I wanted to forgive. I wanted a life without hate, without pain and suffering over the choices we made to protect the ones we loved. Whether she and Gabriel became a thing or she was punished and went on her way after it was over, I wanted to live knowing that her fate wasn’t hanging over my head.
That my hatred didn’t consume me from the inside out and turn me intoher.
“I forgive you,” I said, using my hand to guide her forward when her body seemed to get heavy all of a sudden, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of supporting her impossibly rigid posture. Like the show she was so used to putting on for everyone who watched her was suddenly stripped away.
“I don’t deserve it,” she whispered, shaking her head from side to side slowly. Tears welled in her eyes, but she sniffled them back as we rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and made our way into the basement.
“Maybe not, but I do anyway,” I said with a smile as we stepped into the chaos of Rafael’s men trying to evacuate the women.
Many of them cried out, clinging to the doorways as men tried to coax them out. I moved, stepping out from the safety of Joaquin and Gabriel to help a man who was trying to pry a woman’s hands from the door frame closest to me.
I grabbed his hand, guiding it away slowly and nodding him away as I smiled at her. I didn’t move to touch her, letting her decide for what I imagined was the first time. The bruises covering her skin were like a map of the abuse she’d suffered.
“It’s time to go,” I said softly, not bothering to give her false promises about how everything would be okay. We both knew that after everything she’d suffered, everything these women had seen and experienced, nothing would ever really beokayagain.
But they’d be free.
“Master wouldn’t want me to go,” she said, meeting my gaze with her own brown-eyed stare.
“Who’s your master?” I asked, wincing as I said the words. I wished I could erase them and the fear in her eyes as she met mine and shook her head. Refusing to speak the name. “Dima?” I asked.
She bit her bottom lip, nodding ever so slightly as Joaquin watched me from the next doorway. He worked to coax a somewhat less traumatized woman out of her room, never venturing too far. Gabriel and Faye worked a few doorways up, moving in tandem as if they’d been born to do it.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I asked, leaning closer as if it was truly a secret and not something that I would proudly announce if given the chance. “I’m going to kill him. You don’t need to worry about what he thinks anymore.”
She blinked up at me, biting her bottom lip and glancing to where her hand clutched the doorway. Finally, her fingers relaxed and she stepped free of the room that had been her prison. One of Rafe’s men swept in, gesturing her forward to the exit from the basement where Dima had carried me in from the plane.
I heaved a sigh, continuing on my way to the next woman who struggled. We all worked together, until most of the basement was empty and only a couple of the more resistant ones remained.
“He loves you,” a small voice said as I walked past an open doorway. I froze, peering inside the darkened room to try to find the girl who’d spoken. There was nothing, only white walls and a distinct lack of furniture inside.
No place for her to hide.
My foot crossed the threshold as I stepped into the room, called by the sound of a child. Maybe it was the mother in me that couldn’t leave anyone behind, but something else inside me forced me to stop. Like the whisper of a woman’s voice inside my head or the tickle of the wind on my skin making me pause.
Stop. It seemed to say, and I froze in place. Heeding the warning inside my blood, I stepped back into the light of the hallway just in time for a body to collide with my side and push me out of the doorway.
Gabriel surged into the room before Faye and I had even stopped moving, Joaquin appearing at my side.
It had been one step into the darkness, one heartbeat, and then it was over. Something wet dripped onto my arm where Faye clutched me, her eyes dancing over my face intently. “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling back to run open palms over me and my stomach.
I furrowed my brow at the question, tilting my head to the side as my gaze dropped to the slash in her bicep. Gabriel pulled a girl from the room. She was kicking and screaming as he handed her off to one of the guards, something wild in her eyes as she looked back at me.
“He loves you! Ungrateful whore!” she yelled, and the word in her childlike, singsong voice made my heart clench.
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. Whatever had happened, the action had been too fast for me to follow.
Faye had moved before I could even register that a girl had stepped into the light from the doorway, a knife clutched in her hand. I glanced at the wall opposite the door, finding the blade embedded there.
“I think you’ve earned my forgiveness now,” I said, swallowing as I wrapped my arms around my stomach.
Faye laughed lightly as Gabriel and Joaquin came over and pried us apart. Joaquin rested his hands on my shoulders, his face heavy as he glanced at Faye. “It’s time to go.” The seriousness in his stare left no room for argument, so I nodded my head with a last glance toward the stairs back up to the level where I’d seen Rafael disappear.
This house was full of horrors, and I just had to hope he was strong enough to survive them.