Embraced (The Eternal Balance #2)(35)

They seemed to know exactly where to go. In one of the bedrooms, Sam’s adopted mother sat on the bed with her hands folded in her lap. She portrayed a sense of calm, but her eyes betrayed her. I’d seen terror in my day—been the cause of a lot of it. There was never anything like this. I realized it wasn’t for herself. She wasn’t afraid of what they would do to her, but that they would find her child.

“Your husband is dead. If you don’t want to follow him to the grave, tell me where the child is.”

She turned, clinging to the illusion of calm, and asked, “What child?”

What followed made me sick. They tried to scare her into giving Sam up, and when that didn’t work, they switched to other methods. They violated her in every way imaginable. It was brutal and senseless and even Azi wasn’t interested. Through it all, she maintained her will. She refused to give up her daughter.

Through it all, I knew Sam, hidden somewhere in the room with us, watched. I’d known this had been traumatic, but it wasn’t until that moment that I truly understood what she’d gone through. What it’d done to her.

The scene faded.





Chapter Fourteen


Sam


I was inside Rick’s house. I would know it even with my eyes closed. It always smelled like paint thinner and tobacco, with the soft sounds of jazz drifting through the rooms. “Jax?” I tried, hoping that whatever this rollercoaster was, it would eventually bring us together. But there was no answer.

“Where’s Rick?” a voice asked. I whirled around, for an insane moment thinking the child was talking to me. He wasn’t, of course. He was talking to another boy. They were younger versions of Jax and Chase.

Jax shrugged. “Dunno. He said something about going to the basement.”

Chase nodded and bounded down the hall. He looked to be about nine or ten.

Chase pulled open the door to the basement and peered into the darkness. “The lights are off. You sure he’s down there?”

Jax walked up behind his brother. For a minute, he just stood there, staring at Chase’s back. It was like he was fighting some internal war. I saw it in his expression—the moment he decided to act. Like with the turtle, his eyes took on an eerie spark, part excitement and part regret. He raised his foot and, planting it in the middle of Chase’s back, shoved with more strength than any child should have.

I didn’t have time to be surprised. As Chase’s shocked scream faded, the scene changed, and I was up in Jax’s room. He sat on the bed, staring down at his hands. There was a knock on the door, and a moment later Rick came in.

He sat on the bed next to him. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

“I dunno,” Jax said. He didn’t look up from his hands, but his brows furrowed with genuine confusion. “Chase fell down the stairs.”

“He had some help,” Rick said.

Jax took a deep breath. Without turning to his uncle, he asked, “Is it—is he okay?”

“He’s got some broken bones and a headache. Nothing life threatening. You understand this is serious though, right?”

“Dad said I was bad. He told mom I shouldn’t be allowed to live.”

The surprise on Rick’s face was evident. Looking sick, he gritted his teeth. “He—it doesn’t matter. Your dad was confused. He didn’t understand you.”

Jax finally lifted his head. “And you do?”

Rick smiled. It was easy in that moment to see the relationship they’d had. It must have torn Rick apart when Jax left, even though he knew there was no other choice. “Of course I do. But you need to understand something, too. You are not bad. Not even a little bit. You need to get a grip on this thing, though.”

A single tear rolled down Jax’s cheek. “I can’t. I don’t have a choice. I’m bad.”

This time, Rick did raise his voice. He jumped off the bed and pulled Jax with him. “You listen to me and listen good! You are not bad. You are a little boy stuck in a horrible circumstance. You have a choice! You can choose to fight this.”

“I wanted to hurt Chase,” Jax said. He turned to stare out the window. A shadow passed in front of the upstairs window next door. My room. “What if I hurt her?”

Rick followed his gaze. “Who, Samantha?”

Jax nodded.

“Jax, I’ve seen you with Sam. You won’t hurt her.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Sam is your North Star, kid. You know you won’t hurt her.” He poked him in the chest. “Deep in here, you know it.”

He nodded again, then turned toward the window. “I care about her.”

“I know you do, and that’s good. It’s good. So you fight this for her. You make a choice to be good.”

“I can choose to be good,” Jax said as if trying to convince himself. “For Sammy.”

The scene abruptly changed again. This time I was standing behind Jax. Not child-Jax, but an older Jax, yet not quite as old as he was now. This was sometime after he’d left home, I guessed. We were in a dark alley, and we weren’t alone.

Jax had a man pinned against the brick wall by his throat. It was dark, but because of the streetlight overhead, I could still make them out clearly. The man struggled to breathe, his color changing from pale to reddish as he thrashed about. “You think it’s funny now, f*cker?”