If you are a victim of domestic violence, you don’t deserve this. There are people who are ready to help you.
If you’re afraid for your life in any situation, you don’t have to be.
We can get you out of your situations and help you start over.
Bullshit.
I glanced at my even shorter message and attached the fake account I’d created for Sutton in the email section before hitting submit.
Is this real? Can you help?
A cold smile pulled at my mouth as I slipped the phone into my pocket and fingered the small container in there.
Once the coffee was ready, I glanced around the kitchen before pulling out the container and dumping its powdery contents into the mug.
Within seconds, it had dissolved into the black liquid and its taste was masked by the creamer. Once again, it was as if nothing had ever been there, and my beautiful wife would never be the wiser.
And she thought I was the idiot.
That I wouldn’t figure out what she was doing by withholding her body from me until certain times of the month to prevent from getting pregnant.
I’d figured it out long ago, it had just taken me a while to decide on a game that fit her offense. A game where she slowly began wanting me more and more until she couldn’t help herself when I came for her, until she was insane with need, seemed appropriate enough.
And this past year had been slow . . . but goddamn if it hadn’t been worth it.
In the beginning, she threw out excuse after excuse to avoid me.
The last month or two? One touch from me had her writhing.
Soon, I’d have that bitch begging.
I headed upstairs and let a weighted breath ease from my lungs when I sat on the bed near Sutton’s feet.
She moaned in response and reached for her head. “Whatever this is . . . it’s getting worse.” Her face pinched, showing her discomfort as she pushed herself to sitting. “I need to see another doctor. Someone has to know what’s going on.”
Oh, but they won’t. I pay them too much to.
I forced back a smirk and held out her coffee. “Maybe this will help for now.”
As soon as the mug was in her hands and she’d taken the first sip, I released another heavy sigh.
“What’s going on?” she asked weakly. “You’re distracted and stressed lately. I’ve never seen you like this.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face and pushed from the bed.
After pacing around the room a few times, I stopped near the end of the bed so I was facing her and folded my arms over my chest.
My expression was a mixture of agony and worry and hesitation.
A perfect mixture.
One I’d been practicing for this exact moment.
“It’s Vero . . .”
Sutton sat up so suddenly that she winced and then swayed. “Is she back?”
My head moved minutely, and I cleared my throat, pretending as if I were choking back emotions I wasn’t sure I even possessed.
“Zachary.” It was a breath filled with dread.
I could feel the corners of my lips curling up in a victorious smirk behind my façade.
“She never left,” I finally said. After another few seconds, I risked a glance at her. “We thought she left—Jason thought she left him. He kept trying to call Vero, her parents, her friends, anyone who might know where she went. No one had seen her. And then a neighbor came forward saying they heard screaming coming from the house the night Vero . . . was taken.”
Her eyes widened in confusion. “What?”
“Jason checked the camera system. A van full of people pulled up right after Vero came home. They got her before she could even reach the front door and dragged her into the van. One of them followed behind in her car.”
Tears were slipping down Sutton’s face, but her head was shaking and denial shown in her eyes. “No. No, that can’t—no. Who would kidnap her? What do they want?”
“It’s worse than that,” I said warily and gripped at the back of my neck. “These people . . . they’re a group from North Carolina posing as a private investigating firm. They’re really part of a human trafficking ring. They take a handful of girls from an area and then move on.”
Her mouth fell open in silent horror.
“That means they’re still on the hunt.”
“How—” Her hand dropped to her stomach and squeezed. “How do you know this?”
“Jason’s been working with the FBI since that neighbor came forward.”
“This . . . this just can’t be real. It can’t.” Her head snapped up. “We have to get her back. How do we get her back?”
I couldn’t fight the smile that time.
So naïve.
So trusting.
“We have a plan.”
Sutton
I woke with a start.
Heart racing.
Sweat clinging to my body.
Fear gripping my spine.
But instead of the dark room I’d been in, there was a bright, open area. Instead of the hard floor I’d been on, there were cushions supporting me. Instead of the door I’d been staring at, there was the most precious face in the world.
Wide hazel eyes were locked on me, worrying in a way no six-year-old should.
“Were your dreams really scary, or were they only a little scary this time?” she asked, her voice soft as a whisper.
“No, no. It was nothing,” I said through the adrenaline tightening my throat. “Nothing, sweet girl. Good morning.”
I sat up and looked around the living room of the suite, at the muted television, and the blanket draped over me.
My mind raced as I tried to figure out why I was there, tried to remember going to bed. I couldn’t remember anything past talking with Jess and Kieran about where Zachary could be hiding.
For hours, they’d asked about the lake house and his normal routine. All the while, Conor had sat nearby, regret and indecision bleeding from him.
I quickly covered myself with the blanket when Conor rounded the corner into my line of sight, even though I was no less dressed than I had been the night before.
