Page 73 of Lesson In Forgiveness

Shit, he couldn’t deny that. “Self-defense.”

“More than likely,” he agreed amiably. “She wouldn’t purposefully murder five guys somewhere that could be even remotely connected to her, alias or not. Not when she’s got her focus locked on Ireland.” The box snicked shut; Jasper set his hands on the lid and sighed. “We both know she’s dangerous, Grit. Yeah, she might be more controlled around family, but we’re talking about our coworkers, people we consider friends. Is it fair to expose them to her in one of her moods? If she triggers?”

Hefting her into his arms, Grit stared his friend down. “No cuffs, no drugs. Tabitha’s mine, that’s all anyone needs to know, and I’ll make sure she behaves.”

Consideration set Jasper’s face into thoughtful lines. His sharp gaze dropped from Grit’s eyes to Tabitha and back up again. “I’ll talk to Atticus. If you’re serious about keeping her—and I think you are—there’s something you need to read. She’s not going to thank me for it, maybe you won’t either, but it’ll explain how she became what she is.”

Wow, that sounded ominous. Whatever was in Jasper’s possession, Grit wasn’t sure he wanted to read it. He’d rather hear it straight from the assassin’s mouth, so to speak, but experience had taught him that her past was locked up tight behind closed lips and was liable to stay there.

Prying it out of her required a level of trust they hadn’t reached yet.

“Let’s just get her back to HQ and patched up before she wakes and decides skinning us alive is suitable payback.”

“Go. I’ll grab her gun; Kaufmann will dispose of the rest.” Jasper looked around critically. “Doesn’t look like she’s been here long. An hour and he’ll clean it so well, it’ll be like she was never here.”

“Got to appreciate a good cleaner.” Readjusting Tabitha in his arms, Grit headed for the door. “J, she’s going to be mine one way or another. I’d like it if you had my back if she gets stubborn.”

“Just say the word, Grit.”

*

Tabitha

Caught in the weird consciousness between reality and the veil of drugs in her system, Tabitha relived the worst moments of her life in a scrolling reel of memories. She hated she was too weak to lift herself out of the in between, too afraid to let go and sink back down into the dark.

Strapped to a table, an IV inserted into the vein on the inside of her thigh because the ones in her arms had collapsed. Pale gold liquid drip feeding into her body, making her skin feel tight and itchy, her blood like ice.

Staring at the little black rabbit, all fluff and floppy ears, as it danced and jittered on the table in its death throes, thanks to the poison she’d injected under its skin.

Crying on the inside because tears were a weakness she wasn’t allowed, holding back the sobs as one big hand collared her around the throat while another shoved between her thighs, sharp fingernails nicking the dry, unwilling flesh inside her as a lesson that sex was not pleasurable, but a weapon.

Trying to fight off a man twice her size as he raped her in the pitch black she’d lived in for days. Biting, clawing, kicking without a sound because to express pain and fear in any form was corrected with the cane.

The memories kept flowing, rising from the depths where she’d buried many of them, trapping her in a ceaseless stream of torture. There was no way out, no neon exit sigh flashing in her brain to guide her free.

This was why she was insane. This was why normality evaded her at every turn, making it so fucking easy to revert to the killing machine her father wanted her to be, dancing on dead bodies and laughing all the while.

She might have killed him, but Dominic had won the game.

Far away in the distance, almost lost in the cacophony of chaos drowning her mind, she thought she heard voices. Familiar voices, ones she feared because they belonged to people she wished she had the capacity to love.

Even as her heart did a slow, warm roll in her chest at the sound of Grit’s dark, displeased rumble, she tried to send the feeling away. Emotion was weakness. Physical attraction, if it wasn’t being used as a tool, was a liability. Love was a ruse, a myth, something she refused to tolerate because she was stone cold dead where it mattered.

“…three days is enough, Jasper. I told you I wouldn’t accept her being drugged to this extent, and every fucking day someone comes in and pumps her full of morphine whenever she tries to surface.”

“The rest won’t do her any harm, Grit. Undisturbed sleep, free of pain, is a gift to her right now. We’ve reduced the swelling around her face and throat. The knife wounds are healing beautifully. Her ribs will take longer to heal, and the bruising is fucking brutal; the one on her hip is going to ache like a bitch for weeks.”

“Switch her onto alternative meds, ones that don’t keep her sedated like a rabid dog.”

“Mmm-hmm, and how long after she comes around do you think she’ll stay in bed? I guarantee the first thing she does is rip out the IV. She’s an iatrophobe, Grit. Doctors, hospitals, needles, they’re all right up there on her fear scale.” Jasper’s tone was exasperated. “The only reason she didn’t slaughter us both at the motel was because she was too fucking exhausted to do so.”

Slowly, she dragged herself toward their voices, wading through the memories like they were molasses. She couldn’t deny he was telling the truth; anything medical tended to set her off on a tangent, willing to hurt or kill whoever prevented her from escaping.

“Give her more credit than that,” Grit shot back. “Treat her like she’s insane, she’ll never try to be anything else. She just needs to understand things, have them explained to her so she knows they’re justified. Tell her the IV is just fluids to keep her hydrated, so she doesn’t panic and think you’re poisoning her. She isn’t unreasonable, Jasper, and she sure as hell isn’t lacking intelligence. All she wants is reassurance and a solid grasp on the situation.”

The struggle to rise became weaker. Grit was defending her, planting himself firmly on her side of the line, and that was… wonderful. Every word he spoke lifted her toward him, breaking the divide into reality, and she found herself staring at a ceiling painted a pale cream color, her vision wavering.

It didn’t smell like antiseptic and death, so that was a tick in the plus column. As her gaze rolled over to her left, her stomach lurched at the sight of the stainless steel stand and the bag hanging from it. A clear tube led from the bag to the crook of her arm, and despite her hearing Grit say not sixty seconds ago that it was just fluids, she reacted exactly how Jasper predicted.

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