Page 94 of Vow of Vengeance

It takes a few tries before my lids flutter open, and I have to blink to try and make the hazy shapes before me come back into something that makes sense.

Except, it still doesn't make sense, because my brain takes a minute longer to put it together.

I know who I'm looking at. I recognize them. But I don't understand.

"Oh, thank God!" Marissa sobs, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around my neck. The world goes dark again as she eclipses my vision, pressing herself so deeply into me that I feel like I just might suffocate in her grip. She seems to realize as much when I gasp, because she pulls away quickly so that I can actually see her.

It's really her.

"Rissa?" My voice sounds weird, and it fades out after the first syllable, but it doesn't matter. It's really her.

She was missing. She was gone for so long, and now she's here and I don't even know where here is, but I don't care because Declan and Marissa are with me.

I have so many questions that I can't manage to get any of them out-- they float so quickly through my mind that I haven't even grasped one before it slips away to be replaced with another.

All this time... where was she?

"God, I've missed you."

It takes me a moment to realize thatshesaid those words... the exact words that flitted through my mind a second before.

"How are you here?" I ask, though the words feel weird on my tongue, which seems clumsy, heavy and dry.

"Declan found me." She turns, then, looking behind her. My eyes seek him out... Declan.

The memories come back all at once, unable to be quelled any longer by Marissa's presence. Not now that I remember Vin is alive...wasalive. I think Declan shot him... I'm pretty sure he did.

My stomach turns into a knot at the thought of Vin, of all the things he confessed to me as he tortured me for just another of his snuff films. He was going to rape and murder me, his own wife. And if that wasn't bad enough, he was going to sell the video, so that other people could witness my ruin.

The video.

Oh my God.

Shame sears through me at the thought of Declan witnessing that, of him seeing me at Vin's mercy. I know, logically, that he is the one who rescued me, but that doesn't mean I want him to see the full play-by-play. And did he know to dispose of it? Was Vin live-streaming it?

Oh my god.

Fire burns in my stomach when I sit up too fast, and Declan's large palm presses against my shoulder to pin me back against the mattress. It overrides the panicked thought of who may have seen the video.

Bewildered, I reach for the source of all the pain, but Declan's hand catches mine.

"You don't want to pop the stitches. Just relax, okay, little bird?"

I blink at him, trying to remember why I have stitches. And then I recall being stabbed... how methodical he had been, how sadistic he was as he'd plunged his fingers inside of me, tearing the wound wider.

My brain fragments through the events, like it's trying to hide bits of the night from me.

Stab a bitch and fuck the hole....

He didn't? He couldn't have...

Could he?

I don't remember everything. It doesn't play sequentially in my mind.

Disgust threatens to turn me out of my own skin... and I'm fine with it, because I want to tear it all off. I want every inch of me that he ever touched ripped from my bone; I want it all gone.

I claw at the bandage, needing to know that he didn't do that. He's sick. He's fucking disgusting. But would he have really gone that far?