“Morning. Ordered food a few minutes ago.” His rough voice no longer held that coldness from the past two days, but the warmth was still missing.
I brushed at my wild hair and prayed I didn’t look like a train wreck. “Thank you. Conor, wh—” He turned those bright blue eyes on me, making me forget what I was going to say.
Kind.
Gentle.
Everything they were supposed to be, but it didn’t feel like enough.
They weren’t dipping over my body before quickly darting away like they had those first few days.
They were simply watching, waiting for me to continue.
That should have been a good thing. He was helping us . . . protecting us. I may not have started out as one, but I had turned into his client. So, he shouldn’t look, and I shouldn’t want him to.
Except I did.
I wanted the lingering glances and teasing words.
I wanted the way he always seemed to find an excuse to brush past me when he spoke to me, making me shiver and crave more of his touch.
I wanted to know that he felt this connection that was as undeniable as it was irrational.
I blinked quickly, breaking the contact and pulling myself out of my absurd thoughts. “I’m sorry. I, uh . . . I was wondering about why I was here?”
“You mean why you slept out here?” When I nodded, he said, “Well, I considered moving you. But then I thought you might wake up and attack me, and who knows what you attack like when you’re asleep. You might have managed to get a good hit in.”
I risked a glance at him, but he was looking at his computer screen. The corner of his mouth was tipped up, and that small smile felt incredibly significant.
“Well, thank you.” I eased myself off the couch and grabbed the blanket I’d been covered with. “At least it finally got you to s
leep in a bed. I’m sure that was nice after nearly a week on couches.”
If I hadn’t been studying that perfectly imperfect smile, I wouldn’t have noticed the moment it shifted, became forced.
After a second, he made a confirming sound in his throat.
That was it.
A step forward. A step backward.
Perfect.
The man was infuriating.
I went to the bedroom to change and get ready for another day of sitting in the suite, and it wasn’t until Lexi came bounding in that I realized I hadn’t thought twice about leaving her out there with him.
Each morning, I’d find her in the living room, having stare-downs with Conor. And despite my unwanted feelings that wouldn’t seem to stop surfacing for him, there had always been that underlying fear whenever I saw Lexi with him.
Fear that came from months and months of Zachary feeding me lies. Months of expecting something wholly different when it came to any ARCK member. Fear that I had felt was confirmed when Conor broke into the motel that morning.
But, somehow, I’d come to expect him there, had come to be comforted by his presence, had come to know that we were safe as long as he was there.
That Lexi was safe.
“Did you brush your hair?” Lexi asked, immediately inspecting my head.
I self-consciously touched my hair. It had been as wild as I’d feared and nearly impossible to tame. “Yes . . .”
“It was really poofy when you woke up.”
I dropped my hand to my side and narrowed my eyes. “Don’t be rude, it comes from an ugly heart.”
My eyes widened in horror as soon as the words left my mouth.
Oh dear God, I am turning into my mother.
As a kid, I’d always hated whenever she would say that to me. It made me think there was something wrong with my heart.
As I got older, I heard the hypocrisy in her words and began hating who she was as a person. How she thought. How she spoke to people and of them.
Turns out, I was no better than she was.
I crouched in front of Lexi and grabbed her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have said that. It is true, in a way. It really is.” Damn you, Mother. “But I know you weren’t being rude, you were just teasing me in a silly way, not in a mean way. So, I’m sorry for saying that.”
Lexi was staring at me as if she didn’t know why we were even talking about this. “Okay.”
“I just want to be sure that, in the future, you won’t point out things about other people. Even though my hair was probably funny and it didn’t hurt my feelings, your words could hurt someone else’s feelings.”
“Like when you hurt Mr. Conor’s?”
Being kicked in the stomach would have hurt less than that innocent question. “Yes. Exactly. I need to work on that. Not only with saying it but also with thinking it.”
Lexi placed her hands on my cheeks and forced me to look at her. “It’s okay, Momma. I think he’ll forgive you.”
“Thanks, sweet girl.”
I snuck a kiss to her nose and smiled when she laughed and skipped away. Before she reached the door, she stopped and turned, dropping her voice to a loud whisper. “When I woke up this morning and went looking for you, Mr. Conor was sitting at the door.”
My head tilted. “Oh?”
“He was still sleeping.”
The air escaped my lungs in a rush when I realized what she was saying, what that meant. The man hadn’t slept in a bed or on a couch last night. He’d slept on the floor. That, in and of itself, stirred even more unwanted emotions inside me.
I nodded and offered Lexi a brittle smile.
Once I’d gathered myself, I followed her out of the room and into the kitchen where Conor was setting out the food he’d ordered.
Breakfast was a quiet affair since Lexi still wasn’t speaking to Conor or around him.
I was fairly certain Conor preferred not to say anything to me, and I didn’t know what to say to him. I was upset that he didn’t take the opportunity to sleep on a bed when I’d been begging him to sleep on the one in his room. I was irritated that he didn’t just wake me, and I was kicking myself for being so selfish that I took the only bed he obviously felt comfortable using.
