Page 34 of Beautiful Savage
She nods, accepting this small victory, though we both know I'll be monitoring the call. But her eyes stay on mine, still searching.
"Is he innocent? My father?"
The admission sticks in my throat. I can't say it aloud, but something in my face must answer because she nods again, slower this time.
"Then I want to see him."
"Nicolas?"
"Hallstein." Her chin lifts, regal in her defiance. "If my life's been destroyed because of him, I want to see the man who caused this."
"No."
"Yes."
"That's not how—"
"You made me part of this." She steps closer, and I have to fight not to step back. "When you took me. I'm involved now."
Every rule I've lived by for nine years tells me this is a mistake. Taking her into the field violates everything.
But something in her eyes, not pleading, just demanding to be included in her own story, wears my refusal down.
"Drive-by only. The house. Nothing more."
"That's all I want."
I don't believe her. But I'm already moving toward the door, and she's already following. The discipline that's kept me alive nine years crumbles with each step.
We descend the back stairs in silence. Past the second landing with its flickering bulb. Through the loading dock with its industrial chill. My truck waits in the shadows, black and anonymous.
She climbs into the passenger side without being told. The cab immediately fills with her scent, and my hands tighten on the steering wheel. I start the engine, knowing I'm crossing a line I can't uncross.
We pull out into the Miami night, and I've already given her more than I should.
Coral Gables unfolds around us in Mediterranean perfection. Barrel-tile roofs and perfect lawns, old money pretending it's always been clean.
The truck cab is torture. Her thigh six inches from mine. The windows starting to fog from our breathing. Her scent, that vanilla and something else, filling every breath I take. My cockhardens despite my control, and I shift slightly, trying to ease the pressure.
I park across from Hallstein's house. Cream stucco walls, white columns, circular drive. The lights glow in the front room. Through the window, a shadow moves — then resolves into the man himself. Hallstein. Silver-haired, straight-backed, crossing the lit room with a drink in his hand like the world owes him the ice in it. He pauses, says something over his shoulder, and a younger woman in scrubs wheels his wife into frame. His hand comes to rest on his wife's shoulder for exactly the length of a laugh at something no one in that room could have found funny. The caregiver steps back, out of his reach, in a movement so practiced it looks like choreography.
Nine years of photographs, and the sight of him breathing still floods my mouth with copper.
"That's it," I say, my voice rougher than intended. "Where he lives."
She studies the house in silence. I watch her profile in the dashboard light, the elegant line of her throat, the way her lips part slightly as she thinks. My body aches to reach across the space between us.
Movement at the side of the house catches my attention. The woman emerges from the service entrance, glances back, hurries toward the street.
"Who's that?"
"Caregiver. For his wife."
The woman disappears around the corner, and I dismiss her from my thoughts. She's background, civilian, not my concern.
Daphne turns to look at me fully, and in the dim light from the streetlamp, her eyes are almost black.
"You're not the monster they said you were."
