhand dress that was two sizes too small and didn’t go with the décor. I remembered the compliments, the smiles. The nice guy. Then we came out to a wharf that was Robert’s ‘secret place’ that somehow no one had ever found because it was in a strange spot, outside of the city and not worth most people’s time.
