Severed Ties: A Dark Stalker Romance (Tainted Love Book 1)

I’m not really sure where to start. I’ve done everything I could for years to repress everything about my family, to bury the memories so deep I never have to think about them again. But we don’t always get what we want, I suppose.

Tommy sits on the coffee table in front of me while my ass digs into the wooden slats of the couch that no longer holds its softness. I’m not really sure what Ace does for a living, but I can take a fair guess from our conversation and the equipment sitting on his desk. That just doesn’t answer why his apartment looks like it’s been kept like this for the last twenty years without any updates to anything.

He waits patiently, his hands resting gently on the tops of my thighs in an oddly comforting gesture. Being comforted by someone like Tommy is a contradiction. He’s cold and ruthless, but with me, he’s someone else entirely. He’s gentle, caring and, dare I say, protective?

I suck in a ragged breath and force the words out. “My family has always been very transient. They don’t make a living in the most traditional of ways, and due to that, they’ve brought a lot of heat down on my sisters and me over the years. Our childhood was turbulent, and we were involved in a lot of things children shouldn’t be. Things were okay when we were obedient and did as we were told, but we were just kids and we didn’t understand why we had to do the things our father told us to.” I pause to regain my composure. I’ve never said any of this out loud. I’ve never so much as written it into a journal from fear it would come back on me somehow. My thoughts are jumbled and my words come of their own accord without allowing me to filter them to make sense.

Tommy gives my legs a reassuring squeeze, his dark eyes kind despite the soul of the devil staring back at me.

“A lot of the time my sisters were the ones who broke the rules, but I was always the one who took the punishments. I was the oldest, and I thought it was my responsibility to take it. My mother wasn’t any use. She has been an addict since my youngest sister was born. She got hooked on the pain meds they gave her after the cesarean section and she never quite came back from it.”

“He hurt you?” Tommy growls. The sound is deep and menacing, and if he wasn’t touching me with such softness, I would likely recoil at how savage his words sound.

I nod. “The hospital never got wise because we moved so much. I never visited the same emergency room twice, and I never had the same name either. There was no record, nothing to track the number of times I visited the ER each year and how many broken bones I accumulated over the years.”

Tommy looks over his shoulder at Ace, who’s already nodding. “Working as fast as I can, bro. Let the pretty girl tell her story and I’ll get his location.”

He makes a deep sound in his throat at the endearment but decides against saying anything and turns his attention back to me.

“By some miracle, I managed to get through school. I don’t know how the fuck I did it honestly. I got lucky in the later years of high school and enrolled myself with the same name each time to ensure there was a record of me and my transcripts. If it were up to my parents, we wouldn’t have been going to school at all. We would have been working for the business, but I convinced them it was a necessity for the three of us. It was the only time we got to be normal kids, and even then, it was rocky. We were bullied for our thrift store clothes, for being weird, for not being allowed to have sleepovers, and eventually we each started doing our own thing. It wasn’t worth making friends when we knew it was only a matter of months before we’d be on the road to the next city.” I let out a breath, a weight that’s been settled on my shoulders for so many years gradually lifts, and I can suck in a full breath for the first time. “I had a plan. I enrolled in college. I had a hacker friend I met online who could change my name, my enrollment and everything as soon as I got out. I packed my stuff after graduation. I stashed it in a locker at the train station. Everything was ready. I was ready. But everything fell to shit at the last second.”

“They found out?”

I shake my head and press my eyes closed as the weight of the rest of the story weighs down on me. “My father came in late the night before I was due to leave. He was drunk, bleeding, fucking terrified. I’ve never seen him like that. He’s been in trouble over and over and over again, but he’s never looked genuinely afraid. My mother was packing up the house frantically. The girls were crying. It was bedlam.

“My father told me I had to help the family. That without me, they were going to kill us all, and even though my parents are some of the worst people I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting, I couldn’t allow anyone to hurt my baby sisters. They didn’t do anything wrong except for being born into the wrong family.”

“So you said you’d help?”

I nod. Tears pool at the corners of my eyes and every part of me begs me to flee, to listen to my flight instinct and get the hell out of here. I could run again. It wouldn’t be that hard. I still have friends who could help, and apart from Wynter and the job I love, there’s not a lot to keep me here. But even as the thought crosses my mind, I realize it’s a lie. Because the man who’s brushing his calloused palms up and down my legs is here, and the thought of never seeing Tommy again makes my stomach drop painfully. “I didn’t know anything until it was too late. He just told me to get dressed in all black and that he’d explain everything on the way. I’d done a few odd break-ins and the like, helped him with a few robberies when my mother was in no state to do it, but I knew this was different before I even got out of bed.

