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Cara

I can’t believe what I am seeing.

There is no way that I can be taking this in right—my brain is playing tricks on me, bringing me back to that night the woman with red hair tried so hard to escape—escape my father.

I’m hallucinating. All the stress has sent me back in time to the evening I crept out of my room and peered down over the banister and saw her running from Dad, running like her life depended on it.

And here she is now, sitting in this cabin as though it’s exactly where she belongs.

I feel as though I have plucked her straight from my memory and set her down in front of me again.

The same eyes, the same hair, though she looks a little older, and she is far less panicked than on the night I first saw her.

As she sits before me now, she is self-possessed and looks sure of herself, even if she can’t figure out why I am looking at her like she’s a long lost puppy come home to me.

"What does that mean?” she shoots back, her voice defensive.

I don’t blame her. I heard gunshots in the woods, and I know something has gone down.

My father’s men sent to get me and bring me back…

and failing—I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, all things considered.

Because if I had gone out that door myself after making the phone call, I would never have been here to see her, and I get the feeling that her presence here is going to change everything.

"I know you," I continue, trying to gather as much of my strength as I can.

"I... I saw you. You were at my father’s mansion, maybe ten years ago.

You were running. I remember. I was sitting on the balcony at the top of the stairs in the entrance hall, and I saw you running.

There were men after you. I never knew if they found you, but. .."

I can’t string my words together properly.

I feel as though my head is going to burst at any moment.

That same woman is here, standing here before me, looking at me as though I’m talking nonsense.

But as I speak, I can tell that she is starting to understand where I am coming from.

It might not be easy to put it into words, but she remembers that night, too. Probably even better than I do.

"Jesus Christ," she mutters, as she turns to face me fully.

Max steps forward beside me. Even though I know I will have a lot of explaining to do, there is something comforting about having him so close to me.

"What is it?” he demands. "Veronica, how do you know Cara? I thought you said?—"

"I don’t know her," she replies. "But I... I remember that night. I remember running from that house. I went through the main hall, I remember, because I had to cut back on myself and go through the garden when I ran into guards on the walls. I thought I wasn’t going to make it, I thought they were for sure going to catch me in there, but. .."

She shakes her head.

"But they didn’t. I got away."

I step towards her. I have held questions about that night for all these years, needing to know how all the pieces fit together, needing to know if I can make them fit.

"What were you running away from?" I ask her.

I hardly even know if I want the answer, not when I have a feeling of what it might be.

She gazes back at me for a moment, and the look on her face scares me.

It is almost as though she feels sorry for me, sorry that I might, for a moment, believe a single one of the lies my father has spun to me over the years.

But she is not going to be the one to hold back.

Flicking her tongue over her lips, she speaks at last.

"I was running away from your father, Cara," she replies, as calmly as she can.

My jaw tightens. It doesn’t feel right that she can speak to me like this—her words are lies. They must be! Suddenly, it doesn't feel as though I belong here, where I can be talked to in this way, lied to like this. As though my father is some kind of monster, when I know he’s not, I know...

"Tell her what he had done to you," Max prompts quietly. "Tell her why you didn’t want to go back."

Veronica pauses for another moment, and I see a dozen memories flash across her face in a single second. She’s having a hard time hiding the intensity of her emotions right now, and I feel a twist of sadness and anger, already knowing where she is going to go.

"He was... using me," she replies, carefully. "He was selling my body. He bought me from my father when I was young. I didn’t know any better back then. Hell, I thought all of that was normal. It wasn’t until I got older, and I saw some of the other girls who were being brought in, that I started to question it at all. "

She shakes her head slightly.

"They were all so... vulnerable," she admits, after a long silence.

"All so unaware of how much trouble they were in, how badly all of this might go for them. They’d had lives before this, and they told me what those lives had been like, what it had been like for them to give up on everything they thought they knew—to pay off a drug debt, because one of their family members got into trouble, whatever it was. "

Her eyes mist slightly. These memories are still fresh to her, even though the night I saw her fleeing from the mansion feels like a thousand years ago now, another world, another life.

"And I knew I had to try and strike out and make a life for myself out there," she continues, her voice dropping again. "I couldn’t get everyone out. God knows I wanted to. But I knew if I got out, I could work against him. I’d been with him for years.

I had seen him burn through some of his most trusted generals, and I had information on him that could get other women out of his grasp, too. .."

It’s clear she has told herself this particular part over and over again—repeating it like a mantra until she truly believes that there is nothing more she could have done to get those women out of there.

She trails off for a moment, but it doesn’t take her long to gather herself, shifting back into the story.

"And I ran away," she finishes up. "That’s the night you saw me, the night I left, the night I promised myself I would never go back. I shopped around a few of the people I knew to be his enemies, and I encountered Max’s father, and..."

She shrugged.

"Rest is history."

"And you’re working to bring him down?" I whisper, barely able to get the words out of my mouth.

It seems so impossible, even acknowledging that I am standing in a room with people who are so willing to work against my father—the same one who was going to marry me off to Mario as soon as he got the chance.

"That’s why we took you," Max mutters, as he finally steps in. "Needed a bargaining chip. We were going to distract him long enough to hit his major centers and free as many women as we could, and take out some of his men to boot."

I stare at him for a moment. I can still remember the day we met, when he wrapped his arms around me and carried me out of that corridor, forcing me to climb out of the window to his waiting car before bundling me in the back seat and speeding off into the distance with me.

It seems insane to me now, to think that I would ever have seen it as a good thing, but I did now.

If I’d known that his plans were to end my father’s business, maybe even his life, that would have been a whole different story.

"Why are you telling me this?” I manage, finally.

I don’t know why he would spill something like this to me.

I don’t get why he would willingly lay his family’s secret plans on the line in such a fashion.

Doesn’t he know that I could just go back to my father, and tell him all of this, warn him before they can do anything and bring all the things they’re accusing him of to an end. ..?

"Because I know you’re starting to see him for what he is," Max replies evenly. "And when you do, I want you to understand everything about where we’re coming from. And how powerful an ally you would be to us."

I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head.

I can’t stand any of this, I can’t stand hearing it.

I feel as though I am going crazy, my mind pulling apart at the seams as I try to wrap my head around it.

The way that his eyes feel, burning into mine, I know that he is serious.

This isn’t a game for him—this isn’t some kind of play—he really wants me on their side.

But do I just switch that easily? Do I have such little loyalty to my father that I would allow myself to be twisted without any protest, without any data to support these claims?

They could have found out about that night and strung something together to convince me—he had seen my scar, after all, so maybe he had put the pieces together and dug out Veronica to force me to believe him.

"I... I need some time to myself," I protest, my voice still shaking hard.

Max catches my arm, but I pull it free swiftly.

I don’t want to have to do this with him right now, I don’t want to have to think about where this leaves me.

Because everything that Veronica is telling me is making a whole lot of sense.

I am starting to wonder if all the stories I have heard about my father. ..

If they are only just scratching the surface.

I rush back to my room voluntarily, pulling the door shut behind me and drawing in a long gasp of air.

I sink down to the ground, head in my hands, as the reality of it sinks in.

The gunshots in the forest, the woman in the living room, the revelations about my father—I don’t know how much longer I can keep blocking out the truth.

Or what is waiting for me on the other side if I don’t.