I gushed out a rush of relief. “Thank you.”
He gave it to me for a place somewhere in Kentucky.
“You don’t know how grateful I am.”
“I just want them safe,” he said, his voice a dulled, roughened blade.
“I know. I think we’re close to that.”
The second we hung up, I jumped up to my desk, flipped the lid to my laptop, and entered the address for the box.
“Oh my god.”
It popped up the name of the renter.
I searched his name, my heart in my throat.
And he had a house.
A house in Lexington.
Everything sped and flashed.
My relief and desperation.
My sister. My sister.
I dialed the number as I was flying out the door. “Mr. Jacobs. I found her.”
Thirty-Six
Richard
Six Years Ago
Lily: Shawn really wants to see me?
Richard: Yeah.
Lily: Violet’s already asleep. Should I wake her to come with me?
His gaze traveled around the raging party, and his guts clenched at the thought of his wife being in the middle of this. Of what she would think. A tickle of awareness pushed into his mind. A warning he didn’t heed.
He tapped out a response.
Richard: Nah. Not her scene. Come alone.
Lily: Okay, be there in a few.
He tossed his phone to his lap, stretched back, shot Shawn a grin. “She’s on her way, asshole. You’re welcome. You’d better treat her right this time. She’s a good girl.”
Shawn cackled a laugh. “You know I will, brother. You know I will.”
* * *
“What are you doing?” Richard shouted.
Lily wept, cried where they’d stripped her on the bed. He roared, fought and flailed to get to her while three men pinned his arms behind his back and held him back by the shoulders, forcing him to watch.
Bile rushed.
The high gone as he watched men sink to their lowest low.
As they ravaged her.
One after another.
As she screamed.
As she cried.
Tears streaked nonstop down Richard’s face and snot ran from his nose. “Stop. Fuck. Stop. Please.”
They shoved him at her when they were finished. “Your turn, pussy.”
He fell to his knees, crawled to her, gathered her broken body in his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh my god, Lily,” he wailed, choking on the sobs that ripped from his bleeding lungs.
Lily shrieked the second he touched her. A guttural, unhinged fear. She scrambled back into the corner and curled into a shivering, shaking ball.
“Lily.”
“Don’t touch me,” she whimpered. “Don’t touch me. You monster. Don’t touch me.”
Thirty-Seven
Richard
Fuck.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
I punched the steering wheel like it might be able to dispel some of the rage and disgust pummeling my insides from where I’d pulled off the side of the road. Trying to find a way to get air into my lungs.
Not a chance of that.
Not when every organ in my body had caved. Crushed under the magnitude of the sickened outrage that Violet had looked at me with. Under the weight of the betrayal that she’d finally realized the full immensity of.
Only she’d had it all fuckin’ wrong.
I knew what it looked like.
Of course, I knew.
Those pictures that had been all over that table.
How the fuck had that private investigator gotten ahold of them?
Hadn’t needed a close-up to know they were copies of the same ones that Karl Fitzgerald had tried to use on me to get me to do his bidding.
Ones that had remained secret all this time. Pictures of me and Lily.
What were missing were the ones of me and Gianna. Ones of me and Danica.
Those were the ones Cory Douglas had shown my sister. The ones he’d manipulated her with.
Terrorized her with.
My sister thinking she was protecting me all while trying to reach me. To get answers. To understand because she couldn’t believe I would do something so vile.
I wouldn’t.
I fucking wouldn’t.
But no matter how true that statement was, those pictures were incriminating.
That was the thing about a picture. Sometimes clear evidence wasn’t clear at all because the eye couldn’t see what was hidden underneath.
Buried.
My debt going so fuckin’ deep.
Pain flayed through my insides with a blunt, dull knife.
Tearing and ripping and cutting me open wide.
Violet.
Could still feel the burn of her on my hands. Could still feel the heat of her touch on my skin.
My wife.
My sweet, innocent wife who’d gotten caught up in these atrocities.
Girl unaware she was a victim of the fallout.
Promised her I wouldn’t let her go. That I would protect her. Take care of her.
How the hell was I supposed to drive away?
Needed her to understand. Listen.
But what did I expect? That she would stand there and allow herself to be fed more lies?
I’d wanted to fight her on it.
Force her to hear me out even when I didn’t want her to have to hear what I needed to say.
And sure as hell not when that precious little girl was standing there.
Scared and confused.
I had to walk.
I should have just told her. Fuck, I should have just told her.
But what then?
She still would hate me in the end.
When she knew what I’d kept from her.
When she knew what I’d done.
Why I’d kept it from her.
Six fuckin’ years, and the whole time, it’d just spiraled and spiraled.
Piled up until it was nothing but a shitstorm.
