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Grabbed by Vicious: 1

Page 11

by Lopez, Lolita


  Vicious looked puzzled. “But a man is supposed to support his wife.”

  “Darrin did and still does.”

  “But not in a home of her own.”

  “Not at first but they have their own farm now.” She frowned at him. “Material things aren’t the only things that matter, Vicious. When you love someone, you take the good with the bad. For better or worse, right?”

  “What in the world are you talking about, Hallie?”

  She remembered then. They hadn’t had a proper wedding ceremony. He’d taken her passport from the race officials, handed it to one of the processors from the Valiant and had her small paper booklet stamped, the one and only stamp in the whole thing. After that, he’d signed his name across the bottom of a touchscreen tablet and then shoved the stylus into her hand. With one quick signature across the bottom of the digital contract, she’d been wed to him.

  “In my world, we exchange vows.”

  “We exchanged vows.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We signed a contract, Vicious. We didn’t exchange vows. You said, ‘Here. Sign this’.” She mimicked his deep voice. “It’s not the same thing.”

  His jaw visibly tightened. “Do you not consider our bond as deep as the one your sister and her husband share?”

  “I—” She stopped, uncertain of what to say. “I don’t know. It’s just different, Vicious. Kerri and Darrin fell in love. They pledged to marry. They started to build a life together and planned a wedding. They married in front of their families and friends.” She chewed her lip and shrugged. “You chased me through a forest, threw me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes and made me sign a contract. It’s not the same.”

  “I see.” His tone was short and clipped. He slammed the empty glass down so hard on the counter she was stunned it didn’t shatter. “I’m going to be late.”

  Mouth agape, she watched him spin on his heel and stalk from the room. She didn’t know what to do. Her first instinct? To chase after him and make him talk to her. Only the knowledge that she’d never truly seen him angry stopped her. So far he’d been sweet and kind. Whether the same was true when he was angry was a mystery. She really didn’t want to find out the hard way if he wasn’t. As big as he was, he could hurt her if he lashed out in a rage.

  Obviously she’d upset him but what she’d said had been the truth. It wasn’t the same. Vicious didn’t love her. He’d claimed her like a prize. There had been no gentle wooing or sweet words. He’d simply bested her in a physical contest.

  She couldn’t deny that she had feelings for him now. It was very early days but she cared for Vicious a great deal. Their relationship had the potential to deepen and grow—in time. Right this minute, she couldn’t commit to more than caring though. She wasn’t going to lie to Vicious just to make him happy.

  When the front door slammed, her gut lurched. Had he really just left without saying goodbye? One little tiff and he’d walked out on her like a spoiled child. Was this what she had to look forward to in the future? She’d spent most of her life walking on eggshells around her father. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to live like that and now here she was, facing the very thing she’d tried so hard to avoid.

  Not just “tried”, she thought sourly. She’d risked so much to make the money to pay for her eventual escape from her village and her father’s home. If anyone had ever found out just how far she’d gone, she likely would have been hung in the village square.

  She absentmindedly touched her shorter-than-average hair. She forced away those unpleasant memories before they could intrude. She’d survived that awful year. She could survive this.

  It was one argument. Surely Vicious wouldn’t hold it against her forever?

  *

  Vicious stormed into the waiting room outside his office. He held up his hand, stopping the young private seated behind the receptionist desk from talking to him. “Hold my calls.”

  He didn’t even wait for a reply before striding into his office and slamming the door shut behind him. He dropped into the chair behind his desk and glared at his tablet screen. “It’s not the same?”

  Hallie’s words spun round and round in his head. He didn’t know why they angered him so much but they did. They’d wounded him. Her admission had slashed at his pride and left him raw and bleeding. She didn’t see their relationship as equal to what she might have had in her village with a man of her planet or in the colonies she’d have escaped to if he hadn’t caught her.

  What the hell did that mean for their future? If she saw what they shared as less than, how the fuck was he supposed to make her happy? Could he ever make her happy?