By the time it was over and the plates were cleared away, all I could think of was talking to him about it, but I was afraid I would explode on him the second I opened my mouth.
After Lexi was set up with the crayons and coloring books Jess had brought, I wandered back over to the kitchen table where Conor had set up his laptop.
As soon as I sat, he said, “You’re the first only child female in any of the core families.”
I blinked, trying to reorganize my thoughts, completely taken off guard. “Excuse me?”
He flipped his laptop around to me, revealing a massive family tree. “It’s becoming clearer that this is men only, so we were only looking at the men with the five core last names. But I recognized one of the men on the payroll in the drug ring as one of Jason’s uncles by marriage, not blood. With thousands of people on the payroll, it isn’t unreasonable to think that the men brought in by marriage might be on it too. I’ve been building this to see who’s related by marriage, how they are, and to see who is in on it. So far, every man has been.”
It was overwhelming to see generations of five families splitting off and growing, and to know that every man on that page was—or had been—involved with illegal things.
“You’re the first only child female in any of the original families,” he repeated.
“What does that mean?”
“Your dad was an only child too,” he said with a sigh. “The Camp name is going to die out of the Tennessee Gentlemen.”
I was so focused on the names that I didn’t register what he was saying at first. I’d been nodding, though, for who knew how long.
Shock pulsed through me when my childhood flashed before my eyes in a split second. “Oh my God.”
In the next, fights and fears and realizations ripped through my mind.
“What?” Conor was out of his seat and sinking into the one next to me, leaning over to look at the screen and then me. “Sutton, what?”
“My parents. Za—Oh Jesus.” I shook away the memories and dropped my head into my hands.
Conor must have realized that I needed time, because his chair shifted back and, eventually, that calm patience he exuded reached me.
“It’s my life, it was my life, and it was supposed to be normal.” I looked up and found him watching me. “How do you come in and say something—say one god damn thing—and change everything I knew?” A weak laugh tumbled from my lips. “Or make it make sense . . .”
His eyebrows slowly lifted, but he didn’t push.
Just waited.
“My parents, they—God, they fought constantly when I was young. Younger than Lexi, but I remember it clearly. Every time, it was because my dad wanted my mom to have another kid. When I got older, I remember thinking about how weird that was. I was in middle school when I overheard him threaten to divorce her if she couldn’t have another.”
He actually looked appalled by that, but I waved his horror away.
“Don’t feel too bad for her. Remember, she’s an awful person.” I dropped my stare to the table and traced patterns with the tips of my fingers as I continued. “Eventually, those fights stopped and they stayed married. I heard our housekeeper telling her husband that my dad was the reason they couldn’t have more children.”
“Asshole.”
My lips twitched into a smile because he wasn’t wrong. “Lexi’s an only child.”
“Zachary has a brother to carry on the name.”
I risked a glance in his direction. “I don’t think that mattered to him. He was so mad when we found out we were having a girl that he didn’t speak to me for days. Then, just a week after Lexi was born, he told me we needed to start trying for a boy as soon as possible. Demanded it, actually.”
Conor was s
ilent, but it wasn’t a contemplative quiet.
It was tense. Furious.
Uncomfortable.
I swallowed thickly and shifted in my chair. “I was so overwhelmed and emotional, I wasn’t sure if I wanted another baby at all. I’d had a plan. Get married and get pregnant two years later, maybe have another baby two and a half years after that. We’d only been married a couple of months before realizing we were pregnant with Lexi. I hadn’t been ready, and I wasn’t prepared to be pregnant for years following our marriage. When I said no, he went days without speaking to me again.”
I dropped my arms to my waist and curled them around myself, trying to keep the trembling away.
“There’s something I want to tell you.”
But I also don’t because it shouldn’t be anyone’s business other than Zachary’s and mine.
Because it’s you . . .
That couldn’t be an excuse. It shouldn’t even be a factor.
“I didn’t feel comfortable saying it last night, and I won’t apologize for that. I don’t know Jess and Kieran, and this is . . .”
“Personal,” he murmured.
I nodded, the movement faint. “Before I tell you, I have a question.”
“Anything.” It was immediate, open, and full of some emotion I wanted to explore and refused to acknowledge.
“The drug trafficking within Tennessee Gentlemen, is that only illegal drugs, or is it pharmaceuticals as well?”
Conor was silent so long that I finally looked at him again. There was a question in his eyes, as though he were trying to figure out where I was going with this before I could tell him.
With a subtle nod, he said, “Both.”
“Zachary had these mood swings where he would punish me by not talking to me. And he did this thing that—well, the more it happened, the more I was sure that I didn’t want another child with him because I hated having anything that tied me to him at all. So, I made sure we never had sex at a time when I could get pregnant.”
“Birth control?”
A tremor rolled down my spine.
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