“I feel bad.” Her words were muffled as her chin fell into her chest, voice suddenly shattered, a far cry from the thrill that had been present when she’d been speaking of Harry Potter. “I promised Mia that we could escape together. I feel bad for leaving her.”
“Aye.” He took her chin under his pointer finger and jutted it, waiting for her eyes to meet his before shaking his head. “Don’t you ever feel bad about that. Don’t you ever blame yourself for that, a’ight? It’s not your fault.”
Her chest swelled in a deep breath, and then she was speaking a mile a minute. “I always knew you’d come. Mommy told me that you’d find me and that it might take a really long time, but I always knew you’d come.”
Fury encased his heart. He found himself speaking before his newly discovered fatherly gene could kick in and stop him. “Did anyone ever hurt you in that house?”
Her eyes expanded at the question, and she shook her head no.
Linc studied her response to see if she was lying, but couldn’t find any of the clues he’d come to know well in his years as a former detective in SVU.
Still, he pressed. “Did anyone ever go to the bathroom with you?”
“No.”
“You always went alone?”
“Yes—” She faltered, eyes shifting to the knobs on the bathtub faucet. “Well…”
His heart stopped in mid-beat, wondering who he’d have to kill.
Her eyes flew back up to his. “Only when I needed help turning the knobs. But then he always left.”
“Did anyone ever touch you in a way you didn’t like?”
“No.”
“No one ever made you uncomfortable?”
“No.”
He noticed her voice rose a little more with every no she uttered and realized he’d have to take her word on it. He wanted to take her word. He wanted to believe that, even though she’d been bought on the black market and taken captive by a madman, Emma had miraculously come out unscathed. He recalled Mia telling him that Emma was still too young for Malik—that he wouldn’t hurt her until she was older. As those words made his stomach do a somersault of sickness, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that he’d gotten to his baby girl before any further damage could be done.
“No one has to right to touch you without your permission,” he said, aware that his stern voice was already proving effective at keeping her full attention since she seemed to hang onto his every word with wide eyes as he squeezed her waist. “If anyone ever does, man, woman, child… if anyone ever makes you feel uncomfortable, I want you to tell me right away, a’ight?”
She nodded.
“No matter what they say or do to discourage you… even if it’s someone you know… someone you trust… I want you to trust your own feelings more.” He paused, hoping that he was saying the right words. “I want you to know that it’s never your fault and to always tell me. Because I’m not scared of anyone. And I’ll always protect you, Emma. Always. I love you.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I love you too.”
Linc released the breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding when they embraced, tucking his nose into her shoulder and jamming his eyes closed. The world around him ebbed away until nothing else existed but his daughter in his arms. Only the trickle of the bathtub faucet, on the verge of overflowing the tub, pulled him away from the hug, and he leaned over to turn it off moments before the water trickled over the edge.
He helped Emma out of the rest of her clothes and came up behind her to lift her into the bubbly water. Just as he got her legs and feet inside the bath, however, his eyes landed on the Aztec bird tattoo on her shoulder. The same tattoo that had been branded on her mother after she’d been abducted and forced into prostitution. The tattoo that, in his years as a cop in California, he’d learned was a local indicator that meant Emma’s original trafficker worked out of Guatemala.
The wave of anger that ebbed over every inch of his body almost caused him to drop Emma from his trembling hands, but he found his center quickly enough to ease her gently in the rest of the way. The lingering warmth of Emma’s ‘I love you too’ was the only thing that stopped the rage from enveloping his body and swallowing him whole. Along with the admission that she loved Mia just the same.
If Emma couldn’t have Lisa—if she couldn’t have her mother—at the very least, she could have Mia.
They both could.
And Linc wouldn’t sleep until he made it happen.
35
After tucking Emma into bed after her bath and getting into another heated argument with Jason about forcing him to cancel his plans to babysit, Linc found himself standing across the street from The Ali Hotel, huddled behind a tree that lined the sidewalk. The hotel, owned by and named for Malik, was one hundred stories high and sat on a street lined with high-end shops, a short three-minute walk from London’s most famous attractions. Even the sidewalk went unvarnished. An unheard of phenomenon on the busy streets of London. No trash, cigarette butts, foul odors, or even a single scurrying rat could be found on the quiet St. James Street that evening.
The black hoodie and jeans Linc wore surely made him stand out like a sore thumb, but as he stared down at the screen of his phone, where the map gleaming up at him showed a pulsing red dot that proved Mia was across the street in that very hotel, he couldn’t make himself care.
All he cared about was getting to Mia as quickly as possible. Mia: who had taught his daughter how to read because Malik wouldn’t let her go to school. Mia: who had proved he was still capable of connecting with a woman after a string of gut-wrenching romantic failures. Mia: who he’d promised to come back for. To spare her the same fate that seemed to befall every woman he’d ever touched. Every woman he’d ever loved.