  His gut twisted painfully. The thought of failing Hallie, of keeping her with him against her will, made him ill. Surely it wouldn’t come to that? They were getting along well. In bed, they were very well matched. He’d thought they were doing well outside the bedroom until their conversation this morning. Now he felt thrown and confused.

  He wiped his face with his hands and tried to think. Were all marriages with women from her planet this way? There hadn’t been that many of them among Harcos men. Her planet, Calyx, had only been swapping brides for security via the Grabs for two years or so. Her own village, Harper’s Well, had only been part of the program for three quarters. The Valiant had only been on duty in this area for two of them, so there weren’t that many of her kind on his ship.

  Still, he’d have heard rumblings if the women from her planet viewed their bonds to their Harcos men as less important or real, wouldn’t he? Maybe not, he conceded. Harcos men were intensely private about that kind of thing.

  Who could he ask? Who would be willing to answer those kinds of questions for him? He considered his graduating class, the men with whom he shared the closest connections. Aboard the Valiant there weren’t many. Terror, Menace, Raze, Venom, Risk, Misery, Hazard—and only one of them was married. But hadn’t Misery taken a bride from the Jesco colony?

  He smacked the com unit on his desk. “Private?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Pull the records from the last two Grabs on Calyx. Find me one of our Valiant men married to a woman from that planet.”

  “Any man?” The private seemed hesitant to ask. “I could narrow it down, sir. That’s going to be quite a few if I don’t.”

  He considered the young man’s question. “The wife needs to be eighteen to twenty-five.” A woman in that age range would have a better chance of understanding Hallie. “See if you can find a woman from the village Harper’s Well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vicious ended the open communication. He tried not to think about what a colossal jackass he’d been this morning. Walking out on Hallie like that had been particularly cowardly. At the time, he’d been worried he’d say the wrong thing and hurt her. He hadn’t felt that level of rejection in his life. Now he worried that he’d hurt her even more by leaving without a word.

  “Way to go, Vicious.” His grumbling voice echoed in the room. “You’ve probably destroyed the trust you built.”

  A long, shrill beep interrupted his private chastisement. He hit the com-key. “Yes?”

  “Sir, Sergeant Hawk took a bride from Harper’s Well three months ago. They’re currently on the ship, sir. The sergeant is off-duty today.”

  “Pull his address.” Vicious hit the com-key again and rose from his chair. He left his office and closed the door. The private gave him the apartment and floor number for the sergeant. “Call him. Let him know I’m coming.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vicious extended the courtesy of a heads-up because he would have wanted the same if their positions were reversed. “Direct any issues that arise to Major Leo.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vicious left the office and made his way to the staff elevator. It would take him ten minutes just to traverse the ship and reach the housing block for the non-commissioned officers. He didn’t look forward to all that time alone with his troubling thoughts. He’d
behaved badly this morning. How in the hell was he going to make it up to Hallie?

  When he reached the sergeant’s door, Vicious tapped the bell button and stepped back to wait. The door opened quickly. The sergeant looked breathless and hastily dressed. Vicious instantly felt sorry for bothering the man. Obviously he’d been enjoying some downtime with his wife.

  “My apologies, Sergeant Hawk. I can return later.”

  “It’s fine, sir.” He stepped aside. “Please come in, Colonel.”

  Vicious nodded at the younger man and entered his domicile. His gaze flicked around the smaller space. It was clean and tidy and displayed feminine touches like picture frames and a potted plant.

  Sergeant Hawk closed the door and squeezed around him in the small entryway. He looked nervous as he asked, “To what do we owe the pleasure, Colonel Vicious?”

  “I wondered if I might speak with your wife, sergeant.”

  The man’s smile faltered. “My wife, sir?”

  Vicious realized what the younger, lower-ranked man was probably thinking. Lest he think Vicious was trolling for a wife swap, he quickly explained, “I recently took a bride from your wife’s village. I was hoping she would answer some questions for me so I can better relate to my Hal—my wife.”

  “Oh.” Sergeant Hawk seemed a bit disappointed.

