Page 19 of Vow of Vengeance (Destruction & Vengeance Duet #2)

seventeen

Declan

Soren is quiet the first night when I crawl into bed with her.

By the time I do, I'm exhausted, my body aching from hunching over the keyboard for hours, desperately trying to find anything that will give me an entry point, a nugget of information to try and track down Marissa Hanley.

But the code I wrote does its job effectively, and despite hours of searching, I find nothing.

No social media pages left up, no driver's license, not even so much as a listing in a digital yearbook.

I know I won't sleep when I lay next to her, but I need to be beside her, to hear her breathe, to know she's with me even if she hates me right now.

Misha brought us dinner and supervised Soren while she picked at hers— some sort of pasta.

Mine is still on the kitchen counter, long past cold.

Hypocritical of me, no doubt, to force Soren to eat when I couldn't take two minutes to step away from the computer to shovel spaghetti in my mouth.

Misha assured me that she took a few bites and sipped some water, but I'm underwhelmed with her efforts.

Of course, it's not her body that's ill.

Soren's mind is fractured by tragedy after tragedy.

At some points, she seems to fight past what grips her and function like she's fine, but I don't think it undoes any of the pain and suffering at the root of her problem.

And I can't begin to understand what's going on in her beautiful, shattered mind, so I bring in someone who can.

Dr. Kent's friend is a woman who looks like someone's grandma, except she's got a brusque, no-nonsense aura about her that makes me feel like she's going to yell at me every time she talks to me.

It isn't often, considering that she seems to only be concerned with the person I am paying her to care about.

It's fine with me, of course, especially given that she's a miracle worker.

She gets Soren started on medication right away— she brought the pills with her and gave me the prescription to fill for more.

I was sure to ask her whether this would interfere with our efforts to conceive, and she assured me there was proven to be no risk to patients or their baby.

She visits every day, without fail. I don't know what Soren talks to her about, but the doctor doesn't seem alarmed by the fact that I've kept my girlfriend chained to my bed for the last week, so I'm content to pay the exorbitant price she requests.

In fact, I'd double it if she asked, because by the end of the first week working with her, Soren seems better.

I don't know how to explain it, but after a week of sharing my bed with a stranger despite my best efforts to pull out of her the woman I've fallen for, she begins to change.

She doesn't eat everything I put on her plate, but she doesn't skip meals either. She begins to do more than just lay curled in a ball, wallowing. She throws herself into work, editing articles from our team, deciding the layout of each paper’s columns, fact checking the claims made by the journalists.

I think she suffered caffeine withdrawal by the end of the first day as my little captive, and it made her particularly vicious for a bit.

The psychiatrist suggested that intimacy wasn't a good idea until Soren was better healed, and abstaining from having her has been a hell I'll gladly endure if it promises me an eternity of heaven later.

When I slink into the bed beside her on our sixth night, Soren turns to me of her own accord. "Have you gotten any closer to finding her?"

I don't want the answer to shatter the progress that she's made, so I simply nod. "We're getting closer."

The truth is that I've abandoned the computer work in favor of boots on the ground detective work.

In the last week, I've become something of an amateur sleuth, learning more about Soren's best friend than I even care to know.

I've met with her coworkers, had a lunch with her boss, visited her apartment again, checked the places Soren claimed she likes to frequent.

I've sweet-talked the lady at her apartment complex into letting me view the footage of Marissa's building for the week prior to her disappearance, watched all of the delivery drivers dropping off her dinners for the week before that, and seen that she hasn't brought a single person back to her place.

When Chief Radiker called to tell me that when they tried to run her name through their database, nothing came back, I decided to level with him.

"We're working against a sophisticated operation." I told him over coffee. "This isn't a random abduction or a crime of opportunity. The fact that you can't find any official records on her is by design."

He frowned at me, wanting more details, so I gave him just enough.

"I know it's hard to look for a person without a digital footprint. It's meant to be. But you were in her apartment. You saw pictures of her. She's real."

When he asked me where Soren was, I didn't tell him she was chained to my bed against her will.

Something tells me that no matter how much money Evergreen Industries has pumped into the city budget, he wouldn't look the other way on that crime.

Instead, I told him Soren was indisposed, and he somehow knew better than to ask for more.

We haven't had any contact since then, but I trust he's still doing his job.

It's the eighth night, when I've exhausted everything I can think to do, that I tell Soren it's time to consider the possibility we can't get her back.

"We've done everything we can."

"No." She shuts me down immediately. "No, we aren't giving up. We haven't done everything. I haven't been out there—"

"I've got her face on every third billboard, in every metro stop. I had missing person's posters put up at the bus station, on every lamp post. I've been to her job, her apartment... I'm trying, Ren. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, but it's time to face the fact that we may never find her."

"No." Soren says it so simply that I want to laugh.

I sigh, staring at the ceiling above me.

I don't want to see the disappointment in her eyes, knowing that I put it there.

I don't want to face the fact that I haven't done enough, that no matter how hard I try, I can't undo the past. I can't unwrite the code that made it so easy for people to be erased from public record.

I don't want to face the fact that I was a naive fucking child who wanted to be a hero like his dead daddy, but that I turned into the villain.

The very project I spent my college years designing is the thing that was used to destroy the one thing I care about. The irony is palpable.

Her fingers brush against my jaw, twirling over the stubble that's grown out a bit this last week.

It's such an innocent touch, but I groan at having her hands on me again in any way.

It's such a simple pleasure to be denied for so long, but it's been excruciating.

I don't think I even realized how much until she did that.

I close my eyes, relishing the feel, and then open them to find her watching me.

There's no expectancy, no waiting for me to relent and say that I'll keep trying.

Whatever it is in her gaze, it's untainted. .. pure.

