I didn’t ask any questions though. I just went with him.
We walked up to a black Ferrari, he opened the passage door for me and I got in.
I sat down and strapped on the seatbelt and he closed the door.
He ditched his biker jacket in the back, revealing thick biceps that bulged against the sleeve of his long-sleeved t-shirt.
He made his way around to the driver’s seat, jumped in and gunned the engine just as Frankie came down the steps. It looked like Pa might have sent him.
As we shot down the road, the dashboard buzzed with a phone call.
Xander answered it and switched on the handsfree.
“Yo,” he answered as cool and casually as if nothing had happened.
“Where are you taking her?” Came Pa’s cold hard voice.
“Why?” Xander threw back.
“What the fuck do you mean by why? Boy, you better fucking hope to not piss me off. Bring my daughter back to me right the fuck now.”
“No,” Xander replied.
All I could do was watch and listen. Watch and listen in pure disbelief.
“What do you mean by no?”
“It’s simple, it’s a no. But don’t worry Boss, we’ll be back later. I’ll be sure she gets back in one piece,” he promised, his voice heavy with a mingle of sarcasm and power.
There was a long silence then Pa grunted. “I’m not happy about this.”
Xander didn’t answer. He just hung up.
I looked over at him and he glanced at me, the sympathy returning to his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.
I rested my head back against the soft leather of the chair and accepted that I’d hit rock bottom. I had. I absolutely had.
Forty minutes later we pulled up at Lake Mead.
It was pretty to look at but I always thought the lack of trees made it look as manmade as it could ever be. It had the appearance of being a lake and the beautiful surroundings but just had something missing.
He parked and shut off the engine and that was when I broke.
It took all that time, the whole drive here and I’d held back. Kept it all in until the hum of the engine was no more and we were here.
I must have looked so stupid to him. I must have looked so helpless.
I’d had several little encounters with this man over this past week and each one of them saw me as helpless as shit.
The club, the warehouse, the meeting room, just now, and right now.
Not one scenario had me exhibiting one ounce of strength or showing who I really was. He’d seen me cry at least twice and look at me now, breaking down with the angst that took me out.
Warm hands smoothed over mine and I turned to face him. In my tear-filled mess, the warmth in his eyes reached out to me and soothed me when he undid the seat belt and pulled me right over to him so I could cry on his shoulder while he held me.
God knows how long I must have cried for, or how hard, but the tears fell and it felt like it was for everything.
When people looked at me they probably thought I was a spoilt brat who had it all. Nothing was further from the truth. Not a damn thing could have been further from the fact that my father was a monster and he just threatened to put me in a cage after he hit me.
Something was happening and I didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was though, it just made me wish harder for some form of escape.
Anything.
Even death.
I couldn’t live like this. He’d been right to call me an animal because that was what I felt like, an animal.
I never doubted either that Pa would put me in a cage.
Xander waited until I stopped crying before he pulled back to look at my face.
The ache in my heart was so strong it actually numbed the sting on my cheek. It did hurt though. It literally stung on the surface then felt numb on the apple of my cheekbone.
“I don’t think it will bruise too badly,” he assessed my face. It was the first time he’d spoken since he spoke to Pa. “There’s a little swelling. Does it hurt?”
I met his eyes and found myself gazing into the depths of the bright blue hue.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Yes, but it’s everywhere. He’s never hit me before.” I didn’t know why I said that, as if it meant something. Maybe on a subconscious level I was trying to explain my association with my father.
“No?”
I shook my head. “Never. He looked so angry at me.”
“Anger, no matter how it comes, is never an excuse to hit a woman.”
I was glad to hear him say that, but still embarrassed.
“I know.” I lowered my gaze to my lap.
When he shuffled and reached out to cup my face so he could inspect me further, I looked at him again. The touch of his fingers on my cheek was far too distracting.
Just like I told Anya, he was a nice distraction and this was the longest I’d ever spent with him. We’d been sitting in the car at Lake Mead for about an hour and the drive here had been forty minutes.
He stopped looking at the swelling and focused on me and I swear the lines blurred between him holding my face to check for bruising and him just touching my face. I wouldn’t complain about either.
“Where were you going Jia?”
“Europe. Somewhere in Europe would have been the ideal. Truthfully I didn’t have a plan, but in the sketchy draft of things I knew I had to get away. Anywhere.”
Anywhere was the short answer.
“Anywhere.” He breathed and ran his finger over the edge of my jaw.
“Yeah.”
He dropped his hand to his lap, but kept his gaze trained on me.
“Why now? Why just anywhere?”
I thought about that answer long and hard.
“It’s everything, but in terms of recency…up until the warehouse, I didn’t realize how cruel my father could be. It’s stupid and you’re probably wondering if my eyes have been closed for the last twenty six years but I didn’t know the specifics.”
He intensified his stare and a smile without humor inched across his lips. “Jia, it’s perhaps best if you stay out of business as much as you can. There’s a reason why women are kept out of business. This, the reaction you’re having is one reason. I can’t blame you for wanting to leave, wanting to flee but I’m not sure how you’re going to pull that off.”
“I can’t stay. He treats me like an animal. He wants to marry me off to Armand and keep me in a cage. He’ll do it. I know he will.”
He held out his hands and turned over his palms. “Baby steps, Jia. Take them. Trust me, when you push against a force stronger than you, you get knocked back. Knocked down in a way that takes you a long time to recover. It makes it harder to get what you want. It makes it a hundred times harder most of the time, so it’s worth the wait. Do you understand what I mean?”
I nodded. “Yeah… I get it.”
“It doesn’t mean you give up what you want. It just means you wait longer but when you get it, it feels like you achieved it and you know it’s yours.”
His words soothed me and I actually smiled.
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah?”
“Hmmm hmmm. It sounds like you got your thing.”
He seemed thrown by my comment but he nodded. “In a way I did.”