I liked being rich just like everyone else, but I also thought it was evil.
Her hand moved to mine as it rested on the center console. Her fingers moved in between mine, and she gave me a gentle squeeze, telling me she was there even though she didn’t have the words to comfort me.
“My mother was a housewife. She kept that place perfect at all times, ready for any unexpected company that would stop by. Our meals were homemade every single evening. If she ever saw anyone less fortunate than us, she didn’t hesitate to open her purse and hand over all her cash. She was really generous with her time, money, and her love…”
Her hand squeezed mine again.
“I have good memories of my father too. Before he pissed our inheritance away, he was a good man…for the most part. But he lost his mind when he lost his money.” My father laughed loudest at the dinner table and was eager to take my brothers and me to sporting events. He loved us…at one time. “My eldest brother was quiet and studious. He went to university but chose to live at home because he wouldn’t be able to survive without my mother’s cooking. Can’t blame him. And my sister…” I pulled my gaze away from the front door and looked straight ahead over the steering wheel. I could still hear her voice in my head sometimes, in my dreams, and she had the most innocent soul of anyone I’d ever known. Losing every member of my family was difficult, but her death was the worst. “She was my twin.”
Raven released a quiet breath, a silent gasp.
“It’s hard to explain, but when you’re a twin, there’s a different connection there. She was the hardest one to lose.”
She pulled my hand to her lips and kissed my knuckles.
The feeling of her soft lips made me turn to face her.
Her eyes were wet, like my story had moved her down to her core. “I’m so sorry, Magnus.”
I’d never talked about this with anyone before. Fender and I didn’t even speak of it. The only conversation we’d had occurred when we hunted down our father and killed him. But once he was gone, that was it. We never spoke of that evening ever again. We never visited their graves. It was almost like it didn’t happen at all…even though we both thought about it all the time. “It was a long time ago. But it’s one of the things you never really forget…no matter how much time has passed.”
She lowered my hand and held it on the armrest between us. “I know…”
I kept our hands joined for a moment longer, my eyes gazing down at our affection. My hand was twice the size of hers, with little scars. She had small scars too, from her time at the camp, from her battles to survive. They were almost the same.
Like we were the same person.
We arrived at the camp at sunrise.
The girls were being escorted to the clearing, and the guards stood along the perimeter, wearing their uniforms to hide their faces from the women, to engage an extra layer of fear to keep them focused on their tasks.
When I stepped into the clearing with Raven in tow, I could feel the change in energy.
I could even hear it, even though it had no sound.
I walked with her to her station, where she would pick up the boxes and distribute them to her table. Once she was back in that camp, it was back to work. Her freedom was gone. There were no long walks to the coffee shop near the tower. She was back to her empty existence, just another worker on the line.
There was nothing I could do about it.
She immediately got to work without saying goodbye or behaving like I was more than her guard.
I stared at her for a few extra seconds than I should have, thinking about that painful conversation we had about the future…about us. She was right—it was hard to leave Paris to work as a prisoner when she was more than that. But I turned around and departed the clearing, feeling the gaze of the guards right in my back.
It’d been a long night and I wanted to go to sleep, but I stayed awake and caught up on everything I’d missed. I needed to talk to my contacts in Colombia to begin the shipment to Spain so Napoleon could have a higher product quantity than our other distributors. I didn’t agree with it, but I wouldn’t defy Fender by purposely sabotaging his plan. I just hoped I was wrong…about all of it.
I walked into the communal cabin to find the guys playing poker, their favorite activity when the camp was asleep. It’d been two weeks since I’d left, and Alix’s face was still a bit bruised—along with everyone else’s.
Breaking the bones in his face wasn’t enough satisfaction.
I was still angry.
I stopped at the table and looked down at them.
Alix didn’t hide his raw reaction, the glimpse of fear that entered his eyes when he saw me staring down at them all with that furious look. He dropped his cards on the table. “You want in, Magnus?”
“No.” I was angry at the other guys for their participation in the plan, but I knew Alix was the one who brainstormed the entire thing. I didn’t need to waste my time interrogating them all to figure it out. “Trying to decide if I want to break your nose again.”
The guys stilled at the threat, keeping their heads down as if they wanted to disappear, even the ones who hadn’t been the problem in the past.
“Or your dick.”
Alix held my gaze, but he wasn’t the confident thug he used to be. “I thought we moved past this.”
“I did too—the first three times.”
Alix dropped his gaze, as if he knew this was entirely his fault.
“Come within twenty feet of her, and I’ll kill you. Look at her…and I’ll kill you.” Her screams would haunt me for the rest of my life. They would play on repeat, even though she’d been spared from his ultimate cruelty. That feeling of pure helplessness, stuck to the floor while she begged for me to rescue her, was the worst experience of my life. It was somehow worse than listening to Fender tell me how our father had executed our family. “That goes for the rest of you, too.”
Raven constantly possessed a somber mood while at the camp.
She wasn’t playful or talkative.
I used to be the one who craved silence in the cabin, to work on my laptop without hearing the sound of her voice, but now that situation had been reversed. She was the one who craved the quiet.
She was also exhausted at bedtime because she worked in the scorching heat all day. Summer brought constant sunshine to the camp along with humidity, and the tarp over the clearing wasn’t enough to combat the temperature of the sun.
Time seemed to pause.
We weren’t living like we were in Paris…just existing.
The small bed didn’t bother me anymore because we were practically one person during the night. The cabin had AC, so we weren’t hot when we were close together, but we did sleep in the nude.
My eyes were on the window up above, looking at the moonlight as it poked through the curtain. It’d been a long day, but I couldn’t sleep. She was in my arms, her hand on my chest and her cheek on my shoulder.
She started to shift in her sleep, moving like she couldn’t get comfortable. Then her breathing escalated, a couple of suppressed whimpers coming from her mouth.
I watched her, wondering if she was suffering through a nightmare.