Page 41 of Seductive Desires

I shook my head, frowning as I cut the dough. “It doesn’t matter. I need to finish this.” I kept my head down, hiding my face. Hiding the tears that threatened to spill over. It was happening more and more often, where I would be sucked into a false sense of security. He was a master of making me forget about his job and it always stunned me when I remembered this was a horrible idea. I need to get out of here. I can’t keep doing stuff like this.

“Liam.” I glanced up, catching him before he left the room. He turned, raising an eyebrow. “Do you have any ideas on dealing with Stephen? I’d like to get it over with.” My stomach clenched. I knew I’d have to face him eventually, but I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to it.

He nodded. “Come meet with me when you’re done. We’ll discuss it.”

* * *

I hurriedthrough the rest of the empanadas. They sat on a platter with a note for anyone to take one. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Jo and Gabi offered to sit with me while I talked to Liam but I refused. I didn’t want them involved, they could get hurt.

Liam was at his desk, his focus on a pile of papers when I came in, knocking on the already open office door. He glanced up, waving me in.

“Come on in.”

I closed the door behind me, hesitating. I hadn’t spent much time with Liam. He was intimidating. The only time I saw him smiling was when he was with Jo. Even now, working on paperwork, his face was dark and he was frowning. He signed something roughly before he looked up again, motioning to the chair in front of his desk. I hurried, sitting on the edge of it. I was too nervous to lean back.

“Before we go over the ideas we have so far, I’d like to go over any and all previous encounters, starting when you left home. He may have a pattern that could help us prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“Dmitriy and I agreed, running isn’t working for you. You can’t hide forever. So we need to deal with Stephen head on. Now, we can try intimidation, see if just scaring him is enough. But you need to accept there is a real possibility that he may need to be dealt with if you ever want to be free of him.”

Dealt with… “I don’t want to kill anybody, Liam. Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

He rubbed his chin, contemplative. “Well… I have some friends in the justice system. We could get him thrown in jail but we’d have to get some concrete evidence or it won’t stick. You said your family is well off?”

“My father is, yes. My step mother is a trophy wife, she doesn’t bring in any income.”

Liam nodded. “That could cause trouble if we don’t give them enough evidence. They’d just bail him out and we’d have to start all over again.” He leaned back in his chair, his focus on the ceiling. “To gather that kind of evidence might be… difficult for you.”

I knew what that meant. I would have to stop hiding and let Stephen come after me. The thought of it made my stomach turn and my hands tremble. I clasped them together in my lap so Liam wouldn’t see. But apparently he is incredibly observant.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Mariana. Dmitriy has already volunteered to deal with Stephen without involving you. You won’t need to know any of the details.”

“It doesn’t matter if I don’t know the details. He’d still be dead because of me. I don’t want that. Not again.”

Liam’s eyebrows raised. “Again?”

I stared at my hands, nodding.

“Let’s start with the past encounters. We can focus on our plan after we know what we’re up against, okay?”

I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly before looking up at him again. “Okay. Where do you want to start?”

“At the beginning.”

Divinginto my past isn’t pretty. Carlos basically had to get me wasted to even start talking. I understood why Liam needed to know, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“Stephen has always been… off. I tried telling my father that he made me uncomfortable but he just dismissed me. He would say ‘Boys will be boys’ like it made it all okay. I struggled to sleep, always worried he’d come in at night and hurt me. So finally, on my sixteenth birthday, I brought emancipation papers to my father. I told him if he ever loved me and my mother even a little, he’d sign them and let me go. We weren’t a family.” I paused. It was the one and only gift my father ever gave me, signing those papers. It was my idea, I wanted to be free of them but it still hurt like hell that he signed them without even hesitating. “He signed and I left immediately. I already had my stuff packed in a small duffle. Most of my stuff, like everything I had from my mom, I left in a storage unit. It’s probably still there, I still pay for it. I only took a handful of things with me. I went straight to the courthouse, filed the papers and went to stay with a friend.

“Her parents agreed to let me stay on the couch until I could figure out my next move. I thought I’d have a few days to figure it out. Stephen didn’t give me that chance. That same night, he broke into their house through the back door and attacked me. I didn’t wake up until he was already on top of me, his hand covering my mouth so I couldn’t cry out. He told me he was so proud of me for becoming legal early so we could be together.” I shuddered at the memory. My friend’s family all slept upstairs while I was on the couch downstairs. I was terrified they wouldn’t hear and he’d kidnap me or worse. “He was trying to pull the blanket off me when my friend’s older brother and his friends showed up. They had been out late and were just heading home. They saw Stephen on top of me and grabbed him. Beat the hell out of him too. I’m pretty sure him being hurt is the only reason I got away that night.

“They all offered to help me go to the police but my father was on city council and running for mayor and had a lot of friends in the police station. I knew it would never work. So I left. My friend’s dad paid for my bus ticket and I took the first one available. I didn’t even care where it was going at that point.” It had been one of the most terrifying times of my life. I couldn’t stay longer than a month in one place because I worried he’d find me. I bounced around from place to place.

“After a couple years of basically being a nomad, I found my way to Seattle. Stephen hates the rain, I thought it would deter him and keep him away. I was running out of money so I couldn’t keep moving. I had to earn more before I could move on. I got a couple part time jobs, worked my ass off, and stayed busy. I got comfortable, had a few quiet years and thought he was done chasing me. I even got a boyfriend.” My heart ached. It felt like someone was trying to rip it out of my chest whenever I thought about him.

“Ben was a cop. He came into the coffee shop I worked at every morning. I used to tease him about the cop stereotype until he told me he was coming in to see me.” He was the first guy who ever made me feel safe. He was funny and sweet. The first guy I ever trusted enough to sleep with.

“When Stephen showed up in Seattle, it took me off guard. It had been four years since I last saw him. I thought he had given up.” I never felt more stupid before that day when I saw him standing outside my work. He was bigger, older, and just as terrifying as I remembered.

---