Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The silence in the room was heavy. Though I stayed immobile on the bed where she’d left me, I was wound tighter than a coil preparing to spring.
My back was to her, not because I didn’t want to look at her, but because I couldn’t risk moving.
So much as a finger twitch would release the hold I had on me, and who knew then the damage that might occur. The wall certainly would not survive.
I regretted dubbing him “That Bastard” to her.
When we first returned from Yonkers, I did not like how Car—fuck.
Maisy. I did not like how Maisy said his name.
“Mr. Dalton-Jones.” Like the man was owed respect.
I realized now that it was part of her conditioning.
He was the man of the house, her husband—even in my head the word tasted sour—and he was owed respect because he had a fucking penis.
I hadn’t even known the half of it. “That Bastard” was too good a name for him, and being slowly skinned alive before being tossed into a frenzy of sharks and other marine life that had already been feeding on his strips of flesh was too easy a death.
I was not a good man, but I looked like a fucking saint compared to him.
Had I really just told Aloiki we were even because I had killed Kayl and he got Jones?
Not even close.
Not even a little bit.
Her parents were fucking dead. I didn’t know how yet, but I would make them see their own entrails long before they met their end. Her tutors were fucking next.
I still had so many questions, but I wasn’t sure I could take anymore answers.
What she’d gone through… A part of me questioned why she hadn’t fought harder, why she hadn’t tried to escape every day.
But I had no room to judge her or second-guess her decisions.
Not until I lived inside her body and experienced what she had for thirteen years.
Hell, I could even take it as far back as five years old when her story had started and make it eighteen years.
It was a wonder she was as well-rounded as she was.
I couldn’t… I couldn’t imagine the strength it had taken to survive that.
I didn’t remember what age Neo had said Jones was, but he sure as fuck was older than fifty—and he’d “married” a fifteen year old!
In the loosest possible definition of that word.
The man must have considered himself married in real life if Neo had found evidence of the marriage.
But even they had said they couldn’t find much.
I remembered thinking that Mrs. Dalton-Jones IV wasn’t in the house the day we raided it because she was out at the country club with her prissy, rich friends. How fucking wrong I’d been…
And then for me to have touched her as I had…
She wasn’t underage, which only made a marginal difference in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe of the two of us, I was the one who should have been in therapy.
Clearly, she was more mentally stable than I was, if she was even contemplating allowing another penis-wielding human anywhere near her.
Fight? Maisy was barely over five foot. She might have gained some weight in the three months since she’d been here, but I would still only estimate her weight around one-ten, maybe one-fifteen.
She’d felt featherlight to me that day I carried her up from the beach before we showered together.
What physical threat would she be to a man like Jones?
Add in the conditioning she’d been subjected to for most of her life, and it was no wonder she didn’t fight.
But then, not every fight was physical. I was a large man, well over six feet, and had close to two hundred pounds of muscle on me. My instinct would always be to fight, to overpower, an opponent. And now I was being given a small taste of what Maisy had suffered through for eighteen years.
Because I couldn’t fight this. There was no enemy to battle, no victory to be won. I was as helpless now against her past as she had been living it.
Something wet hit my hand. I ignored it at first, but then another drop hit me. I risked blinking my eyes open. I was on the bed, my elbows on my knees, and my head bowed over my clasped hands. From a different perspective, it might have looked like I was praying.
I blinked, and another drop landed on the base of my left thumb.
Tears. I was fucking crying. I hadn’t allowed my body to rage as desired, so instead I was embracing the immense sadness for all she and Samantha had suffered.
And not just them: Nishi, Mitsuko, Ayame, Sayuri, and any other women Jones had kept trapped in that basement hellhole.
My tears did not seem like a big enough sacrifice.
I felt like I should be bleeding for them.
How did I right such atrocities? How could I ever look at Maisy again and not feel shame for not having been there to protect her?
And Samantha… The little girl I loved so fucking much…
How did I make up to her the fact that she’d been forced to live in a dog crate when she’d been so small and helpless?
Promising them love and safety in the future did not seem like a big enough ask.
