Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that, so I try to keep her talking. The guys will be looking for me by now. I just need to buy time. “What happened to you after Freya – your sister, left?”
Angelica frowns. “He didn’t let me out for a long, long time. He said I was dead.”
“He saidyouwere dead? Or he said your sister was dead?”
She wraps her hand around my neck and pushes my chin up with her thumb. “You’re not listening,” she snaps. “There is no her and me. If she was dead, I was dead.”
“Okay, okay.” I swallow. Her thumb digs in so much even that small action hurts. “I’m sorry,” I say.
She lets go of my throat and runs her fingers through my hair.
I hate it. I hate having her hands on me because it’s too much like when Freya touches me. And she is not Freya. She is not mine. “What’s the plan here, Angelica?”
She smirks. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.” Her hands drop to my chest, and she starts unbuttoning my shirt.
My entire body goes rigid.
A scrape echoes through the warehouse as Angelica picks something up off the floor and then she’s pointing the tip of a knife to my bare chest. “We’re just going to wait right here forFreyato come rescue you.”
Her words do little to reassure me. I very much doubt this woman’s version of ‘not hurting’ is the same as mine, and I really, really do not want Freya anywhere near her. Based on what I know so far about Angelica, I’m strugglingly to understand why Freya was so determined to protect her.
“She never told us about you, you know,” I say. “She wants to keep you safe.”
The tip of the knife pierces my skin. I suppress a grimace.
A bead of blood appears on the silver blade. “She left me.”
“I don’t think she wanted to.”
Angelica lifts the knife up. She watches my blood run down to the hilt. “You’re not supposed to break a promise. I haven’t broken mine. That’s why he’s mad.”
“Your dad?”
She sits back on her heels. Nods.
“Is he here?”
She shoots forward, pressing her finger to my lips, her face centimeters from mine. “Shh, you can’t tell him.”
“Where is he?” Getting kidnapped might be worth it if I can get a location on Maxwell.
“I’ll take you to him once I’ve fixed it.”
“What do you have to fix?”
She twirls the knife towards herself. “Me. I’m broken. She made me promise not to kill anybody, but daddy doesn’t like that.”
I sink into the beam as I realize just how much weight Freya’s been carrying. I mean Jesus, she’s the only thing standing between her sister becoming a serial killer.
My heart squeezes for this girl whose world has been twisted and distorted at the hands of a monster. How Freya got out with her mind intact, I’ll never know.
“We can get you away from him,” I say. “We can keep you safe.”
“No.” She slices the knife across my chest lethally fast and two sharp lines burn into my skin in a large cross. “No. No. No. I will fix this!”
Sweat gathers on my brow. I clench my hands behind the beam as warm blood runs down to my waist.
“How?” I bite out. “How are you going to fix it?” I know I’m not going to like the answer, but I ask the question anyway.
