Page 62 of Beg Me Angel

Chapter Seventeen

Vera

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“I'm sorry, Vera, it's true.”

Shaking my head, I wiped the tissue across my nose. “I can't believe it, it can't be true. Why would he do this to me?”

The detective reached his hand across the table, gently grabbing my fingers. “I know you've been through a lot and I promise you, I'm going to get you the answers you need.”

“He said the same thing.”

“Who?Paxton?”

Nodding yes, I couldn't stop from crying, I hadn't been able to shut down the tears since the cops barged into the cabin and took him from me.

I know he wasn't really mine, but in a way I felt like I was his. I had given him something that no man ever had; my purity, my innocence. . . It was all his.

That in itself sealed me to him, it locked a part of my heart into his hands, a part that would only ever be for him.

“I'm sure he's said a lot of things.” Sitting back in his chair, the detective watched me, taking notes in his yellow pad. “But what I need is for you to think long and hard, can you do that?”

Letting my eyes settle on his, I shrugged my shoulders. “I told you everything already, everything I can remember. I don't know what happened before I woke up at his house, I have no clue.”

The detective was an older man, mid to late fifties with salt and pepper hair and a pudgy beer belly he tried to hid beneath his blazer. His eyes were beady with small, dilated pupils trying to force out a look of concern that I knew he didn't really feel.

He wasn't worried about me or what I was going through. He had one goal and one goal only, close his case, put Pax behind bars, and move on to the next stack of papers on his desk.

It was so easy for me to see. His pen tapped the paper impatiently, his face scrunched up, pruning his skin when I couldn't tell him how I ended up in Pax's cabin and that I didn't know if Pax was the one who had taken me.

It was as if he thought I was lying, that in some sick way I was protecting the man who had harmed me. But I wasn't, I couldn't even grasp the reality that he might have actually done this.

How could I protect someone if I didn't have the answers to begin with?

There was nothing I could do, I still couldn't remember, it didn't matter how much he pressed me or fed me small bits of information. Those memories were still dulled, just lost seconds in time.

“Well, I need you to think harder.”

Cocking my head, I veered my stare. “You don't think I've already been doing that? Do you think I just sat around playing hostage or something?”

“No, that's not—”

Cutting him off, I slapped the top of the table. “This is the only thing I've been thinking about! If I had more to give you, I would, but I can't remember a fucking thing!”

“Vera, I know this is hard, I really do. But we have information that pinpoints Pax as being one of the men responsible for what happened to you and your friend Sara.”

Hearing her name sent a shockwave through my body, bristling my skin in worry. “Sara—is she okay? Where is she? I want to see her!”

“Calm down.” Holding up his hand, he shut his eyes and nodded. “She's fine, a local woman picked her up two days after you both went missing. Sara was banged up too, spent most of the time wandering through the woods until she found a roadway. But Vera, Sara was able to pick him out in a lineup, she remembers him from that night.”

No it can't be.

Pax wouldn't have done this.

“I can't believe that, he helped me, why would he hurt me? You keep telling me he was the one, but I need proof, something that shows me he's responsible.”

I didn't want to believe that he was capable of kidnapping, of beating me, drugging me, and causing all the pain I felt; Why go through all of that and still save me?

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