Page 40 of Stockholm (Angel of Mercy #1)

The Kept

A crash shakes me from my sleep, and I sit up, the stab of fear making it difficult to breathe. I rub my eyes, taking in the scene in the kitchen, where Bo and Jesse both stand, looking guilty and disheveled.

“Fuck, sorry,” Jesse says, picking up a bowl that must have fallen off the counter. “That’s my bad.”

My brow furrows, taking in the mess. Cracked eggshells and an opened carton of milk have been pushed to the side, and Bo’s pouring some kind of batter into a cupcake tin. A kitchen towel is slung over Jesse’s shoulder, and flour dashing across his cheek completes the chaotic image.

“Why does it look like you guys had a food fight?” I ask. “Where’s Noah?”

The couch is empty, the feeling of his arm slung over me during the night still a phantom pressure on my side.

I slept like the dead with him at my back. Not a single nightmare of the dollhouse or cameras in the trees.

The night before drifts to the surface of my memory and I consider hiding in my room for a moment, but nobody else seems to be embarrassed about what happened and I don’t want to be the one making it awkward.

“He had errands to run,” Jesse answers, taking some dirty dishes and putting them in the sink. “He’ll be back later tonight. And it looks like this because Bo let us in on a little secret.” He winks at me as he starts hot water in the sink .

Bo’s smile lights up the kitchen, and Jesse is immediately refocused on him as he slides the cupcakes into the oven and grabs a plate of waffles to show me. “Your favorite breakfast! Happy Birthday, Em.”

I clamp my hand over my mouth. With every day feeling more and more like the twilight zone, I’d lost track of the time.

My birthday. I’m officially thirty years old.

“You forgot, didn’t you?” Bo asks, his shoulders drooping. “I’m sorry, I know things have been crazy and I couldn’t really plan anything.”

I shake my head, stretching and walking over to the kitchen. “You always do too much, you know that. I don’t want it to be a big deal. It’s not like I’m excited for my thirties.”

“Thirty is fun,” Jesse says. “I have to say, you being a Libra makes so much sense.”

“Thanks, I think,” I say. “You’ve done too much already, Bo. Let me clean this up.”

“Absolutely not. Sit down and eat your breakfast. Today’s about you. You can make it up to me next year for my twenty-eigth.”

Jesse rolls up behind him, and I watch as he lightly bites the side of Bo’s neck. “I keep forgetting you’re younger.”

Bo huffs, glaring back. “Barely a few years, that’s nothing.”

“Okay, little sugar baby.”

Bo bites back a laugh, dropping my waffles in front of where I sit. “Please, don’t ever say that again.”

“You are, though. You have a problem. Sugar addiction. You’re a sugar whore . I keep finding stashes of candy in our room.”

My eyes flit to Jesse at the reference to them sharing a room together. Then I shake my head because no rules apply here. Dating is different when your boyfriend likes you so much that he kidnaps you.

I cut up my waffles, watching them move around the kitchen in total comfort with each other. Teasing. Playing. Bo can’t keep the smile off his face.

Jesse can’t keep his hands off of Bo.

Noah’s gone. Part of me wishes he would have been here when I woke up. I wonder when I reached the point that seeing him is an important part of my day. That I miss him when he isn’t here.

It’s only been about three weeks since I first laid eyes on him. My entire universe has been flipped on its head since then, and he’s standing right in the middle of the rubble. Instead of hating him like I should, I find myself drawing closer. Fascinated. Wanting more .

Lost in my thoughts as the two clean up the kitchen, I go back to last night.

My cheeks flush, but I don’t feel shame like I thought I would.

I would have expected to wake up this morning and hide out of sight, trying to forget the person I turn into whenever Noah gives me any attention.

I just eat it up, crave it. There’s something about him that dares me to give a little more to him, to trust him when he coaxes me into doing something I would have never done a month ago.

There’s something to be said for the way he handles me. It makes me forget who I am, or who I thought I was. Eric had never been that way. He loved babying me, so everything was always soft and gentle and I loved it then. It was just his way of making sure I knew he cared.

Now I know better. Noah’s opened my eyes to who Eric really is, and I can’t figure out the dynamic now. Knowing Eric is such a monster, why did he treat me so delicately?

It’s like I was a doll he didn’t want to ruin. Set on a shelf in the middle of nowhere and played with gently so I didn’t lose my value. And the more he emphasized my delicateness, the more I accepted my role as the soft wife.

It’s who I thought I was. Who I’d been raised to be. Demure. Modest.

Noah touches me like he’s trying to break me.

His hands grip me like he doesn’t want to let me go, wrenching violent orgasms from me with that dangerous look in his eyes.

It’s downright wolfish, like he could keep consuming me until nothing remained.

And I’d let him. I’d let him do anything he liked if he would just smile at me like that one more time .

I would. I want him to tell me how good I’m doing, like he’d whispered in my ear last night as he’d shed my clothes and opened me up for Bo and Jesse. How he’d pushed me and Bo closer, allowing me to explore that attraction. He’d directed me and my pleasure and I loved it. I crave that handling.

A chair pulls out next to me, and Bo sits down. “You okay? You’re very quiet. Look I just wanted to say if last night was too much, I’m sorry. I don’t want to do anything that would hurt our friendship.”

I shake my head, placing my hand on his. “Don’t be sorry, I’m okay.” I take a shaky breath. “Maybe mortified, but still okay.”

Jesse sits down with a giant stack of his own waffles across from me. “I get it if you’ve never done something like that before, but if it makes you feel better that was the hottest shit I’ve seen in a long time.”

My face burns and Bo turns to him. “Really?” he asks under his breath.

