Bow Down(55)

The question was, did he think that working with my father was that way to do that?

I couldn’t imagine that was true. The only thing that suggested he was working with my father was the ambush. But there were other explanations for that.

For example, my father somehow figured out that Wyatt was working with me. Or maybe he didn’t, and was just trying to find a leak in his organization by letting slip things like that then seeing who leaked it to us. Or any other number of issues greater and smaller could explain it.

Or he was a traitor. I kept coming back to that, but the way he made me feel, the way he touched me, I just couldn’t see it.

A few days after the attack, we began to pack up the safe house. Kasia insisted that we move. Wyatt had seen too much, knew too much about it. Even though the building had been built at incredible expense and was essentially a fortress, we couldn’t risk it. The mafia could easily trap us in there and starve us out slowly.

Leaving that safe house wasn’t an easy decision to make. It was one of the first projects I undertook, and it had saved many, many lives. But I knew Kasia was right. If Wyatt was a traitor, then my father knew about the safe house.

But if Wyatt was a traitor, why was he on the run?”

It only took us a day to pack the essentials. The gravely injured men had both died, and so we didn’t have to worry about transporting them. The men that were left remained loyal, or at least Roger Dean assured me that. We were paying them more, since we had excess cash now that the other mercenaries had died before getting their payment.

We had other places scattered throughout the city. It felt strange to be moving to one of those houses, one that wasn’t nearly so protected, but at least it was more secret.

Kasia and I stood together in the first underground room, surveying the empty space. Most of the girls had been packed away and were already moving, spreading throughout the city.

“It’s strange, leaving here,” she said to me.

“I know.”

“This is the first place you brought me. Remember?”

“I remember a scared little girl that didn’t know how to use a Kalashnikov.”

She smiled. “That girl is long gone.”

“Good.”

“She was weak. But that weakness is gone now.”

“Don’t get too hard, Kasia.”

“We need hardness now. I’ll be too hard so that the other girls don’t need to be.”

I smiled at her sadly. “I hope you don’t need to do that. I hope you let someone in one day.”

“Like you did?”

That stung. “Yes, like I did.”

“He’s gone, Lou. He’s gone and he isn’t coming back.”

“I know that.”

“He was a traitor. He got your people killed.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Not maybe.” She turned to me, her expression serious. “You have to let it go. You have to let him go. We can still win this, but we need you.”

I nodded. “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

“We need all of you. Please. This is for the best.”

“I can’t say that I agree with you. But it’s what we’re doing.”

She sighed. “I used to think you were strange. Did you know that?”

I grinned at her. “No way.”

“You come off as very detached and weird to the people that meet you.”

“I had no clue.”

She smiled softly. “But since getting to know you, I’ve realized that you’re the most passionate woman I know. You care more than I can ever understand. It’s because of you that we’ve survived this long, and that we continue to fight. That mind is beautiful, Louisa, and we need it. Let go of that man and come back.”

I understood what she was saying. I knew that she meant well. But I felt things with Wyatt that I never thought I’d feel again.

I had closed off my heart. I shut out the world. I locked myself in my room and hated men, hated the way the world worked, and from that hate I birthed the Spiders. That hatred was a powerful thing, an incredibly powerful thing. It gave me strength that I never knew I could have.

But Wyatt gave me something else. I didn’t know how to name it, maybe didn’t have a name for it anymore, but it was more than desire. It was different from hate. It was an entirely different kind of strength, maybe even more powerful than my hatred had been.

That was gone now. I had a hard time accepting that the man who could make me feel something again would betray me, but I had no other choice. I forced him to leave, and now I was forced to leave as well, or at least to leave my home. He was on the run, and I was going to have to run, too.

That was my only option.