Page 19 of Obsessive Stalker
I exhale slowly.
“It didn’t start out for that reason,” I say to her. “No. I won’t make that a secret, pet. Kidnapping you was about satisfying my desire to have you.Originally. But now…”
“But now what?” she whispers.
I look at her.
“Your father is a bad man, Kristen,” I say to her.
“You said that last night and you still haven’t told you what you meant,” she says impatiently. “All you said is he gambles. Which I already know about. If that’s supposed to scare me -”
“It’s more than the gambling,” I say, my voice strangled.
I’m caught between my need to protect this woman from her own father, and my need to protect her from the harsh reality of the world around her. How I wish I could shield her from all of this shit, hide her away in a manufactured paradise, all of the comforts my money can provide for her. That was the original intent. But now things are different. Kristen was in danger, and still is as long as her father is alive and scheming. So are her sisters.
“More than gambling,” Kristen repeats flatly. “So…what? Embezzling? Because I’ve suspected that for a long time and honestly, you’re not making a compelling case for why I’m better off with you.”
“Embezzling, gambling…other things,” I reply evasively. “Things that make your father desperate and willing to blur the line between right and wrong even more than he already does on a routine basis and Kristen, you have to know that a desperate man is a dangerous man.”
Kristen lets go of my hand and falls back on the bed, her hair fanning out on the pillow behind her.
“If you’re going to speak in riddles and dance around the details, then don’t even bother telling me anything,” she says quietly. “It’s just you fucking with me again. You come into my life and mess it up and now you’re messing with my head, too. I feel like I’m going crazy.”
Her voice breaks on the last word.
“If I tell you the truth,” I say slowly. “Will you stop this behavior? Will you stop fighting me at every turn and trust that I’m acting with your best interests in mind?”
She looks at me.
“That’s a lot to ask,” she replies. “Considering what you’ve done.”
“I know,” I reply.
She pulls her knees to her chest and casts her gaze downward at the bed in front of her.
“I’m not going to make a promise like that,” she says. “I’m not going to say I’ll never fight back, or that I’m just going to accept being your prisoner for the rest of my life. That’s crazy.”
“Fair enough,” I reply. “Then don’t promise me forever. Just promise me one week.”
She looks up at me.
“One week,” I repeat softly, almost pleadingly.
All I can do when I look at Kristen is envision the danger she was in before I took her, danger she didn’t even know about. She thinks I’m the thing to fear but the real thing to fear is the man who might have bought Kristen off of her father if I hadn’t taken her when I did, or the way that Kristen’s father might have gotten rid of her, made her “disappear” otherwise.
I want to wrap her in my arms and protect her, show her that I mean well. That I intend to keep her safe, whatever it takes.
But this would all be so much easier to do if she would stop trying to hurt me, stop hurting herself in the process.
I hate to see her bleed, I hate to see her cry as well. She’s started up again, tears rolling down her cheeks. Tears that I put there, my broken girl who was so strong in the beginning, such a fighter.
“One week,” she agrees. “I’ll stop fighting you for a week but that’s it. I’m not going to promise anything else.”
“One week is all I need,” I reply, thinking of her father’s timeline for getting affairs in order, how he plans to make it seem like she was kidnapped and possibly murdered, collecting that life insurance for himself. Probably moving onto his other daughters soon as well.
“Now that I’ve agreed to that,” Kristen says, wiping her tears away and straightening up. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I nod, standing from the bed.
