“You think I don’t know that, Miah? I fucking love…shit. I love her, okay? I have for a long time and it eats at me that she doesn’t love me back,” I say, dropping her hand to wipe at my face as it all comes tumbling out.
I do. I love her so much that I feel like a piece of me is dead, like it died when I realized what she did. The pain in my chest is a gaping hole that aches with every breath just thinking about the possibility that she could be another trap sent to us to infiltrate the ranks.
I don’t want to believe it, and Miah’s right, just knowing that a part of me doubts her means I am far from that forgiveness he thinks she needs. But it’s there all the same, and no amount of love will erase it.
All I know is that forgiveness or not, I can’t let her go. Not knowing what her family or those assholes will do to her if they get at her again.
What if she is a plant and she doesn’t get anything? Will they kill her and move on? Is she as expendable to them as she is precious to me, I wonder, feeling my ire rise again.
“She does love you, bro—”
“You don’t betray the ones you love, Miah,” I say harshly, getting up and stalking to the window. “She talked to me every day, sometimes for hours. She could have confided in me. She could have told me and let me help her.”
“Yeah, you’re right. She could have. Hell, she should have. But you don’t know why she didn’t, and you need to find out before you pass that final judgement you’re so famous for,” he says, rising tiredly with a last glance at her. “Ask her. That’s all you have to do. Just ask and I think you may be surprised by what she has to say. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a kid to go dig out of the cookie jar and a mother to scowl at for spoiling him rotten.”
When he leaves quietly, shutting the door and sealing us in, I turn back to the bed and stand staring down at Paulie’s peaceful face. The bruises are still stark against her pale skin, but I see an improvement already, not even an hour after that nurse gave her the shot.
I can hardly wait for meds to do the job they were intended for, because the minute the doc gives her the all clear I’ll have her tied to me and under me.
Whatever was done to her…
I can’t think about it now, not yet. It won’t matter after I show her how much I love her body. I will wipe away whatever happened and give her so much pleasure, she will never remember a time when all she felt was pain.
When I can’t stand to stare and not touch her for another moment I go over to the bed, place a gentle kiss on her puffy lips, and turn for the door, hitting my office and the servers I have there.
This is my sanctuary and the only place I know that makes me feel in control. Here I can do anything, find anything, see anything, and what I want to find now is not only a reason to look at Cupcake with the love I feel in my heart, but one of the missing pieces of the puzzle I’ve been neglecting.
Melissa Dobson.
The woman has to be somewhere; she can’t just have vanished, no matter how good Roman is at his job, and I need to find her so I can at least use her as leverage when the time comes.
Roman loves that woman.
She’s his. I know it like I know Paulie is mine, and if it comes to it, I will use whoever I have to to draw this shit to a close. Miah is too wrapped up in his little vendetta against Nick Grimes, Jace is obsessed with Tracy and everything the woman does, and Wyatt is a lost cause what with him trying to crawl into poor Ellie at every turn, as well as be a good father to little Al.
That leaves me to keep this ball rolling, no matter where that leads.
With Case and Bronx on the Hayeses and my baby safe in the room next door, I have the time and the know-how to do what needs doing. I hope.
I hit the keys and start pulling surveillance from every camera in the area, expanding my search when I come up blank after three hours of nonstop searching.
It’s only in hour four that I finally get a hit on a female entering a gas station convenience store a few miles outside of town that I feel excitement hit me.
It takes a while to clean up the footage because the equipment is shoddy, but another hour later I am finally looking into the face of Mel Dobson.
She’s blonde here instead of brunette, and her eyes are a deep shade of dull brown instead of the shocking blue on her driver’s license, but it’s her. Now I just have to follow her as far as I can and hope that she pops up on footage again.
It’s hours later when I stand and stretch with a groan and realize I haven’t looked in on Paulie once. With a curse and a lot of self-recrimination, I run for the room only to stop dead in my tracks when I find her crawling beneath the bed, scratching at the floorboards.