Page 131 of Ace of All Hearts

“I know,” he huffs.

A long silence extends between us.

“I don’t want to go back,” I tell him quietly. Too scared to admit the truth out loud.

“There’s nothing I can do for you, Rose.” The pity in his voice breaks my heart. “All I can advise is to convince your boyfriend to drop the contract and go far away from here. Make yourselves untraceable. Disappear. Sam won’t find the brothers. He won’t be able to kill them. All he’ll do is sacrifice you because once Viktor has a hold of you again…Let’s just say he won’t lose you twice.”

“I can’t go back,” I say again.

I can see Aaron biting his inner cheek before he talks again. “Did you fall in love with him?”

My eyes go to the floor, trying to figure out the feelings I had for the man who wouldn’t set me free.

Not knowing the answer, I stall. “Why are you asking?”

“Because it took me almost two years to understand if you wanted to leave or not. You were unhinged. Like none of it was real to you. You partied with the Bratva men. You learned everything he told you to. You didn’t just fuck him, you shared a bed with him. You let him move you to a room right next to his marital bed. He basically turned you into his concubine. And in all that…you didn’t try to leave. You didn’t try to ask anyone for help. Not once. Not even when Sam found you.”

Taking it all in, I struggle to make sense of his words. Viktor turned me into exactly what he needed out of me. And I took it as a gift rather than the curse it was.

It takes me a minute to swallow the ball in my throat. Then I look up.

“Why didn’t you?”

His eyebrows shoot to his thick hairline. “What?”

“You were kidnapped. Like me. At barely eighteen. You’re twenty-threenow. Why didn’t you try to leave?”

Biting his inner cheek, his eyes dart to the side.

“You answered your own question, Aaron. All of it feels surreal. It’s not a reality I was in, it was a high. Viktor saved me from being in constant pain with Aleksei. For his own interest, as you so obviously pointed out. But what do you think it felt like to me?”

Now he’s the one who can’t look into my eyes anymore.

“I can’t tell you when I started admiring him. He was just there, mighty, smart, and willing to take care of me. I don’t even remember why I suddenly wanted to have sex with him. I didn’t question why he wanted me closer and closer to him.”

I shake my head.

“None of it felt real. It still doesn’t. I don’t remember half of my time there. Just locations, names, numbers. I was either high on adrenaline, drunk, or too exhausted to keep my eyes open.”

Vulnerability mixes with my words. It shows in the shakiness of my voice.

“I didn’t choose to be there in the first place. No one is allowed to make me accountable for anything that came after that. Out of everyone, I thought you’d understand.”

We look at each other intensely, and I say, “I want to see Viktor. I want to end it all for good.”

“Let’s say I take you with me back to the compound.”

Adrenaline is already kicking in me upon hearing those words. It’s a drug that warms my chest and freezes my extremities.

“Are you going to kill him when you see him?”

My heart stops, and the truth is clear as day.

I wouldn’t do it.

Aarons reads me like an open book and shakes his head at me. “I’m not judging you. I couldn’t either. In that case, I wouldn’t suggest asking me to take you to him because he won’t let you end it.”

I let my head fall backward as I huff loudly. My heartbeat feels irregular from the fear.

---