“Do you hate me?”
My body snapped upright at the question. She was standing at the foot of the bed now, her back to me and angled in the direction of the bedroom door. Her head was tipped downward and her elbows were bent like she was holding her hands to her chest.
The fuck did she just say to me?
“Look at me.” Crap, my voice sounded monstrous.
But Maisy shook her head, her shoulders starting to curl over her hands too.
My barely contained rage fueled my command. “I said, look at me.”
Maisy’s body jerked, and with a stiff neck, she hesitantly looked over her shoulder at me.
The fear and sadness on her beautiful face doused my anger.
I never wanted to be the cause of her uncertainty.
I wanted to be the one thing on this fucking planet she knew without question would be there for her.
The pareo I had borrowed, or stolen depending on if I gave it back, from Aloiki’s closet fell to the floor at my feet with a single tug at the knot.
I was not aroused in any way, shape, or form, and yet I felt my dick twitch as her eyes glanced down at it.
But that only proved the hold she had over my body.
I walked down the bed, completely bare for her to see everything I was and am. As I approached her, she slowly turned her feet so she was facing me rather than the door, the escape.
Falling to my knees, I had no lei to present to her, but I was able to offer her my body and my words in my eternal commitment.
“Ho?ohiki au e hele ma kou ?ao?ao i kēlā me kēia aumoe a me ka ?ino. Me ke aloha e alaka?i ana i ko?u pu?uwai, e mālama au i ko kāua maluhia, e pu?uhonua i ko kāua ?ohana, a e ho?oulu i ko kāua aloha i ko kāua mau lā a pau.” I stared at her tear-filled sea-green eyes and felt a piece of my cracked soul mend.
“I vow to walk beside you through every sunrise and storm. With love guiding my heart, I will protect our peace, cherish our family, and nurture our love for all our days.”
Maisy looked like she wasn’t breathing for several long seconds before she let out a shaky breath. “You don’t… I mean, you don’t…” She sniffled. “Why did you say that? I thought you were angry with me—”
“For you,” I corrected sternly. “Angry, very angry, for you. I hate what was done to you, hate what you suffered through, hate that I wasn’t there to protect you even though I know that makes no logical sense.
I don’t know why you lied about your age or who you were.
I would like to say that it doesn’t matter, but we’ve already gone down that road.
All I can promise you is that it won’t change my thoughts or feelings towards you.
It won’t change my desires for our future.
A shared future that includes you, me, and Samantha.
And you might have to forgive me if I slip up every once in a while and call you ‘Caroline’.
Or if you prefer ‘Caroline’, we can keep that.
All that matters to me, baby, is you. Your health, your safety, your happiness.
” I gestured towards myself. “I’m yours.
However you want me, however you need me. ”
She took a small step towards me. “I want to be Maisy. I want to figure out who I am without the overbearing, overpowering rule of a man suffocating me.”
I nodded, but tried not to show the sting of rejection. “I understand—”
But she interrupted me. The first time of her doing so, that I could recall. “You’ve never suffocated me. You set me free, Tangaloa. You gave me this opportunity to learn who I am, and I want to keep learning.” She took another step forward, and added, “With you.”
My abdomen actually quivered at her statement. “I would love that. I never want to stand in your way.”
“I’m still younger than you. Just…not as young as I led you to believe.”
I nodded, having already done the math. “That can also be reversed. I’m twelve years older than you. Do you want to be with someone twelve years older than you?”
“I would want to be with you even if you were forty years older than me.” Maisy stepped forward again, but though she was within arm’s reach, I did not move.
“And I want you to know that my lie had nothing to do with you. When you first came into our lives, I was scared to share That Bastard’s fate.
I did not want to be separated from Samantha or punished alongside him. ”
I scowled. “I never would have punished you for his sins.”
“I know that now,” she said with a slight raise of her eyebrows. “I did not then. You were a stranger. All of you. Hard men who were sweet to me, but still men. I wanted to trust you, I wanted to believe in what you told me, but I still needed to learn to trust you.”
“Yet you took my offer to come to Hawai‘i?”