“Stop apologizing! This is not your fault! Do you understand? Your kidnapping—what they did to you? None of it is your fault!”
“Except it is!” My dress cascades to the floor in glistening waves as I stand. “I left school—I disobeyed orders! I put my parents through hell. I will always be afraid! Traumatized. Tainted. It’s who I am—”
“No, it is not who you are!” Aksel roars. He takes me by the shoulders, swiveling me to face him. “You’re not defined by what others did to you, Sophia!”
He bends his head down until our foreheads meet. Gently, he holds the back of my neck with his hands, his thumbs resting on the skin behind my ear.
“Those men, Sophia?” He pauses. “Bekami? Farhad? The others? They took twenty months out of your life. Don’t give them the satisfaction of taking another second. You can’t control a lot of what has happened to you, but you can control that. And it doesn’t matter what Bekami wanted from you, because you are strong, Sophia, the strongest person I have ever met, and no one …”
Aksel touches his finger to my chin. I look up at him. Firelight sparks in his eyes. “No one can defeat you unless you give up.”
Aksel strokes my hair. His voice is both fierce and calm. “Farhad is dead. Bekami is in prison. Your father certainly won’t let anyone near you, Sophia, and I swear I’ll die before I let someone hurt you.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes closed, remembering the man with the curly hair and hazel eyes. “Are you forgetting what just happened?”
“I’m saying it because of what just happened,” he declares. “You are not alone, Sophia.”
“You can’t …” I don’t finish my sentence.
Eighteen months of tears pour out of me in a torrent of memories I can no longer dam.
Aksel’s arms lock behind my back. We sink to the floor in an entwined heap of limbs and chiffon.
My tears wash over Aksel, soaking his shirt, seeping into his skin, and connecting my past with his future.
After a time, the only sounds are the crackling of the fire and Aksel’s steady breathing as I burrow myself into his chest.
Warm and safe, I neither know, nor care, how much time passes. All I know is that I would trade every day of my life without Aksel for just one more day with him.
CHAPTER 36
Aksel shakes my shoulder. Rubbing my eyes, I look around. The room is dark. The fire is out. He is sitting beside me, his back against the sofa. I am curled next to his warm body, my arm draped across his torso.
Suddenly, Aksel springs to his feet.
“What?” I sit up, alert in an instant.
Aksel’s eyes find mine. “Not sure.”
I glance at the large windows overlooking the snowy meadow. Lanterns hang from the cedar shingles, lighting the deck in a soft luminescent glow.
“I’m going to check outside.” Aksel is still wearing the crisp white shirt and black suspenders of his tuxedo. He takes his parka from the back of the couch and heads toward the front door.
“Sophia,” he says, turning around.
Something isn’t right.
Aksel’s body goes rigid. Solid as stone.
I hear it in the distance. A crash. The grating sound of metal smashing metal.
Aksel looks down at his phone, vibrating in his hand, alerting him. “The gate has been breached,” he utters.
A siren goes off inside the house.
Instantaneously, Aksel runs toward me. He picks up his rifle and seals it in his left hand. He pushes his SIG into my right hand.
Standing, I shake my head. This isn’t happening.
Nonetheless, the SIG molds into my palm, comfortable and familiar.
I exhale. This is happening.
“It takes twelve seconds to reach the house,” he murmurs, looking defiantly out the back windows, steeling himself.
He is right.
CHAPTER 37
The lights inside the house go out with a snap.
I grab my satin clutch, retrieve my Ladybug, and slip it down the top of my shimmering bodice.
Aksel pulls me to the library.
From the dark room we can see into the night. The night-vision video on Aksel’s phone shows movement surrounding the estate—green figures encircling the house, blocking our exits. I step over to the window.
Two shadows move below us, descending to the lower deck near the mudroom door. Silently, I unlock the window and push it open. It is an angled window, and the hinge halts at six inches.
But we don’t need six inches. One will do.
I motion to Aksel. He walks over, threads on the silencer, and thumbs off the safety.