Chapter 2 - The Anatomy of Bruises
When Isa’s eyes opened, the pale morning light filtering through the grime-streaked kitchen window seemed to burn her retinas.
Pain—throbbing, hot, and nauseating—surged through her skull, radiating from the laceration above her eyebrow down into the delicate bones of her left shoulder. Her breath caught in her dry, cracked throat, a sharp whimper escaping her swollen lips as her vision fought to clear through a haze of tears and concussion.
She expected to see the face that had haunted her nightmares for three years. She expected to see the cold, sneering eyes of the monster who had cornered her in this very room eight hours ago, who had used his fists to remind her that she was property, that she had no name, no freedom, and no sanctuary.
Instead, the silhouette towering over her was impossible.
Framed against the dingy beige cabinets of her kitchen was Rhett Valin.
He was kneeling in the dirt beside her, his massive, muscular frame filling the cramped room like an armored fortress. The black cashmere coat wrapped around her shoulders smelled of expensive cedarwood, clean tobacco, and the crisp, masculine scent of a man who commanded kings. Beneath his open collar, the dark ink of his tattoos stood out in stark relief against his throat, but his face—a face that normally terrified state senators and made rival capos drop their eyes—was carved with an expression she had never seen before.
It was an expression of raw, unvarnished concern, bordered by an abyssal, terrifying darkness.
“Mr… Mr. Valin?” Isa whispered, her voice cracked, barely audible above the low hum of the ancient refrigerator.
She flinched violently, her natural instinct to curl inward taking over. She tried to drag her left arm toward her chest, tried to shield her face, but the movement sent a white-hot spear of agony tearing through her clavicle. A sharp cry broke from her throat, her fair skin draining of what little color remained, leaving her translucent and shivering.
“Easy,” Rhett commanded, his deep baritone dropping into a velvet, rhythmic cadence that was astonishingly gentle. “Do not move, Isa. Do not pull away from me.”
His large, warm hands moved with the deliberate precision of a combat surgeon. He caught her right forearm, supporting her uninjured side, while his left palm slid beneath her nape, keeping her head steady against the floorboards. His thumbs brushed lightly across the purple swelling along her temple, checking the bone for fractures, his jaw setting into concrete with every millimeter of damage he cataloged.
He looked down at her wrist.
Circling the delicate, pale bone of her right arm were deep, dark-crimson pressure welts—the violent, unmistakable imprint of heavy male fingers that had pinned her against the counter while the rest of the assault took place. Her white blouse was smeared with dirt and faint droplets of dried blood where her cheek had hit the linoleum, and the left shoulder was dislocated, hanging slack from the joint.
Rhett’s dark eyes shifted from her bruised wrist to the shattered wooden chair three feet away, then to the splintered baseboards near the door where she had clearly been thrown like a ragdoll.
In that moment, the temperature inside the kitchen seemed to drop below freezing.
The soft, tender look in Rhett’s pale eyes did not leave, but beneath the surface, the predator awoke. A corded muscle leaped along his jawline, ticking in rapid, lethal synchronization with his pulse. The ink on his neck stretched as his posture straightened, his broad shoulders eclipsing the winter daylight.
Rhett Valin had spent twenty years in the underworld of Chicago. He had seen bodies pulled from the river; he had ordered executions that cleared shipping docks in forty-eight hours. But looking at the woman who washed his floors, the woman who spoke in whispers and apologized for the sound of her own footsteps, broken and bleeding on the floor of a ten-dollar tenement, a primal, unholy rage ignited in the center of his chest.
“Who did this to you, Isa?” Rhett asked.
The question was not loud. It was soft, intimate, and wrapped in a terrifying, deadly stillness.
May you like
Isa looked up at him, her brown eyes swimming with fresh, hot tears. Her chin quivered, her hand clutching the heavy wool lapel of his black coat as if it were the only solid thing remaining in the universe.
“Please…” she wept, her breath hitching against the pain in her ribs. “Please, Mr. Valin… you shouldn't be here. You can't be here.”
