Page 79 of Love What's Left
Shoot. Man Candy Time is over. I take a breath.Focus on Mario.“Yes. Can you show me the exercise again?”
“No problem.” He demonstrates the straight-armed slow lift, bringing his palm from his side to shoulder height.
Heat floods my face. A two-year-old could do this. I begin, and the water—My gaze darts around—The water . . . the water . . . So much sick dread.
I follow Mario’s instructions and make it another twenty minutes, hanging on to my concentration by a thread. Then I wobble on a leg raise.
Mario braces me with a hand on my elbow for balance and places his palm under my leg to lift my thigh a little higher. I flinch and jerk away, inadvertently going under. I flail. Scream. Inhale salty liquid fire.
A man with a shower sprayer in hand. My red dress soaked and clinging. Another frigid blast of water to my face in an already freezing room.“You fucking stink.”
He’s here. Markov is here.
I come up coughing, fighting, scrambling.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you.” A man’s voice sounds through my haze of panic. He touches my back. Then he hits me. Again and again. He pounds on me, and I can’t breathe to scream for help because . . .waterin my eyes and nose and lungs. My teeth chatter, my sinuses and throat burn, and I shake hard enough to make my bones hurt.
I scramble away from him, but he follows.Chasesme. Water splashes, but I don’t turn my head—too busy trying to breathe and get away from those grabbing hands and—
Then my husband, soaking wet and fully dressed, stands before me with his arms spread wide in protection. “Can’t you see she’s afraid of you? Back the fuck off.”
McRae doesn’t touch me, but when I blink the moisture from my eyes, he fills my vision.
“You’re in the pool. Physical therapy. That’s all this is. Just exercise. You’re safe.” His firm voice reaches through my fear, and I grab on to it like a life raft.
Clutching and clawing, I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
He holds me against his body, rubbing my back, as if he’d only been waiting for my permission. “I’ve got you. Slow breaths. In. Out.”
I breathe and cough twice more until I clear my lungs. Heat from the warm water and the sun sits on the surface of my skin, but inside, I shiver.
“They used water,” I choke out. “They tortured me with water.”
His arms tighten almost painfully around me. “I’m sorry. I am so fucking sorry.”
“Markov,” I say.
He swallows hard and turns his head. “Mario, we’ll see you on Wednesday. Mrs. McRae has had enough for today.”
“Feel better. I’ll see you next time,” Mario says, but I don’t acknowledge his goodbye. It’s not his fault he unlocked something in my head, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to look at him.
“I remember Markov,” I say.
“He’s dead. Do you remember that? I killed him.”
I already knew this, but now I have a face and voice to go with the name. “I wish I saw his body.”
“He’s gone. I shot him straight between the eyes,” McRae says.
I untangle myself from the intimate press of our bodies. “Who was he to you?”
And why is this the first time I was brave enough to ask that question?Because you weren’t ready to know the answer.
“He was part of my past,” he says.
Horror wraps its craven, selfish fingers around my throat. “You were friends with that monster?”
“I thought we were. We were kids then. I grew up in a home I thought was too strict. Too many rules. Too many bodyguards. Nick talked me into sneaking out. It didn’t take much convincing. I wanted to have fun, and I thought my parents’ rules sucked. Nick’s mom gave him more freedom. It was a trap. His mother was involved with a member of the Bratva. They used Nick to take me in a power play. Dad had pissed them off with his hard line against organized crime. Henry followed me that night. We had to shoot our way out to escape.” His explanation sounds almost clinical, but the rehearsed tone breaks when he continues, “Nick took you to punish me for killing his mother that night. But I had to do it. She’d already shot Henry once. He was bleeding out. I had to get out and get help.”