A car went blazing passed on the narrow road, honking as it swerved around me. I hadn’t even realized I was still halfway out in the road.
I jerked two fistfuls of hair.
Trying to get myself the hell together.
I eased back onto the road, glancing in the rearview mirror like I might still have a view of her farm. Last thing I wanted to do was drive away.
Let her out of my sight.
But I knew she was too raw to allow me within five miles of her right then.
I fumbled to dial the number, anxiety racing through my veins while I listened to it ring and ring. Doubted Royce was gonna be all that excited to get this wake-up call from me on the morning after his wedding.
Finally, his voicemail came on.
“Royce, man. We’ve got a complication.” My voice cracked on it.
Complication?
It was a fucking travesty.
And I was the fool who’d come to hope for a different outcome.
“The private investigator Violet hired somehow dug deep enough to find the photos. The ones of Liliana and me. She lost it, man. Lost it. Didn’t want to hear a word I had to say.”
Couldn’t blame her.
“She kicked me off her property. Said the authorities had already been notified.”
Which was just fine. I’d always known I’d burn for this. Their safety was well worth the cost. But the one person I didn’t want to pay for it was Violet.
“Know you guys are supposed to be leaving for your honeymoon this afternoon, but I need you to go over to the farm. Watch out for her. Talk her down and let her know we’re trying to keep Lily safe. Think that’s what she needs most right now. I’ll stay with Emily and Maggie until we see this thing through.”
Unease shivered through my senses.
Praying those pictures were as deep as the guy had gotten. That the trail had ended there. At that ridiculous mansio
n that was nothing less than a prison.
A slew of women kept in the upper rooms. A few men, too. Some who’d stumbled in unaware and were caught up in it before they knew what was happening. Others that had been ripped off the streets. Some lured from other countries, convinced by coming here, they’d have a better life.
Poison pumped into their veins. Their minds and their bodies no longer their own.
“Call me as soon as you get this.”
I ended the call and tossed my phone to the passenger seat, my body shaking in a riot of trepidation as I sped the rest of the way to my parents’ house.
Every molecule in my body pulsed and fired.
Screaming at me to turn the fuck around and go to her.
Ten minutes later, I pulled to a stop in front of my childhood home, heart ramming against my ribs, breaths so hard and shallow I was getting lightheaded.
Knew I’d lose her.
Should have known it all along.
But what I couldn’t stand was driving away.
Leaving them vulnerable.
Not when I could feel it.
Destruction on the horizon.
I dropped my head to the steering wheel in an attempt to get myself together before I went inside when my phone started ringing. I scrambled to get it when I saw Royce’s name lighting up the screen.
“Hey, man, sorry to wake you like this.” Didn’t get the apology out before he cut me off.
“Richard.” His voice was grim, straight terror in my name. “Where are you?”
“Just got to my parents’.”
“Turn around and go back to Violet’s. Right now,” he shouted.
Without asking for a reason, I threw the truck into reverse and gunned it, dust flying as I whipped around, shifting into drive before I’d made the half rotation. Tires skidding on the gravel, truck fishtailing, I pushed the pedal to the floor while I could feel Royce breathing his panic through the line.
“What the fuck is goin’ on?” I said when I righted my truck and blew down the narrow lane.
“I just got off the phone with the prosecutor. Both Karl Fitzgerald and Cory Douglas were found dead in their cells this morning.”
Motherfuck.
Air rocketed from my lungs.
Entire being slamming forward with the impact of the news.
With what this meant.
Not that I was going to mourn the bastards.
But this was so much bigger than them.
“First the two witnesses. Now the two on trial. It’s clear they’re systematically silencing anyone who has an inside on this.” Royce’s words thinned on the end.
Knowing what that meant for him. For Emily. For his sister. For all of us.
“Where’s Emily?” I demanded.
“Right beside me. I’m going to your parents’ where Maggie is. No one is leaving until this is done.”
Just wasn’t sure how we were gonna end it.
No question, the rules of the game had just been changed.
“It’s time to bring in Detective Casile. I know they wanted to wait until they could testify, but that’s not gonna work when there is no one left to testify against,” Royce said.
“I know. Make the call. I’ll call Kade.”
“Done. Get back to Violet. Don’t give a shit if her father meets you on the front porch with a shotgun. You make them understand, and you don’t let them out of your sight.”
Sweat gathered at my nape and dripped down my back.
“I’m already on my way.”
“Stay safe, brother.”
Affection pulled tight across my chest. “You, too. Take care of my sister. Of Maggie.”
“Promised you I would.”
The second he hung up, I punched in another number.
Kade answered on the first ring. “Richard.”
I heaved out a strained breath. “We’re on high alert, man. Double down your efforts.”
“What happened?” he grated.
