Chapter 11 Blindside
Blindside
To question authority is to lend your voice to the hypocrites of the Defiance. Every voice raised for them is a stone thrown at all true Americans.
— NEW AMERICAN ORDER, A HANDBOOK
Every Thursday, Lucas beat the shit out of me.
Or, he would have if he hadn’t pulled his punches.
Each move I made, he was twelve moves ahead.
If any of the bouts were real, I’d have been dead or captured within minutes.
He offered advice about areas I could improve, but I suspected he enjoyed watching me struggle.
He chuckled a few times, fueling my frustration.
I missed his fury. Furious Lucas was scary, but predictable.
The sarcastic self-defense instructor he’d transformed into had me second-guessing my entire life.
After a full evening of battering me, he crossed his lean arms and frowned.
“I hope you’re at least remembering everything I tell you since you’re incapable of doing anything I say. ”
I didn’t bother to hide my annoyance. “Every time I try, you throw some new move at me and it fucks up my concentration.”
He cracked his neck. “Do you think an attacker will allow you to concentrate before he attacks?”
“Of course not.”
“Then—”
I threw up a finger, and his mouth snapped shut. “I’d expect my trainer to allow it.”
A small laugh escaped through his nose. “You need me to hold your hand through it?”
“How were you taught? It couldn’t have been like this.”
“See one, do one, teach one.” His casual one-shoulder shrug had my hands itching to strangle him. “That’s how I learned everything.”
Sweating in the stuffy room, I resisted the temptation to growl. As spring melted into summer, sparring became a venture in heat endurance, and my hair defied gravity. “Can’t we at least open a window?”
“Not if you’re going to yell at me.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “You might wake the neighbors.”
The growl rumbled deep in my chest, and I exploded. “What neighbors? No one lives in this neighborhood.”
He dropped his head. I glared at his hair before he glanced up, laughing at me. “Is that a temper?”
“I’m hot and hungry.” And maybe I’m also on my period.
“Want to stop early today?”
“Early? You’ve been battering me for two hours.”
“Battering is a bit strong.” He gestured toward me. “You don’t even have bruises.”
I threw out my arm and showed him a tiny bruise near my wrist.
He perked an eyebrow. “Really?”
“When I arrived, my arm was pristine, and now…”
“Now you’re deeply and irrevocably flawed.”
He was unmoved by my flat stare. “Have I mentioned that I hate you?”
“Once or twice.”
“Can we please open a window?”
With a toss of his hand, he motioned behind me. “Go for it.”
Pane up, I sat on the floor beneath to catch the breeze.
He took a seat against the wall three feet away, and we peered at each other through the dark.
When he leaned his head back, my gaze traced the outline of his throat.
Such a vulnerable place, the throat. If I had a knife, I could kill him instantly.
I shook myself.
Why had that thought popped into my head?
I was spending far too much time with a murderer.
Desperate to think of anything else, I shifted my focus to something irrelevant. “Why do we sit in the dark? You have solar panels.”
“I don’t want people to know about this place. Lights are suspicious. Candles work fine.”
“Then why are there no candles in here?”
His skeptical gaze slid my way. “Didn’t you just say you’re hot? Do you ever stop complaining?”
Damn, this guy was good at pushing my buttons. “Do you ever stop being an ass?”
A dramatic sigh escaped his lungs.
“If I’m so annoying, why don’t you report your information directly to Theo?”
“Who the fuck is Theo?”
“Harrison.”
Vibrant eyes grew penetrating and curious. “You call your general by his first name?”
I mentally slapped a hand over my eyes. Clever, Sophia. Good cover.
He waited for my explanation, but I gave none, so he widened his eyes…questioning, expectant.
I groaned. “Fine. He was a friend of my father’s. Growing up, he was just Uncle Theo. It’s why I’ve been in the Defiance since the beginning. Theo’s always been by my side.”
Lucas blinked at me. “No.”
“No?”
He raised a hand, fingers splayed, all pause-while-I-reason-through-this-difficult-dilemma.
“Let me get this straight. Your entire ideology is based on the concept that we’re all equal and free, and yet the leader of that ideology chose to sell his adopted niece—like a pimp—to what I’m sure he thought was a woman-hating rapist for information? ”
Could I burn him with my gaze alone? “He didn’t sell me. I volunteered.”
“And he allowed you to just…walk into my arms? Without issue?”
I opened my mouth, but what could I say? Memories of Theo flitted through my mind, and I had no idea how to answer his question.
“You said you’d bring her back!” I scream at him. “You said she was alive!”