A full day hadn’t even passed since the trade, but Malik hadn’t wasted a single moment in trotting Mia out to the next party—the fundraising gala currently underway in one of the hotel ballrooms. Linc hoped getting Mia back in his arms that night would be even easier than the first time. He knew he wouldn’t have to haul her out on his shoulder this time. He wouldn’t have to bind her hands and ankles to the bed—unless, of course, she asked him to. This time, she’d come to him willingly. She’d fight alongside him. Then all three of them—him, Mia, and Emma—could finally be together.
Finally be free.
Emma would never get her mother back. As heartbreaking as that fact was, it was a fact nevertheless. And Linc would never waste his time trying to replace Lisa with another woman. To Emma, there would never be another Lisa. She was irreplaceable. But, at the very least, Linc believed, she could have a new woman in her life to look up to. He believed Emma could have that in Mia. A woman she’d always love second best to her mother, but whom she would love regardless. A woman he could feel himself loving just the same, even though he’d never told her.
His stomach rumbled as he looked down at that pulsing dot on his phone, cursing himself for being so foolish. So foolish to make the trade, Mia for Emma, without making it clear as day to Mia how he really felt. He could only imagine what she must be going through at that very moment, inside that hotel, with a fake smile plastered on her face as she schmoozed with London’s elite. She’d told him she loved him earlier that day, during the trade, but he’d been so enamored at the sight of Emma, with the need to feel her weight in his arms, he hadn’t had the capacity to say it back. He hadn’t had the capacity to say anything, so paralyzed he’d been by the breathtaking love he’d felt at the sight of his daughter. Mia must’ve been sick, plagued, utterly ruined by the fact that he hadn’t returned her heartfelt admission.
His eyes hardened as he looked up from the phone, nostrils flared, and he made a silent vow that he’d tell Mia how he felt before the night was out. Then he’d spend the rest of his life never letting her wonder how he felt again.
With a deep, determined breath, he slid the phone into his pocket and looked both ways before he began across the street.
By the time he’d finished crumpling to a heap in the street, everything had gone black.
——
Linc had never fully understood what he’d put Mia through until that moment. Until he opened his eyes, vision still blurry, head still aching from the beating he’d taken on the sidewalk outside, and found his hands bound high above his head. A pair of handcuffs had been locked around each of his wrists with the chain slung across the top of a water pipe overhead, leaving him shackled. The sensation of being completely out of control was enough to make swallowing back an enraged scream a battle he nearly lost. He knew if he remained that way—restrained and out of control—for long enough, he’d perish from manic psychosis alone.
Every bone in his body trembled and throbbed in agonizing pain as his vision crystalized and shifted around the room. A dark, gritty warehouse that he could only assume was the basement of The Ali Hotel. The hotel that, moments earlier, he’d been standing across the street from. Planning to infiltrate the gala raging on in one of the ballrooms to take back what was his. Take back Mia. Instead, he realized, it had been him who’d been taken, as his shifty eyes landed on several men, all dressed in tuxedos, who surrounded him. Clearly, he’d pulled all of these men from the party where Mia still awaited his arrival. Each man had a gun cradled in front of their bodies, hard gazes never leaving Linc’s as his sharp green orbs flitted all over the room.
It wasn’t the sight of those men that made Linc’s heart beat twice as fast. It wasn’t the guns in their hands that knotted his belly and caused him to wheeze, his head collapsing between his hoisted arms. It wasn’t even the fact that his death was inevitable that caused a self-loathing so breathtaking it blazed across his body and sealed his lungs shut, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
No.
It was the fact that he’d failed Mia, and Emma too. Mia would be stuck with Malik forever, enduring his mental and emotional abuse before he finally killed her, probably savagely, as punishment for having an affair. Emma would be forced to grow up, not just without her mother but without her father too. Tears stung his eyes as he imagined all the struggles his baby girl would endure. As if she hadn’t already suffered enough. It killed him that she would now suffer ten times more, and it would be all because of him.
All he’d wanted was for the three of them to try. To try and surrender to love. To try to be a family. To try and forget the hurt, the pain, and the struggles that the savage world they lived in seemed happy to supply in droves.
But he’d failed.
“You promise? You’ll never leave me?”
His eyes reddened, lips curling down as he recalled the hope in Emma’s soft voice when she’d asked for that promise in the bathroom, earlier that night.
“I promise, baby. I’ll never leave you.”
A lump filled his throat, making it hard to breathe, angry that he’d made his daughter that promise. That he’d promised to never leave her only to walk away and never come back. It didn’t matter that it had been against his will. She wouldn’t know that. All she’d know was that she’d woken up one morning and her father had been gone without so much as a goodbye. That he’d never come back.
If he’d just been honest with her, told her the truth—that, eventually, all kids lost their parents—maybe it wouldn’t hurt her so badly when she woke up the following morning to find her father gone. When she woke up each morning after that, day after day, year after year, hopeful that he’d return, only to be hit with the devastating blow that she was alone once more. Another day that her father had broken his promise. Another day he’d left her, abandoned. Would she grow up to resent the man who’d left without a trace?