“We were living in Florida at the time, not far from Miami, and from the first day we moved there, I knew it was different. The people my father was talking to were different, more powerful, and the stakes were higher. We got in the car and dread settled over me. I knew something bad was going to happen long before it actually happened.

“My father pulled up outside this old building. It didn’t look like much and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was getting ready to be demolished. He turned to me and explained there were people inside who would fall for a pretty face and a little bit of flirting, and when I was able to reach the office, I needed to copy the files from the computer and then install a virus to corrupt the whole system and cover my tracks. My father was often hired to do things like this, to destroy evidence so his clients could never be charged for whatever crimes they’d committed, but I’d never helped him with it before.

“My sisters and I could get in tight places, and that’s what he normally had us do, but this was different. It was interacting with criminals, throwing his barely legal daughter to the sharks and hoping for the best.”

I don’t want to tell the rest of this story. From here, there’s nothing but pain and misery, two things I’ve known all too well in my life, but so has Tommy. He doesn’t need to say the words for me to know his childhood was far worse than mine. His body tells the tale, the scars an intricate map of the horrors he’s seen, and his tattoos are a cloak to protect himself from the world.

“Take your time, fawn.”

I meet his dark gaze, dragging strength from the connection. “I did as he asked. I went into the building, pretended I was lost, flirted a little. I wasn’t great with guys back then.” I scoff. “Who am I kidding? I’m no good with them now, but back then, I was even worse. I’d had a couple of boyfriends, had managed to get rid of my virginity in the back of a beat-up pickup truck, but we left town suddenly a few days later.”

Tommy makes a deep sound in his throat that can only be described as primal, but I ignore it. If I stop now, I might not start again. Tension pulses through my body to the point my limbs ache under the pressure.

“I did as I was told. I walked in like I was lost and fed them a lie about my boyfriend and me getting into a fight. I told them he made me get out of the car a few blocks away and that I’d left my cell in the car. I asked if they would let me use one of theirs to call for someone to come get me, and at first, they were suspicious. Especially seeing as I had put little effort in before I left the house half-asleep and I must have looked a sight. But I was young and innocent looking, so they relented.

“They gave me access to the office my father told me about and handed me a phone to make my call before leaving me on my own. It was too easy, and I knew that at the time, but I was too close to getting out to care. I just had to do this one last thing for him, and then in the morning, I could escape. I could start living a real life. But while I was transferring the files, they came back.” I squeeze my eyes shut as a flurry of memories hits me all at once. The guns, the yelling, me begging for my life, them laughing at the pathetic little girl who dared to steal from them.

“Fawn,” Tommy murmurs, his fingers moving to brush down my cheek in a comforting gesture. “Breathe for me, Clara.”

It’s only now I realize my breaths are coming in hard and fast, the memories making it impossible for me to break free from the panic bearing down on me. I had nightmares for a long time, hell, I still do some nights, and I swear I can still feel the knife slicing into my skin, can still hear their laughs as their grubby hands move over my bare skin, can still smell my own blood filling the dirty old office as they held me down.

“Clara,” Tommy’s voice firms, the softness gone from his tone and in its place, his demanding timbre has my eyes opening of their own accord. “There you are.” He cups my cheek in his calloused palm and takes something from Ace, who looks equally concerned. He’s no longer sitting by the computer. Instead, he’s hovering on the other side of the coffee table. “Can you drink some of this for me?” He holds up a bottle of water and I barely manage a nod in agreement.

He moves the bottle to my lips and I take a few careful sips. No one has ever fed me water like this, and even through the blinding panic, I’m worried about spilling it down my front. “Good girl,” he says softly. “Just a little more.” There’s something comforting and almost hypnotic about his voice, and I can’t help but obey him. He’s taking care of me, and for someone who basically raised themselves and their siblings, that means more than he could possibly imagine.

“I’ve tracked the call. He’s in the city, a few blocks away from her apartment.” Ace’s voice fills the space, but it takes long seconds for his words to soak in.

Did he say near my apartment? How the hell does he know where my apartment is?

Tommy carefully lifts the bottle from my lips and brushes his thumb over the plump pillows. “Can you keep an eye on him? Let me know when he moves?”

Ace nods. “Yeah, man, I’ll keep him up on one of the screens. What are you going to do with her?”

“I’m going to take her back to my place, where she’ll be safe.”

“What about my apartment?” I choke out.

Tommy and Ace look at one another for long seconds as if they can communicate without saying a word, and perhaps they can. Perhaps they had to do that in foster care, and in adulthood, they’ve been able to continue the practice.

“Once you’re secure, I’ll pick up your belongings, but you won’t be going back there.”