Looking at the cuffs on her hands, Rachel snapped, "Is this really necessary? It is not as though you had to gag and drag me here."
With a stern and expressionless face, Miles retorted, "Well, I am sure you did not come here because you missed me."
"Oh," Rachel replied, "I could have just stayed at home, and," pronouncing every word distinctly, "watch you hurt my family."
"Your family...," Miles repeated cynically to himself.
Since that first meeting, after more than a decade apart, their exchanges have been tense.
For the next few years it did not get any better. Rachel could never be sure what went on in Miles' mind. But gone was the man with the charming smile, the laughing eyes and the carefree spirit. Instead what was left was a shell of a shadow of a man who was cold, guarded and cruel. The stories and rumors they had heard at home in Sylvania Estates were all true. In fact, they had been watered down. Hearing the whispers in the corridors, the banter between the guards and the sights from outside her room window, Rachel saw and heard only of destruction, death and more deaths.
However, sometimes, for that split second, she glimpsed the fatigue, melancholy and loneliness in Miles' eyes. It was such times when she wanted to go to him, escape from this black hole they were in and whisper sweet nothings to him like she did umpteen years ago. But he was always quick to check himself, and those moments were gone almost as soon as they appeared.
There were, unfortunately, numerous more times when Miles and Rachel argued, taunted each other and clashed. And almost always, hurtful and angry words were hurled at each other. Most spiteful of them all was that Miles actually believed and blamed Rachel for breaking up their relationship and making him the person he was now.
On one fearful incident, drunk and in a fit of rage, Miles cried out, "you were mine first," ripped Rachel's clothes off, and was close to raping her. But he suddenly stopped when she screamed Ben's name. However bad-ass and ruthless Miles may have become, it seemed that he still had some respect, and maybe a soft spot, for his only brother. Mumbling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I promise I will not touch you again," he left Rachel's room.
After that fateful night, Miles cautiously kept his distance, or was only present when Bass or someone else was around.
For years, Rachel had refused to give Miles and Bass any substantial information. She managed to create believable fabrications of the truth, plausible half-truths and absolute misinformation. After a while, slowly dragging the inevitable, it was hard to tell the difference.
The last few months before Miles disappeared, he seemed more stressed and agitated with his position in the Monroe Republic. His relationship with Bass seemed strained, although Rachel could not pin-point the exact reason or the exact time this had started.
However, with Rachel, Miles seemed to have mellowed down. At one point, from the glances he gave her, Rachel even thought he was going to release her and let her return to Ben and her kids.
She was rudely awakened to the truth when Bass just laughed it into her face that Miles had played her. And that Miles had left her as Bass' prisoner to do as he pleased, while Miles left to sow his wild oats for fresh conquests.
Rachel never saw Miles again until that delightful day when she stabbed that sick son of a bitch.
"But Miles had thought I was dead, and he did say that he would never have left me if he thought I was still alive," Rachel pondered.
"How could I have been so gullible to believe Bass after all that he did to me, and knowing what a monster he is?" she questioned herself.
Feeling as broken and torn as the night Charlie had stopped her from killing Neville, she sobbed, "what does it matter now, anyway? If I succeed in this quest, or die trying, I'll never see Miles or Charlie ever again."
She thought to herself, "at least they have each other, and father and daughter are finally reunited."
"And this secret will die with me."