Page 73 of Take the Sub and Run

“Who found you?”

“No one. I always went back. I couldn’t leave her.”

Sofie took a shaky breath.

“So you see, I understand,” he said softly. “Why you tried to leave, and why you tried to go back.”

She nodded against his chest.

“When I was twelve, suddenly we had money. I didn’t understand how or why at first. We moved into a house with lots of bedrooms. I got a room to myself. Then other women started showing up. They’d stay with us. Some spoke Czech. Some spoke Slovak, which we spoke too, because that’s where my mother was from originally.”

“The other women, they were…”

“They were being trafficked. The money was because she was helping force these women who originally came for cleaning jobs, into prostitution.

“She died when I was fifteen. Liver failure from Hepatitis B. A transplant could have saved her, I think. But they never even talked about it. Not for someone like her.”

He took a measured breath, letting himself feel the grief and anger that he knew would never full fade. “I think part of me stayed there, in the hospital room where she died.”

Sofie made a snuffly noise, and the idea that she was crying for him should have been absurd but wasn’t. “What did you do…after?”

“I started working for the same people she had. Organized crime. It was survival. Nothing more. Until I got caught, and the authorities started offering me things in exchange for information. I realized that who I was, the life I’d led, had value. I could do things, go places, no one with a pretty childhood could. First, I was an informant, then, when I was old enough, I joined the state police. They sent me undercover almost immediately.”

“That’s how you ended up with Interpol.”

“There were a few career moves and things along the way, but yes.”

They stayed wrapped in each other's arms for a long time, enjoying the silence and the night.

“Andrei?” she whispered just as he was starting to think about scooping her into his arms and moving them to the couch.

He’d hold her until she fell asleep. Then he’d lay her out on one couch, and he’d take the other. That way, he could be with her, but removed the temptation of touching her.

“Yes?”

She pulled back, looking up at him. Her gaze was frank, her chin raised…but she was blushing.

“May I kiss you?”

Sofie braced herself because she knew what his answer would be: no.

But she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t ask. Especially now that he’d shared his own story. Now that she knew that when he said he understood, he meant it.

He’d said she wasn’t broken, then admitted maybe they were all a little broken, but with him…with him, she felt whole.

With him, she was more the Sofie that craved adventure than the one who was a willing captive within the gilded cage her father had created for her.

Since Colette arrived at her house, she’d been Adventure Sofie, and was terrified to completely lose that person in favor of the Sofie she’d been just a month ago.

She almost had lost her. The feeling that she had to go home because it was the only place that she was safe—despite the evidence that wasn’t true—had nearly overwhelmed her earlier. If she’d gone back into the house in that moment, she wasn’t sure she’d ever have been able to bring herself to leave again.

Andrei had stopped her. Kept her safe from her herself.

He made her bold, daring. It was why she’d been willing to risk body and soul to submit to him.

And of all the people alive on the earth, he was the only one she wanted to kiss.

It would hurt to hear him say no, but the pain was worth it to know that she’d asked. That she was the Sofie who was bold and daring enough to go on adventures.

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