“He didn’t take you in. He recruited you and Nicky as a way to control me.”
“Everything is always about you.”
“Not everything, no. But in this situation, yes, yes, this was absolutely about me. If he didn’t use you and Nicky against me, he knew I would find a chance and run. He didn’t want that. Because he’s a sick, twisted guy who kidnaps and holds women against their will.”
“He loves you.”
“He loves no one. Not me, not you, no one. All he loves is himself and power. If you think anything else, then I’m sorry for you because you are horribly mistaken.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Okay,” I said, shrugging.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’m wrong. Prove it. Prove he loves you or cares about you. Get him here,” I suggested.
Was I suddenly hoping that the man who’d kidnapped and held me captive for years to show up and become my savior?
As fucked up as that was, yes, yes I was.
Because he was possibly the only person who could save me in this situation.
He was the only person Lucas cared about.
And I felt like I knew Colin well enough at this point to know that if he showed up and saw how warped Lucas was, how big of a threat not only to me, but to him and his organization he was, that he would… do what he had to do.
My stomach turned over on itself at that. Because I knew how Colin would handle this.
In a similar way that he’d handled Larry.
This was mybrother.
I raised him.
I loved him.
But there was not a single doubt in my mind that, in this moment, in this crazy world he’d created up in his head, that he would kill me. Without a second thought.
And blood and love aside, if it was going to come to saving him or myself, I was going to have to pick myself.
“What?” Lucas asked, brows furrowing.
“Call Colin. I want you to call Colin and get him here to see what a traitorous bitch I am,” I told him.
“You do?”
“Yep. I will confess it all to him,” I told him. “Hiding the money. Being willing to work with the Calgary Family against him. Tracking down the man who’d killed Cody and then going to him with help to try to kill Colin.
“I’ll even tell him how I let that man put his hands on me in the alley behind the deli,” I said, improvising the last part because if I didn’t make it out of this, I didn’t want to get Traveler in trouble.
“I want to tell him how stupid he’s been,” I went on, letting rage slip into my words. Not rage at Colin, for once, though. Rage at the situation. At the betrayal. At the choices I was being forced to make.
“He’ll finally see how stupid he’s been to believe you’d learn to love him.”
“Yeah, well, he’s an idiot if he thinks that,” I said, meaning that part. There was no way I could love Colin. Even if, in the end, my own damn brother was the worst villain in my story.
“Fine. I’ll call him,” he said, but charged over at me. “But I’m getting you somewhere safe first.”
Safe meant strapped to a chair in an empty building while he made the call, not giving any specifics, just a location and saying it was an emergency involving me.
“And so we wait.”