His mouth opens, but nothing emerges.
“You promised!” I yell.
Theo hurries around his desk and takes my arm, but I shrug out of his grasp.
“You promised, Theo! Mom— She’s dead!”
“I tried,” he says, his tone thready and desperate.
“You should have tried harder!”
Outside his office, a crowd gathers. A soft voice—Zara’s?—cuts through my anger. “Sophia, let’s get you some water, okay?”
I ignore her. “You refused to let me go with them. I could have—I could have helped her!”
“You’d be dead,” he says, brow creased.
“Maybe that would have been better!”
A gentle hand touches my shoulder. “Sophia—”
I yank away from Zara’s grip.
“It’s alright,” Theo says, looking over my head. “She’s just upset.”
Just upset?
An inhuman wail erupts from my mouth, composed of nothing but loneliness and pain. I launch myself at him. My fists pound his solid chest as I scream You promised! over and over.
After a moment, Theo restrains my wrists.
“I hate you!” I yell. “I hate you! Get off me!”
“God,” Lucas said, interrupting my reverie. “And I thought my side was bad.”
“Your side is bad, and you’re avoiding the question.”
“I’m sorry.” He drew his knees up and draped his arms over them. “I was too distracted by my absolute revulsion. What did you ask?”
“Why don’t you report your information to Harrison instead of me?”
He cocked his head. “How would I go about that, Sophia?”
“Well, I mean, how did you contact him in the first place?”
His smirk appeared. “You didn’t ask him?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
The chuckle that burst from him had me stiffening. “I’m not surprised.”
Embarrassing for Theo then?
“You could’ve met him here,” I said.
“He would’ve never allowed that, which is laughable, considering he let you traipse in here with no escort.
Would he be upset if I murdered you?” He threw a hand up.
“No, don’t answer. I don’t want to know.
If he’d come here, he would’ve brought a dozen people as backup.
He’d have the whole neighborhood swarming.
It would’ve raised alarms, and we’d be discovered.
And even if he hadn’t, what if I was followed?
How would I explain meeting secretly with the general of the Defiance? ”
“You couldn’t, I guess.” I studied his face, his guarded expression. “You’re a planner, huh?”
He nodded. “I didn’t want physical evidence, and I needed a mediator of his choosing so he could trust her. I wanted someone who wasn’t on the front lines so she’d outlast me.”
Outlast.
I shook off that word. “And you wanted a woman.”
Something off-putting lurked deep in his eyes. “Yes.”
I wanted to ask him why, and he waited, eyes gleaming like he knew my thoughts. But I couldn’t do it. What if the answer was the obvious one?
It seemed unlikely, but possibilities sifted through my mind. Maybe he thought if I trusted him, I’d be more into it. Maybe he was trying to seduce me so I’d give him information. Maybe he liked my second-guessing everything.
Or maybe he didn’t want anything at all.
Then why was he doing this?
I straightened my spine. “Do you have information tonight?”
His head tilted, and he chuckled under his breath before giving me several points to take to Theo. When he finished talking, he stood and offered his hand. My heart thumped in my chest while I considered refusing him.
Had I ever voluntarily touched this man?
With a shaky hand, I reached for him. Warm fingers closed around mine, and he yanked me to my feet. I tried to let go, but he held tight and pulled me close. “You still think I’m going to hurt you, don’t you?”
I swallowed. “Hurting people is what you do.”
His brow raised. “Why would I spend all this time trying to keep you alive just to hurt you in the end?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been playing mind games from the beginning.”
His eyes flared with surprise, there and gone before I could investigate it. “Have I?”
“You—you purposely mess with me.”
He shook his head and dropped my hand. “I think you hear what you feel. Not what I say.”
Was that true? Though the man had lost some of his terrifying aura, he still chilled my blood to ice. Every time the memory of his first execution popped into my head, the fear would wash over me like acid rain.
I’d witnessed Lucas Scott kill dozens without mercy. It was only a matter of time before I was next.
“What do you want from me?”
His voice softened as it sometimes did, almost brittle in its exhaustion. “I don’t want anything from you, Sophia.”
“Then…why are you doing this?”
“I told you. They hurt my sister.”
My throat thickened, and tears burned behind my eyes. It would be so easy to trust him, and yet, “I—I just don’t believe you.”
His gaze grew distant. “That’s good. You should never take someone’s words at face value.”
My stomach dropped. “Are you saying you’re lying?”
“No.” He held an arm out as an invitation to leave. “I’m not.”