  “Is something wrong, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir.” He hesitated. “I thought you were here to discuss my complaints against Sergeant Crow.”

  Vicious frowned. “What kind of complaints?”

  Sergeant Hawk glanced at the wall. “None that you would be interested in, sir. I’ve kicked them to our C.O.”

  Vicious didn’t want to involve himself in what was probably a neighborly dispute about noise or some other nonsense. “Let me know if you don’t feel your complaint has been taken seriously.”

  Sergeant Hawk nodded. “Of course, sir. This way.”

  Vicious trailed the man into the living area. The sergeant gestured to an empty seat and then left the room. Vicious took the place he’d been assigned and waited. When Sergeant Hawk returned, he held the hand of a blonde beauty with bright-green eyes. Vicious’ gaze fell to her slightly rounded stomach. Her tight-fitting top displayed the small bump very well. She was pregnant though not very far along. He smiled at the couple. “Congratulations.”

  Sergeant Hawk grinned and curved a protective hand over his wife’s belly. “Thank you, sir. It’s twins.” Turning to his wife, he said, “Lenny, this is Colonel Vicious. Colonel, my wife, Lenny.”

  He nodded in her direction. “Ma’am.”

  “Colonel.” She smiled and took a seat on the couch. “Hawk says you married a girl from my village.”

  “Yes. Her name is Hallie.”

  Lenny’s eyes went wide with shock. “Hallie? Hallie Blacksmith?”

  “Yes. You seem surprised.”

  “I am,” she admitted. “Hallie was the last person I’d ever expected to end up in the Grab. Even when we were kids, she never wanted to get married. When we’d play wedding, she always took the part of the sky pirate who came to steal away the bride to save her from a life of drudgery. I mean, when they announced Harper’s Well was joining the Grab program, she—”

  Her husband reached out to take her wrist and stopped her. His worried gaze displayed his very obvious concern that she’d overstepped her bounds.

  Vicious offered a smile. “It’s all right. I want the truth. Actually, I have to admit I’m rather amused by the thought of Hallie dressed as a sky pirate.”

  Lenny’s expression softened. “She always was a dreamer. That’s how she lost—” She stopped suddenly. “Never mind.”

  Vicious frowned. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know if I should—”

  “You should,” Vicious interrupted, his voice firm but gentle. She wasn’t one of his soldiers so he couldn’t pull rank. He wasn’t the kind of officer to punish her husband for her refusal to cooperate but she didn’t know that. Hopefully a little fear would work in his favor this time.

  Lenny touched her long strands of blonde hair. The waves reached her waist in spots. “You noticed her shorter hair, I’m sure.”

  “I did. I assumed it was her choice to wear it that way. She didn’t me strike as the most conventional of Calyx women.”

  Lenny laughed. “No, definitely not.” Then, with a shake of her head, she explained, “That’s not why Hallie wears her hair so short. Almost two years ago, Hallie broke the law. They punished her with a public shearing.”

  Vicious blinked. The shock of Lenny’s statement stunned him speechless. His blood boiled with fury at the very idea. “They shaved her head?”

  Lenny nodded. “She got caught red-handed. There was nothing anyone could do to protect her.” Lenny swallowed hard. “Honestly, she’s lucky they didn’t put her in the stocks to be publicly whipped or worse.”

  Lucky? Vicious wanted to scream. Hallie would have been very young then, still a teenager. He didn’t know much about women but he figured that having your head shaved in a culture where a woman’s hair was an outward sign of her beauty and innocence had to have been devastating.

  “Why?” he asked when he finally found his voice. “What could she possibly have done to deserve so barbaric a punishment?”

  “She drew,” Lenny answered simply. “Hal started an underground newsletter of sorts. Illiteracy is high in our area so she drew cartoon panels to keep people informed. It helped a lot of people. I never knew exactly who her partners were but they managed to pull it off for an entire year before Hallie got caught carting ink and paper to a barn.”

