Chapter 42 #2
“They pulled me from your car.”
Son of a bitch. The attack was staged. The real target was Tatiana.
I curl my fingers into fists until my knuckles crack. “Kent?”
“He stood by while they dragged me away.” She’s quiet for a moment, seeming to reflect on that. “I knew there was something about him, something I didn’t trust or like.”
I want to fucking kill him all over. “Where did they keep you?”
“I don’t know. They tied me up and pulled a bag over my head, so it was difficult to tell where they took me. It was a warehouse of sorts with a bathroom at the back. The place was deserted. There was an empty parking lot behind the building.”
I go closer, fury and a brutal need for vengeance warring with regret in my chest. “Did they hurt you? Did they lay their filthy hands on you?”
“Not like that.” She looks away. “They left me alone for hours or days. Time became a blur. It got confusing. I think that’s when I started losing it, when my mind—”
She bites off the rest.
Gripping her chin between a thumb and forefinger, I turn her face back to me. “When what happened?”
She shrugs a shoulder as if the statement carries no significance or weight. “They locked me in a trunk that was barely big enough to hold a body curled into a ball.” Almost ashamedly, she adds, “For days at a time.”
My entire body shuts down—my mind, my pulse, my breathing. Killing rage takes over, twisting me into something that shouldn’t be let loose on the streets.
She continues in a soft voice. “That’s when I started forgetting my own name, when I broke. It was the panic, being confined in that box—”
I put a finger over her lips, unable to listen to more. I fear if I do, I may walk out of this church and knife down every mercenary in the city. I won’t stop until the streets have become rivers of blood.
She pushes my hand away. “You wanted to know. I’m not the one who wants to eliminate any rivals of your necklace.”
“Your mother hid it here.”
Seeing that Milena had the key, it’s a logical conclusion. Of course, Tatiana could’ve moved the necklace here after her mother had given it to her, but she doesn’t deny the statement.
Which brings me to another question. “Why did your mother have it?”
She rests her chin on her shoulder, staring at the painting above the altar again. “She was planning on running away. She was going to take me and leave Leander and my father behind.”
“So she stole the necklace.”
“She took the most valuable possession she could find in my father’s safe. She hid it with money, a burner phone, false passports for both of us, and a gun.”
“That’s where you got that gun.”
She looks back at me. “She gave me the key in the hospital where she drove me after my father… after he whipped me. She knew I wanted to keep Noah, and my father would never let me.” Tears glimmer in her eyes.
“He would’ve forced me to have an abortion and marry Joni Stein.
My mom gave up her chance for freedom so that my baby and I could be free.
” Her voice cracks a little as she says, “So that’s what I did. I took what she’d left and fled.”
I focus on her perfect features, on the sadness that torments her eyes. “Why didn’t you try to sell the necklace?”
“I did.” She utters a wry laugh. “Unfortunately, that didn’t work out very well.”
I’m curious. “How come?”
“Right at the beginning, when the medical expenses of Noah’s birth had eaten up all my cash, I put out some feelers to shady gemstone dealers.
I would never have been as brazen as trying to sell the necklace without an army of soldiers fitted out with the best weapons money could buy to protect me, but I did consider selling off a few diamonds.
” She meets my eyes squarely. “I had no idea how such a valuable and highly guarded piece had ended up in my father’s clutches.
I remembered when it had disappeared from the museum.
It had been all over the news. Every law enforcement agent and insurance company investigator were after that necklace.
” She chuckles. “Sadly, so were the criminals. All I got for asking the right questions to the wrong people was attracting unwanted attention that resulted in a few scary attempted kidnappings and attacks I was lucky to have escaped.”
The mention of that alone makes my blood boil. I can’t imagine those scenarios without losing it completely, and I need to keep my head because I want names and descriptions. I’ll go after every one of those sons of bitches and rip them apart.
Another laugh leaves her lips. “How was that for irony? Most days, I didn’t have enough money to feed us, and all the while, I had access to a fortune I couldn’t touch.”
Fuck. The sound of that, that she or Noah went hungry, does something to me, something that makes me want to fix things that can’t be fixed. It’s not an easy truth to live with. The knowledge burns like acid in my stomach.
She continues with a rueful smile. “Being a fugitive has its advantages. It teaches you to always have an escape plan A, B, and C as well as how to disappear fast and effectively.”