“What?” Jesse questions. “It was. I just don’t want you to feel nervous at all, like things are going to be weird because they’re not. You’re best friends, right? So you’ve always been super close, but now you have a new and way more fun way to show it.”

I have no idea what to make of that, so I peek up at Bo. His messy hair and boyish charm, coupled with his sunshiny personality make it easy to see what attracts people to him. He has a way of making everyone around him feel safe and taken care of. He’s always paid close attention to my feelings.

Bo rests his cheek on his hand, looking at me. “If it makes you feel better, that was a really good kiss.”

I laugh into a bite of my waffle. “Thanks, Bo. I’ll try not to die of my mortification.”

“Good, that would make me really sad.”

The timer on the oven goes off and Bo jumps up, grabbing an oven mit to pull the cupcakes out. They smell amazing, though I’m already feeling like I’ll burst from the syrup drowned waffles.

“We’ll ice them once they're cool. What do you want to do for your birthday, Em? ”

I look out the window, then laugh at the absurdity of the question. “I assume going out to dinner is out of the question.”

Jesse pins me with a look. “I don’t think Noah would forgive me for letting you out of the house.”

“If he was so worried he’d probably be here right now,” I say, trying to sound detached instead of fixated, which is what I am.

Jesse sees right through me, and I realize he’s much more perceptive than I’d originally thought. “There’s a lot going on in the background, Emma. He takes looking after you very seriously, but work is work.” He shrugs.

“What kind of work?”

Bo glances at me, then back at Jesse. I scoff, realizing I’m once again out of the loop. “Wait, Bo knows, doesn’t he? Am I the only one who keeps being kept in the dark?”

Bo shakes his head. "It's not like that. We just didn’t want to overwhelm you with information that might hurt you.”

“We? Since when are you grouping yourself in with them instead of me?” I say, stung that he’s considered trustworthy enough to know the things that I don’t.

Jesse grabs my hand, holding it tightly and locking his eyes on mine.

“Hey, it’s not like that, Princess. It’s not so black and white.

We’ve shared things with you.” He tilts his head to the side.

“Think about everything you’ve learned since you got here.

Tell me you don’t feel different about what Mercy does? What we do?”

I pause, because this isn’t something I’ve had the head space to think about.

So much has been packed into such a small amount of time that my brain hasn’t fully caught up with what I’ve learned about Eric.

Sometimes I hate him, I hate the thought of him seeing other women, hurting other women— girls.

Then other times, I forget for a moment that he’s the cause of all of our pain. It takes a moment for my head to catch up with what my heart had already known.

I wasn’t happy with him. I just hadn’t been sure why.

The nightmares, the anxiety attacks. The obsessive routines and lists and calendars so I could be perfect all the time. My fixation on looking immaculate because when Eric wanted me it was the only time I felt truly beautiful and worth something.

“No, of course I want him to be stopped for what he’s done, what they are doing.

I just have been kept in the dark from both sides.

It still feels abstract to me, that these business men I’ve known for my whole adult life are secretly purchasing trafficked women?

That there’s a shadow organization taking them down?

I mean it’s just hard to accept. Like I’ve been living in a movie. ”

“I get that. I’ve grown up in this way of life so everything is ingrained in me.

What you need to know is that Eric is not fucking smart enough to do this shit on his own.

He’s a predator that found himself rubbing shoulders with some wealthy men.

” He shrugs. “Some were just normal business owners, and those are a lot of the ones you met, Emma. But there would have been some that were involved in worse shit. Who take advantage of people weaker than them. Those are the people your husband chose to link himself to. Not by accident, but because that’s the fucking type of person he is at his core.

They’re consumers in every way, even with other human beings. ”

I shiver. His words feel like ice in my bloodstream.

“The only question you need to answer for yourself—just like Bo did—is how much you want him to pay for what he’s done? How much do you want to be involved in taking him down?”

Bo looks over his shoulder when the timer goes off, and walks out of the room to go grab more baked goods from the oven. I can’t look away from Jesse’s eyes.

“I—I want him to pay. For what he’s done to your sister. For what he did to Bo.”

“You’re a victim too, Emma. Look at where you are now because he wanted to play God with all of those degenerate pigs. He knew there was a chance you would be in danger at some point, because of his decisions.”

I hadn’t considered this. “I would hardly say that. I just lived my life like a naive idiot. I had no idea.”

He shakes his head sharply, brows furrowing. “No. He brought John-fucking-Bundy home to meet you. Knowing he would want you. Knowing he was the most dangerous of them all. What kind of husband would do that to someone he loves? It almost makes you wonder what was coming next.”

I blink, processing. “He was getting more deeply involved?”

“That’s what we think. You know we actually hadn’t intended on taking you at first.” He smirks.

“Originally I suggested that Noah just get you to cheat on Eric and send him the pictures. Something to drive him fucking nuts. But the more we watched and the more we learned, Noah didn’t want to leave you behind.

When he saw Eric bring John to your house, he got antsy.

Thought there was a chance you might go missing.

So we jumped the gun and took you before something worse could happen. ”

I’m oddly touched. “Uh, thanks Jesse. I guess I appreciate you looking out for me.”

He winks at me. “Don’t mention it. I get off on saving damsels.”

Despite everything—the heavy conversations from yesterday, the wildness of the night before, and him basically admitting that something sinister was likely planned for me before I’d been kidnapped—I find myself smiling back at him.

Bo appears back at the table, a cupcake with pink frosting and a flickering candle that he lowers to the table in front of me.

Leaning down, he kisses the top of my head. “Happy Birthday, Emma. Make a wish,” he says, the tongues of the flame glinting in his eyes.

I close mine, thinking hard about what I wanted to wish for. Then I open them, biting back a smile. I look at Jesse and Bo, who both watch my mouth as I blow out the candle.