“Karl Fitzgerald and Cory Douglas are dead.”
“Shit,” he wheezed.
“Getting them to trial is no longer the focus. The detective is being contacted. Backup should be there soon. For now, stand guard and don’t stand down.”
Lily had made me promise the authorities wouldn’t be brought in.
She’d convinced me it was too dangerous.
Wasn’t like she was off base. Someone tried to leave? Expose what was going down in that house and those who visited it? Go to the police?
They ended up gone.
Permanently.
Just like the two women who had agreed to Royce and Detective Casile that they would testify. Even under police protection, they’d disappeared.
It was better the rest of them were thought dispersed into the streets before the raid than as a threat.
Clearly, we were passed that.
“Will let you know as soon as I hear anything,” I told him.
By the time I ended the call, I was coming up fast on the curve that brought the Marin house into view.
My spirit clanged. My guts in knots. They twisted a thousand times tighter when I saw Violet’s truck was no longer parked in the spot it’d been when I’d left.
I raced up the drive, truck jostling like mad. I barely skidded to a stop before I was flying out the door and sprinting up the steps, banging on the door that whipped open a second later.
“Haven’t you done enough?” Mr. Marin spat, words close to a plea.
Not quite.
Because it was time for this all to end.
Thirty-Eight
Violet
I didn’t know how I made it to the library parking lot through the tears that kept fallin’. Didn’t know how I was functioning at all with the sheer, utter devastation that singed and burned and ate me alive.
My ribs feeling like they’d been cracked wide open and my heart ripped out.
I was running on adrenaline alone.
The bit of hope that my sister was comin’ home, even when I didn’t know what that was goin’ to mean. Knowing I was wholly unprepared for the things she’d been through. That I was gonna learn things that I didn’t want to know.
And then there was Daisy.
Daisy. Daisy. Daisy.
The vacancy in my chest howled with the grievance.
That outright fear.
But I just kept reminding myself this wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about me.
I fumbled out of my truck when the sedan whipped into the parking spot beside me, and I jerked open his door and slipped inside.
Unable to breathe.
Unable to see.
Knowing I had to fight for this one purpose. I could fall apart later.
“You’ve got the address?” David Jacobs asked, peering over at me.
“Yes. I think so. I talked with Mr. Baronson. He gave me the address for a P.O. box so I could attempt to contact my sister. I…I think I traced the renter of the box to a house in Lexington.”
“May I see?” he asked.
Hand shaking, I passed over my phone. He looked at the address and then was making a call with his.
“We got them,” he said. I guessed that was when his demeanor shifted from concerned P.I. to something else entirely.
When the mood whipped into something cruel.
And those three little words.
They danced and shivered and spun through my mind.
A moment held.
And then it hit me from all sides.
All at once.
A vat of ice-cold water was dumped over me.
The realization of what I’d done.
That voice.
Oh my god. That voice.
How hadn’t I made the connection?
“You shouldn’t go diggin’ up graves. You never know when you might fall in.”
I swung around to get to the door handle at the same second the locks engaged.
The car whipped out of the spot, and I fought the lock that
wouldn’t give, yanking at the handle, trying to escape. “No. Let me out. Don’t do this. Oh, god. Please don’t do this.”
Despair and fear and terror.
They spiraled and curled and shackled.
Leaving me in chains.
I came to the quick, gutting realization. I’d let my despair over seeing Richard in those pictures with Lily overshadow the truth. What had been hidden in Richard’s eyes and in his cryptic words. What he’d been trying to convey.
Hot tears streamed down my face when I realized what I’d done.
The car accelerated like a bullet down the street.
And I knew I was a prisoner.
Nowhere to run. No chance of savin’ my sister.
The only thing I’d accomplished was leading the wolves to the den.
David Jacobs glanced over at me with a smug grin on his face. “You know, I thought you were going to be a complication when we first intercepted that hit that you were actively looking for Liliana Marin. Turns out you did my job for me. Maybe I should be the one paying you. I guess Richard Ramsey couldn’t help himself, could he? You are awful pretty. I’ll call that a bonus.”
He smirked a disgusting smile.
And I knew, I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Thirty-Nine
Richard
Six Years Ago
“I warned you that you needed to prove how much you wanted this,” the sinister voice mocked in Richard’s ear before he was met with another barrage of fists and feet. Pain splintered through his body, ribs cracking, skin tearing.
Soul shearing.
Richard climbed to his hands and knees, and blood gushed from his mouth and pooled on the floor. “Never.”
They’d tossed him at Lily and told him to “prove it”. He’d spat in Martin Jennings face.
He’d rather die.
He was pretty sure he was halfway to it.
Consciousness coming in and out. A darkness sucking him under where he’d never emerge.
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