Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
The room is empty. One bed. One wardrobe. One small table with a pitcher of water and two glasses. A faded rug covers most of the wooden floor, though not enough to hide the places where the boards dip near the wall.
The sheets are clean and fresh. A folded quilt rests at the foot of the bed, pale blue with tiny stitched flowers, almost too innocent to belong in a house like this.
A normal room on its face, but with a million tiny cracks in the plaster.
Robin stops in the doorway behind me. For a second, she doesn’t move. She’s staring at the bed.
“Robin.”
She turns to me. “What?”
“You’re safe in here.”
She lets out an unsteady chuckle. “That’s a big promise from a man who kidnapped me.”
I don’t reply. I simply close the door behind her and lock it.
Robin takes two more steps inside. The floor creaks beneath her bare feet.
I glance toward the open doorway on the left. “Bathroom’s through there.”
That gets her attention. “A real bathroom?”
“More or less.”
She moves past me cautiously and peeks inside. “A shower!”
“Yes.”
“And hot water?”
“Probably.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Probably?”
I shrug. “This is an old building.”
She shakes her head with a small smile. “I don’t even care if icicles come out of it. I’m dying to be clean. To wash that disgusting cell off me.”
“I’ll stand guard,” I say.
“You’ll stand guard outside the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Not inside?”
I hold her gaze. “Outside.”
She tilts her head. “How chivalrous.”
“I’m not chivalrous.”
She scoffs. “No. You’re not.”
I make myself stand there and absorb the damage in her voice. The disgust. The remembered fear. The filth of a place I walked through every day like it was nothing more than stone and bars, blind to the true cost of doing our business.
The worst part was how easy it was to stop seeing people as people.
Women came through those cells terrified, screaming, pleading. Some offered money. Some offered names. Some offered their bodies before anyone even asked, believing surrender might spare them something worse. I watched them shake. I watched them cry. I watched them bargain with men who had no intention of keeping any promise made in the dark.
And I learned to put a wall between myself and their eyes.
They were prisoners. Assets. Problems. Packages to keep alive until someone more important decided what to do with them.
That’s how Vega made it possible.
Then came Robin.
Robin, with fury in her eyes and blood in her mouth. Robin, who didn’t beg. Robin, who insulted me like she had the upper hand while imprisoned in a dirty cell. Robin, who watched me like she could still choose whether I mattered.
I couldn’t separate her fear from her face. Couldn’t separate her body from her will. Couldn’t imagine there wasn’t a person standing in front of me, even when every survival instinct I had told me to keep pretending.
Maybe that doesn’t redeem a damned thing.
But I can at least try.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She narrows her eyes. “For what?” She takes a step toward me. “For the cell? For holding me against my will? For letting that creep Zabala touch me?”
I clear my throat. “For all of it.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s a lot of sorry.”
“I know.”
“Probably not enough.”
“No.”
She looks away.
“You can shower,” I say again. “I’ll be right here.”
She hesitates. Then, “Fine.”
I turn away to give her privacy.
“Cruz.”
I look back.
“If you open the bathroom door while I’m in there, I’ll break the mirror and cut you with it.”
A strange warmth moves through me. Damn. She’s something. It’s scary how much I want to protect her. “I believe you.”
“You should.” She disappears into the bathroom and shuts the door.
The pipes groan when she turns the water on.
I settle my hand against my gun in the back of my waistband.
I crossed a line tonight, and Vega’s reach is long. Zabala’s temper is longer.
I don’t regret it.
That should scare me more than it does.
Steam drifts beneath the bathroom door. I inhale the fresh scent of soap, stare at the door, trying not to imagine Robin naked as the water slides over her.
Ten minutes pass. Then fifteen, until the bathroom door opens.
I turn.
And every thought in my head goes silent.
Robin stands in the doorway with a fluffy pink towel wrapped around her body.
Pink.
Of all the colors in this house, Señora V gave her pink. It should look absurd on Robin.
It doesn’t.
Instead she looks like a woman who survived hell and came out wrapped in cotton candy, a fire still burning underneath.
Her long hair is wet, black as night, and curling slightly at the ends. Droplets cling to her shoulders.
I force my eyes back to her face.
She steps fully into the room. Her bare feet sink slightly into the faded rug. She looks toward the bed and then back through the bathroom door at her soiled clothes folded neatly on the toilet tank.
“I don’t want to put those back on.”