Linc ground his teeth as he fought the pain charging through him, glaring when one of the men in the room walked toward him. The click of the man’s expensive black leather shoes drowned out the incessant sound of water dripping from one of the exposed leaky pipes that zigzagged throughout the ceiling.
Linc’s nostrils flared, taking in a heavy whiff of the moldy scent that permeated the muggy room. When the man came to a stop about a foot away from him, Linc instantly recognized him as Hakeem, who Mia had informed him, earlier that day, was the head of Malik’s security team.
Hakeem smiled kindly at Linc as if he were looking upon one of the donors in the ballroom upstairs and not the man he’d just incapacitated on the sidewalk outside.
“Lincoln Hill,” Hakeem purred.
Linc’s eyes widened—the hairs on his neck standing tall as a cold chill made him go rigid.
Hakeem’s grin spread as he lifted up a passport and picture ID, both with Linc’s photo on them. “Forgive me, I suppose you were waiting for me to refer to you as Harold Washington,” he said, referencing the names that graced both the IDs in his hand.
Linc slammed his eyes closed, his breath coming heavier by the second, dots of sweat collecting on his skin as his chest heaved wildly.
He kept his eyes closed as Hakeem spoke to his men, his words but a hum in Linc’s pounding ears.
“Don’t kill him.” Hakeem’s muddled voice droned into Linc’s pulsing ears. “Call Homeland Security and tell them we have America’s Most Wanted.”
Scattered laughter filled the basement.
And Hakeem’s muffled voice came once more. “It’ll be much more satisfying watching him rot in prison. Spending the rest of his miserable life wondering if Malik has reclaimed what’s rightfully his.”
Linc’s gleaming eyes flew back open, searing a blazing cringe at Hakeem, who’d already turned his back to walk away. The mention of Malik reclaiming what was “rightfully his”—reclaiming Emma—while Linc was imprisoned in America, sent a heat flushing through Linc’s body that almost made him go blind. He hadn’t even realized he’d charged after Hakeem until the clatter of the handcuffs around his wrists disagreed with the drain pipe above. Until a curve in the pipe prevented him from moving any further, stopping his body in mid-charge and making him ricochet backward, stumbling over his own feet—his wrists screaming in agony when he unwittingly gave the cuffs all of his weight, causing the metal to dig into his skin as he struggled to find his footing.
Hakeem stopped at the door across the room, the door that would lead him back to the ballroom party, turned back to Linc and curled his lip high. Without another word, Hakeem straightened his bow tie, threw open the door, and disappeared out of sight.
Linc watched him go with his heart at his feet.
36
Bright lights shone down from the white marble ceiling of the luxury yacht, making the tears filling Mia’s eyes glimmer as she stared at the clock on the nightstand just as it struck midnight. The moment it did, her chest swelled from where she sat in the middle of the bed, the movement making a beam of light move across the silver silk of her nightgown, and the first tear fell from her eye and jetted down her cheek. Slapping away every other idiotic tear that followed, she clenched her teeth against the tornado whirling in her stomach and finally accepted the truth.
Forty-eight hours.
“As soon as I have Emma in a safe place, I’ll find you. Twenty-four hours. Forty-eight, tops. You planted the GPS, right? The way we practiced the other night?”
How cruel of him. To not only lie to her face, but to go even further by ensuring that she still had the GPS chip shoved up her snatch as if he wanted to make absolutely certain she’d done everything right so he could carry out a promise he’d never intended to deliver on. Every bone in her body wanted to rip that chip out of her pussy and set it on fire, but she couldn’t move from the bed—from the dent she’d made in the middle of the deep purple duvet. Her limbs had gone to mush a
s if the heart ramming against her ribcage was producing blood so boiling hot it had melted through her veins and liquefied her bones.
She’d even given him some leeway. He’d promised her forty-eight hours, max, and she’d given him sixty. Taking a deep breath that, amazingly, only seemed to make it harder to breathe, she drew in the scent of the tall, exotic pink flowers that had been situated in potted plants all over the yacht’s master bedroom. Even surrounded by gleaming white finishes, encased in the most opulent furnishings, the softest bedding, and a flat screen plasma built into the far wall, Mia couldn’t escape the slow death of her heart. The death of her pride.
All talk until he got some pussy, then he vanished into thin air. Taking every secret and promise he’d whispered while he’d been inside her with him.
He would never come back the way he’d promised. The hope for real love—real freedom—had been a ridiculous pipe dream before she’d met him, and it remained ridiculous still. Her thoughts dried her tears eyes and even calmed her raging stomach as a boiling anger took over her entire body. Leaving her incapable of another tear as she dedicated every inch of her focus to the monumental task of biting back an animalistic scream.
“I love you, Linc.”
She smiled at the words she’d whispered to him during the trade, her red eyes still locked on the clock. She didn’t smile out of happiness, but amusement. Amusement over what a fucking idiot she was. That, even after the sinking feeling that had taken over her stomach after he hadn’t said the words back, she had still allowed herself to have hope. Perhaps she couldn’t even blame Linc for taking whatever he could get from her. She’d made it so damn easy.
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