and warm. “I’ll love you always, Fast Lane. Things are different now. Go be with him. We’ll start over. As friends.” Lie. Lie. Lie. He can’t be my friend. I can’t be his. We never broke up. Our love never died. “This is the life I wanted for you while I was captive—for you to be happy with someone else.” My hands shake even more until I feel the tremors moving up to my arms. In the next moment he’s pulling me into him, hugging me so effortlessly that I’m reminded of home. I don’t fight it, actually quite the opposite. I lean into his broad chest and press my face against his shirt. He smells like the same cologne he always wore. It’s the same cologne I sprayed on my pillowcase for a year after he died. My tears would mix with the scent and it would cling to my face for a full twelve hours. I inhale deeply.
“I missed you,” I whisper. His arms fold around me. “I’m sorry.”
He ignores my apology. Cody never did do apologies well. “Does this make it easier?” Cody asks, his lips pressed against the top of my head. “Will it be easier for you to move on now?”
I pull back and look at him. He hums with life and everything else that makes him so precious. Running my hand over the side of his face, he closes his eyes. I look back at the huge window and think of Dax: my perfect, trusting fiancé who is my pillar. I can’t hurt him. There’s no way I’ll hurt him. “Yes,” I lie.
“This is just what I need.” Truth.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cody
A SUNFLOWER WILL always turn its face toward the sun. It’s called heliotropism. During my years in captivity I wasn’t granted much sunlight in my dank dungeon cell, but you can bet my mind was always turned to one thing. Her. Now that I’ve had another small taste of Lainey, I can’t turn away from my sun. It’s an impossibility. Seeing her was a mistake. One I’m glad I made because I knew from the first moment she laid eyes on me that it wasn’t over. Quite the opposite. Lainey Rosemont is still fucking in love with me. She’s in love with me. This is what I think of as I work in this dank, oppressive basement that smells of sixty-year-old rust and stale cigarettes.
I wrench the greaseball’s head to the side, exposing his sweaty neck. “I will slit your fucking throat. Tell me,” I order, my voice quiet—stern. There’s rarely screaming in my job. If there is, I’m not the one doing it. This bastard has information I want. Horse told me so. “Where is V, asshole?” There aren’t very many tactful ways to get the information you want these days. Men, especially bad men, only respond to violence and typically they need to be within an inch of losing their lives to come clean. This asshole wants to be within an inch of it. Idiot.
He sputters and whimpers. I release my grip a touch to give him some incentive to speak. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me,” he gasps in broken English. Pressing the tip of my knife harder, I pierce his skin. “I’m nobody. They don’t tell me where they travel!” His words are erratic now. I’m getting closer. This may be a truth. The men responsible for holding me hostage were many. The ring leader, V, was never around. Especially at night. He would have the lowly pee-ons guard my cell. Nighttime is when the shit always hits the fan. Always.
I grunt. Thinking about V makes me angry. “Well, if you don’t know where he or his counsel is, fine. Maybe you can tell me why you have a basement full of underage children, then?” I press the knife in deeper until a stream of blood trickles down his neck, soiling the collar of his fake Armani dress shirt.
“I don’t know!” He shits his pants. Perfect, now he has yellow pit stains and crap on his trousers.
I cock my head to the side and spread my legs wider so I don’t dirty my own pants. “Now, that’s a fucking lie.” I spoke with an older child. I know the truth. This asshole is up to his eyeballs in trouble. Not only does he have ties to V and the counsel, but he runs one of the largest child trafficking rings in Mexico. He makes me sick. With a gloved hand