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I turned around, leaving my drink on the bar, and rushed towards her, gathering in my arms. “Hey,” I muttered, pressing my nose into her hair. She’d showered before the doctor arrived, and her hair was still damp.
She put her nose in my shirt, and I felt the wetness of her tears as they fell. I said nothing as I allowed her to cry in my arms. It was clear that she needed this catharsis, and I needed to feel her in my arms.
After my press statement, her father had called Marcel and let us know that they’d gotten Annie out. I’d still be tense until the moment I’d seen her. And when I had seen her, I’d been able to see the extent of the damage O’Connor had wrought.
My hands tightened around her shoulders as I thought about what Annie had endured. I didn’t know the specifics, but I knew that O’Connor had worked Annie over well. It made me want to kill him if he was still breathing.
I held Annie until her shaking cries subsided.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked, my tone soft.
When Maximoff called me, he’d told me that Annie had been found, and that he was putting her up in a hotel he owned. I was wary at first to throw myself further into the lion's den, but my desire to make sure that Annie was okay, outweighed anything else. I had to see her. I had to make sure that she was okay.
“Sawyer O’Connor cornered me this morning. I was on my way to see my father…” she trailed off, her eyes searching mine. She wanted to know what I thought about her father. I could see the question eating away behind her eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” I asked. “You had to know that I prosecuted Nikolai for what happened.”
She sniffed. “I knew that you would never trust me again. You hate everything that my family stands for.”
“I hate that you lied to me even more.”
“I never intended to lie to you, but I didn't know what to do. I was hiding from my father, and I thought that if I could just avoid the media, I could hide forever.”
It was a ridiculous plan, but I didn’t tell her that. After all, if I had won, her face would have been splashed all over the news, and her father would have taken a vested interest in the city’s new mayor.
“I know it was stupid. I put everything at risk.”
“Why did you reach out to your father?” I asked. Marcel has speculated that it was to get Joseph Rome to give me the money we needed for the campaign, but I needed to be sure.
“Joseph Rome works for him. I leveraged that information to get what you needed from him.”
There was a tightness in my chest as I looked at Annie. She had sacrificed so much for me, and when she had told me that she loved me, I hadn’t even been able to say it back to her. She could have fucking died tonight, and I would have had to live with the knowledge that I’d been too guarded to let her in, even after everything that she’d done for me.
“I know that you probably hate me now,” Annie said. I waited a few seconds to see what she was going to say, but she just sat quietly, allowing the weight of her words to live between us.
“I don’t hate you,” I told her.
I looked down into Annie’s eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to tell her how much I loved her, and how I didn’t think I could ever love anyone as much as I did her. But the words wouldn’t come out.
There was so much else that needed to be said.
“What happened after Sawyer took you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Sawyer O’Connor had always been a worm, but now, he needed to be dealt with.
Annie shivered, and her hand came up to touch her ear. The doctor had bandaged it, but I knew she was reliving the pain that she had felt when Patty had sliced it from her skin. “O'Connor wanted to send you a message,” she said. Her tone was detached, and I knew that she was trying to keep herself from falling apart. “He wanted you to concede. When he found out that Rome would be backing you, he started to panic.”
I sighed. “How did you get away?” I asked. “Your father said that Marco got you out, but he didn’t tell me how.” I wanted to know if O’Connor was still alive because if he wasn’t I was going to have to deal with that. Though a part of me wanted nothing more than to strangle O’Connor with my bare hands, I wasn’t a proponent of murder.
The law existed for a reason, and I didn’t believe in taking it into my own hands. O’Connor deserved his day in court. I’d rather see him dragged through the mud than put in the ground. Same with Sawyer.
Death was instantaneous. I’d rather see them ace what they did.
“He’s alive,” Annie said.
My brow crinkled as I was pulled away from my thoughts. “What?”
“O’Connor is alive.” She shrugged slightly. “He’s missing an eye from where I jammed a handcuff into it, but I made sure that Blanchi didn’t kill him. I didn’t think it would look good if he ended up dead, especially since it’s bound to come out who my father is.”
I didn’t think as I pressed my mouth to Annie’s, grateful to her. Not because she’d done so much to save my campaign but because she truly was a good person. Despite what she said, I knew that she spared O’Connor because she wasn’t a killer.
