Defending Raven (Mountain Mercenaries #7)(41)
“I fought after that. Refused to simply lie back and take what was happening to me. But eventually, I broke. I was starving. A customer came into my room with an apple. Just one. But he held it up and said if I let him take me without a fight, he’d give it to me.”
Tears formed in her eyes at remembering the humiliation. “I was so hungry . . . I agreed,” she admitted softly. “I figured if I hadn’t been found by that point, maybe I wouldn’t ever be. I had no choice. If I wanted to live, I had to adjust to my new situation. So the next time del Rio came to see me, I told him I’d do what he wanted.
“I’ll never forget the grin on his face. He knew he’d broken me. He’d done it time and time again with hundreds, maybe thousands, of women, and he held all the power.”
“Look at me,” Dave said in a tone Raven couldn’t read.
She didn’t want to, but she finally looked up at him, expecting to see anger or disgust on his beautiful face. But what she saw when she looked into his eyes surprised her.
“I’m outraged beyond belief at what happened to you. But I’m so incredibly proud too.”
“How can you be? Did you not hear what I did? What I voluntarily did?”
“You didn’t do anything voluntarily,” Dave said without hesitation. “Just because you physically stopped resisting doesn’t mean you enjoyed it or wanted it. You did what you had to do to stay alive. We both know if you’d continued to fight, you’d be dead right now. Del Rio wouldn’t have any problem letting you starve to death. He doesn’t have a conscience. You were just a thing to him. But you know what? You won. He thought he broke you, but he didn’t. He made you stronger. You’re here. You have a group of friends who would do anything for you, and you have an amazing son. Fuck him.”
Mags couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Dave should be mad. Should be upset with her for not fighting harder. But instead, he was praising her. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “I know you have to be wondering why I didn’t try to get in touch with you after I got out,” she said hesitantly.
Dave shook his head immediately. “No, I understand.”
Mags was skeptical. “You do?”
“Yes. When Zara came back to Colorado, it took her a while to acclimate. When she was ready, she had a press conference to answer some of the questions about where she’d been for fifteen years. One of the reporters had the balls to ask her why she didn’t try harder to tell someone who she was. To get help. She didn’t fly off the handle, but she cut that reporter to shreds with her answer.”
“What’d she say?” Mags asked.
“I don’t remember her exact words, but the point she got across loud and clear was that she did the best she could with the knowledge and resources she had at the time. She’d been a child. Scared to death and trying to survive in a foreign world she’d been dropped into without warning or preparation. And she made sure everyone understood that the question was offensive. We can second-guess her decisions all we want, but the bottom line is that we weren’t there. We don’t know what she was going through, and therefore we can’t armchair-quarterback it. And now that I know about David, I understand your decisions even more.”
“I couldn’t leave him,” Mags whispered. “He’s innocent in everything. If I left him, I’d be throwing him to the wolves. No one would take care of him the way I would. No one would tell him he was smart and strong.”
“I get it,” Dave said.
Mags looked down at their clasped hands once again. “And . . . I was ashamed. I had no idea if you’d moved on and found someone else. I didn’t want to come back into your life if you were happy and remarried. And I really didn’t like what I’d had to do to survive.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since that last night we spent together in Vegas,” Dave said.
His words were akin to a bomb being dropped in the room.
Mags’s eyes whipped up to his. “What?”
“I haven’t touched another woman since you disappeared,” Dave clarified.
“But . . . it’s been ten years!”
“I know. How could I make love to someone else when all I wanted was you? I didn’t know if you were dead or alive, but it didn’t matter. If I had touched someone else, I would’ve felt as if I was cheating on you. And I’d rather rip my dick off than ever dishonor you that way.”
“Dave,” Mags whispered, overwhelmed.
“Hear me now, Raven,” Dave said. “I would do anything for you. Anything. Face down a pissed-off motorcycle club, learn everything I can about the dark web and hacking, hire former Special Forces men to hunt down and find missing women and children in the hopes that someday, one of them might be you. I’d even die if it meant you and our son could survive. Giving up sex was nothing in the scope of what I’d lost, sweetheart.”
Moving slowly, Mags scooted closer to her husband and rested her head against him. He shifted until his arm was over her shoulder. She tensed, not comfortable with being trapped under his arm, but when he didn’t grab at her or otherwise do anything that would make her nervous, she slowly relaxed.
Her mind was whirling with everything she’d learned tonight. Not only had her husband not forgotten about her, he’d completely changed his life, changed who he was, to try to find her. She regretted not trying to get in touch with him right when del Rio kicked her out of his compound without a Peruvian sol to her name. But she couldn’t change the past. She was still ashamed of what she’d been forced to do, but somehow, sitting with Dave in this motel, clean from a shower, and lying on the softest bed she’d been on in a decade, the shame seemed less.