Yes, she’s become quite the escape artist. No one knows that better than me.
“I realized that the necklace wasn’t going to do me any good,” she continues.
“I couldn’t turn it in without risking arrest. No one was going to believe me when I told them I had no idea how it had ended up here or why my mom had given me the key.
I would’ve probably gotten locked up for theft and spent the rest of my life behind bars, and what would’ve happened to Noah then? ”
I’d never let it come to that, even if I had to break her out of fucking Fort Knox.
She runs a finger along the edge of the marble altar. “I’ve come to look at the necklace rather as a life insurance policy. I thought that one day, I might need it when I ran out of escape plans.”
And this is how she believes she’s going to escape me for good, by trading in the one thing I want most in the world for another I can’t live without.
She’s made it clear that my touch is unwelcome, but that doesn’t stop me from invading her space. “What about the explosion?”
“I reckoned most people would expect the necklace to be in the vault of a bank. So I used some of the money my mom had left and commissioned a guy to build me a bomb. My father never paid me much attention. He always treated me as if I were invisible, but I listened and watched. I knew who to contact. It wasn’t difficult to install the bomb.
He designed it to work with a simple tripwire. ”
“Fuck, Tatiana. You could’ve blown yourself up in the process. Do you have any idea what a big risk you took?”
She smiles. “Yes, it was risky, but it was a good escape plan. That bomb was my insurance of getting away the day someone kidnapped me. I rented the safe box in my false name and prayed that I’d never have to put that plan into action.”
Despite the risk she took, my chest expands with admiration and pride. “It worked.” A muscle ticks under my eye. “But you nearly got yourself killed.”
“My mind was already broken by then. I could hardly remember my own name. Whenever I gave in to the panic, I thought about Noah. I kept on repeating his name, fighting to stay sane, to stay alive for my son.”
“That’s why you didn’t forget him,” I say gently.
“I already started losing myself when they kept me tied up in a chair. But they kept on pushing me back into that trunk. They kept on promising me a glass of water if I told them where the necklace was. And then the code for the safe box flashed in my memory. I saw the name of the bank in my mind’s eye. That’s what I gave them.”
“Your mind was accessing selective memories.”
“Maybe my mind subconsciously knew what would protect me. Or maybe those memories were stronger. More vivid.” She shrugs again. “I don’t know why those are the details I remembered. But I didn’t know myself that the box would explode.”
Unable to hold back any longer, I cup her jaw. “You were so fucking lucky, Tatiana.”
“No.” She steps away from me, escaping my touch. “I was many things, Dante, but lucky wasn’t one of them. I was scared, terrified, and weak.”
“You’re right. Luck had nothing to do with it. You had a plan because you were clever and brilliant and you left nothing to chance. But you’re wrong if you think you were weak. You were strong, Tatiana. You survived. You fought. You fought for Noah. A weak person wouldn’t have done what you did.”
That’s when I know.
This strong, intelligent, industrious woman is perfect for me.
No, I always knew that. Right from the start. If anyone could survive me, it was Tatiana. And she didn’t only survive. She flourished. But at what price?
“The men who did that to you…” I start, my tone dark. “They can be glad they’re dead. I would’ve done to them what they’d done to you and much worse. The same goes for the woman.”
“Oxo?” Her eyes flare. “She’s dead?”
“Yes,” I bite out. “Kent took her out when she tried to talk to me.”
“That’s why you killed him.”
My reply is clipped. “Correct.”
“That’s sad.” She gets a far-off look in her eyes. “I felt kind of sorry for Oxo. The man who mostly interacted with me was mean to her. I don’t think she was all bad.”
“Tatiana,” I say with warning, loathing her pity for the motherfuckers who tortured her.
“She looked vulnerable.”
“The only person who was vulnerable in that situation was you.”
“No.” A small smile curves her lips. “I don’t think so.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I splay and flex my fingers, imagining what I’m going to do to the bastards who orchestrated her kidnapping when I catch them.
“I will find every person who had a hand in your abduction, and when I do, they’ll wish they’d never heard your name.
They’ll die in the most painful manner my sick, creative mind can think up, all of them. I swear that to you.”
She gives me that same pitying look. “You do realize there will always be someone else who’ll come after the necklace, don’t you?”