  Vicious sat back in his seat. His sweet Hallie had been a political dissident? Was that why she’d been so skittish about telling him her sister’s story? He remembered the way he’d accused her of working with insurgents. No doubt she’d been afraid he’d hand her over to the police. God, could he do anything right when it came to her?

  “She wouldn’t reveal the names of her accomplices.” Lenny glanced away and quickly wiped at her eyes. “They held her in the jail for nine days before handing down her punishment. She was underage so they couldn’t exactly throw her in prison for life. They chose humiliation instead.”

  “Humiliation?”

  “In our village and those surrounding it, a shaved head on a woman is the mark of a convicted prostitute,” Lenny explained.

  Vicious closed his eyes. He could only imagine the trauma a young woman of such a tender age would have suffered at being marked a prostitute in a culture where premarital sex was so taboo.

  “When they turned her over to her father…”

  Lenny couldn’t bring herself to speak the truth but Vicious could fill in the blanks. He thought of the way he’d spanked her backside last night. It had been playful but had he terrified her then? Had he forced her to endure flashbacks to all the pain she’d known in her father’s house? The way she’d cowered in that corner made so much more sense.

  “You know,” Lenny continued softly, “everyone expected her to become a hermit, but not Hallie. The very next morning, she limped out to the market and did her family’s shopping. She was all bruised and battered. Her head was still bleeding in spots and scabbed in others. She held her head high and didn’t even pay any attention to the whispers. Even then, they couldn’t break her spirit.”

  “No, I’m sure they couldn’t.” Vicious doubted anyone could break Hallie. She possessed a well of inner strength that rivaled any he’d known. Only Terror came to mind. That man had known soul-crushing hell too.

  “Her sister Bernie and I are the same age. That’s how I knew Hallie. There weren’t many of us girls in that age range, not after the cough came that winter and killed so many of us. She lost her stepmother and two brothers that winter.”

  He nodded. “She told me.”

  “I’m sure she told you about her father?”

  “She said he’s a heavy drinker.”

  “Very,” Lenny agreed. “Jane
r Blacksmith ran that house with an iron fist. There’s a reason he never had a third wife. No father in town would allow him to court their daughters. He’s a good blacksmith but he’s an awful man.” She exhaled a noisy breath. “Hallie spent most of her childhood with switch and belt marks criss-crossing her legs and backside. I’d wager that half of the time she was covering for Bernie or one of her older brothers.”

  Vicious wasn’t surprised by that tidbit of information. If she was willing to have her head shaved to protect her accomplices, she’d probably cover for a brother or sister she viewed as weaker, even if that sibling was older. “Why did her sister leave Harper’s Well?”

  Lenny hesitated. “She was pregnant. With the morality laws in Harper’s Well, there was nowhere for her to hide. Even if she’d escaped to The City, they would have run her papers and discovered she was missing.” She wrung her hands. “Bernie’s issue was complicated by the father of her child. He…he’s an alderman. A married alderman.”

  “Of course he is,” Vicious muttered. “And Hallie arranged for her sister to flee?”

  Lenny nodded. “She’d been squirreling away money for years to get away on a transport ship. After the shearing, she really buckled down and started studying the laws. A woman can legally gain a travel visa if she reaches the safe zone during the Grab. It’s a kind of reward. Barring that, her other choice was to hop a transport ship and buy a smuggled seat in a cargo hold.”

  “But her sister became pregnant and Hallie had to use her money to get her sister to safety.”

  “Yes. Bernie disappeared a few days before I was Grabbed. Later, I found out she’d been smuggled out on the Shepherd and reached the Safe Harbor colony safely.”

  “That had to be expensive,” Sergeant Hawk commented. “How in the world would a young woman in that hellhole get that kind of money?”

  Lenny dropped her gaze. “That’s not my story to tell.”

  Vicious considered the woman’s body language. There were only a few ways for a woman to earn a significant amount of money in the backward villages of Calyx. Obviously, Hallie hadn’t been a prostitute. That much was clear from their first night together. Whatever the story, he would get it from Hallie’s own lips.

 

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