50 Her hips (1/2)

”How the hell could you know what's good for me? You don't even know what's good for yourself.” Pulling the blanket up over her shoulder, she rolled onto her side. ”Good night, Bentley.”

The way she said it stabbed me in the heart. I wished it could be as easy as just whisking her away and never looking back. But it wasn't.

We were in Italy. How did she expect me to get her home? We couldn't run in this country, we couldn't hide, there was nowhere for us to go that he wouldn't have eyes watching. He probably had someone outside keeping tabs on us right then.

Virgo had her since she was a child. If he hadn't sold her off at this point, he never planned to. He would probably go to hell and back to keep her. I was never afraid of that man, but I was well aware of just how unpredictable he was.

Virgo couldn't kill me, but there was no doubt in my mind that he could, and would, kill her. That's how men like him worked. If he couldn't have her, no one could.

Jessie had reached out to me for help, but this was all I could give her. One night of freedom for the lifetime she had already served. I wanted to do more, but when I really thought about it, my hands were tied.

It was a harsh reality we both had to face.

We would spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. Virgo would find someone else just like me at some point, and we'd forever sleep with one eye open. It wasn't fair to either of us.

Fair? What's really fair for her?

Turning off the lamp next to the bed, I laid down and stared up at the ceiling. My eyes slowly began to droop as my mind ran wild with ways to fix all of this.

We could disappear. . . But go where?

I could get her a new identity. . . That would take too long.