"I never want to disappoint you, Ren." I tell her truthfully. "But I—"

"Shh." She shakes her head, cutting me off. "No. Listen, okay?"

I do, listening to her take a shaky breath. When she swings her leg over me, I stiffen, confused by the sudden motion.

And then my cock stiffens, too, as her creamy thighs straddle my bare chest and I look up at her from this angle.

Seeing her like this is like seeing her in a whole new light...

Despite not having left this room in over a week, she has more color to her, as if the glow of the sun through the windows has tanned her somehow.

Her hair is a mess of soft curls, and her collarbone doesn't look as sharp beneath the straps of her tank top.

She's a fucking goddess, divine perfection, and I am her most devout disciple.

"We aren't giving up on her." She runs her fingers down my chest, her lips hovering above mine as she attempts to seduce me into continuing the search. I won't tell her it's working. "You want to know why?"

"Why?" I ask, playing right into her game.

She smiles coyly, flicking her tongue over her lips.

"Because I can't imagine telling our child that they'll never meet their aunt."

Everything freezes as I contemplate her words and their meaning. "Our... child?"

She nods slowly. "That's what you want, right?"

I sure fucking do. I've always wanted a family. But more than that, I want her family. I want her stuffed full of my cum, I want her body softening with my child, I want her to be bound to me forever by the only thing more effective than a chain.

"Are you pregnant?"

"Not yet." She laughs. "But if it's what we want, we'd better get busy."

My cock jumps at the allure of her words-- both the current situation and the future she suggested. I want this unlike anything I've ever wanted, but I need to know she's okay first.

"A baby won't fix everything." I tell her softly. It won't fix her. It could actually make things worse.

I looked it up one night when I couldn't sleep, checking the bottle of pills for any potential side effects. It took me down a rabbit hole of women's hormones, mental health, and things about pregnancy I'm not sure I needed to know.

If we do this and something goes wrong, if she suffers another loss, I could lose her entirely to the grief. I'm not opposed to the idea of having to tie her up again at any point in the future, but there's only so much heartache one person can take.

"A baby won't fix me." She nods. "It won't undo the fact that my husband was a monster. It won't replace the memory of the child I lost. It won't make all of my problems disappear. And it won't make this thing between us any less real or any more legitimate. But this is what I want."

I think before I speak, trying to decide which of those things to respond to first.

"This is what I want, too. But what do you mean, it won't make it any more legitimate?"

She laughs, and the sound is beautiful. It may be the most unhindered sound I've ever heard from her, something effortless but more valuable than every submission I've had to fight for.

"We didn't meet in a crowded bar and feel sparks fly. We didn't find each other on a blind date and decide to go with it. This thing between us... it's unconventional, to say the least. And you'd think having a baby with your stalker would be a bad idea." She laughs again.

"Just because it isn't conventional doesn't mean it's any less real. In fact, I think it's more real because of it."

"Do you?" Soren smirks.

"Yes. Because you brought out the worst in me." She scowls, clearly not expecting that.

"I think when you love someone, you're supposed to bring out the best in them."

"Mm." I agree, deciding not to point out that she just as good as confessed to loving me. "But you turned me into someone I don't recognize. A hypocrite, for one thing. I mean, you're chained to my bed."

"You're really seducing me with this romantic tribute." She deadpans.

I laugh now. "What I mean to say is that, you've seen the darkest part of me. And I think I've seen you at the lowest you'll ever be again."

She considers it a moment. "I want to say I've been lower, but I don't know. Is it wrong that finding out my husband was a rapist isn't the lowest I've been?" She cringes, biting her lip in penance. "It feels wrong."

"It all hurts." I tell her. "You don't need to quantify your pain to make it valid."

Soren blinks at me. "Have you been listening in on my sessions with Georgia?"

"Georgia?"

"Dr. Farrell." She laughs. "Georgia. Have you been eavesdropping or something? Because that was a remarkably well-adjusted sentiment."

"I'm just well-adjusted on my own." I muse, swiping a strand of dark hair out of her eyes. "It doesn't matter what your greatest pain is, Ren. What matters is that I'll never let you hurt the way you've been hurt before."

It's a bold claim, given that I'm the asshole who showed her what her husband was doing behind her back in the first place.

She swallows. "How can you promise that? You can't control everything."

"No, I can't. But I can promise you that I'll take every ounce of pain that you can give me. I can promise you that I'll tear out my own heart before letting yours break ever again."

"Declan..." She whispers my name across my lips, a sigh that holds so much at once. Desire, hope, fear... "What if—?"

"I already told you, Ren. I will give you the world.

But you're right..." As much as I hate to admit it, I can't live with her chained to this bed forever.

It's not the life we want. And that means, I can't control every aspect of her life; It means I can't stop the world from possibly causing her pain.

"There's only so much I can do. So, I'll promise you this instead. "

Her eyes find mine, but I grip the nape of her neck anyway, offering her no escape from the vulnerable truth I'm about to lay out.

"I promise that whatever pain I can't protect you from, I will take from you.

And whatever pain I can't take from you, I will hold for you.

" She shakes her head, but I'm not done.

I grip her tighter. "And if I can't hold your pain, I'll hold you until it stops.

I'll never leave you alone to deal with it yourself. "

A sob breaks from her chest, but there are no tears to follow. They just shine in her eyes. "I'm scared that if we do this and something goes wrong, that I won't make it. That I'll drown in the darkness of my own mind."

"I won't let you drown." It's the only promise I can make to that specific fear. "If you start to drown, I'll wade in and pull you out."

"And if it takes you too?"

I don't bother telling her the darkness can't take me, because she's my light and I'll never let her go out.

Instead, I just tell her, "Then we'll float together."