Cade’s face remained motionless as his worried stare drove into me. I saw the flickering of Slave’s muscles playing back and forth, as if he were teetering with the idea of cutting his throat. I would never recover. Nothing at that moment mattered other than putting this to a stop and getting that knife away from the only person I ever loved.
“So, you sold me to him.” I looked at Bain’s father, latching onto his beetle-like eyes, trying like hell to distract him from hurting Cade. My heart beat in my eardrums so loudly I could hardly hear his answer.
“That’s right. Except, up until recently, I thought you were dead. Your dumb fucking mother hid you from me because she was forced to sign you over to save her own life. She tried to save yours, too.”
“And then when she died, that responsibility came to me.” My gaze crossed the room like a cutting jab toward Bain, feeling the confusion sweep me off my feet.
Slave seethed. “So, you’ve been hiding her all these years?”
It felt wrong to wish danger on someone else, but in the moment, the fleeting thought of Slave letting Cade go to get to Bain made my heart skip.
“Don’t you worry, Slave. I’ll take care of the betraying little fuck. That must be his mama coming out of him.” The gun was suddenly pointed at Bain, and everything was spinning out of control. The room was shifting, weapons were being pointed at everyone, my heart was hammering, and panic was slowly taking me under.
“Stop it!” I shouted, stomping my foot down on the wooden plank beside me. Tiny dust particles flew up, surrounding me in my wake. I glared at Slave with his wicked little smile and asked the simple question that would change everything. “Why was I up for sale? And why did you want me?”
I could never say that no one wanted me again, the only problem was that this was not what I had expected as a young child when all I wanted was to be adopted.
“Because your mother had cheated on Callum.” He nodded to Bain’s father, the man who still had a gun pointed at his son. “He put you up for sale to get back at her.”
Callum stared at Bain as he spoke to me. “I thought it would hurt her more to know you were living a shitty life without her than killing you along with your father. He was nothing but a local restaurant owner.” Callum smiled as he revisited the past. “I had him make me a meal before I killed him with the same knife he cut my steak with.”
A tremor ran down my spine, shaking me to my core. I mourned the loss of someone I didn’t even know.
I shifted my attention back to Slave, not able to look at the fear in Cade’s eyes because I knew the fear wasn’t because there was a knife to his throat. It was because he could see my decisions before I even saw them myself. “Why did you buy me? What could a man like you want with a baby?”
“Well”—he smiled at me as if he were a kind and decent man—“I was going to sell you on the black market. American girls are a hot commodity.”
Bain must have seen the confusion on my face, because he explained it quickly, ignoring the gun pointed in his direction. “Slave owns one of the biggest sex-trafficking rings in the United States. Selling women and children all over the world for sex purposes.”
My face fell, and my watery eyes were instantly drawn to Cade. I was deadbolted right there. What do we do? It was so much worse than I had expected. This was never something I could have imagined when I was younger, and I had imagined a lot of different reasons as to why I was placed in an orphanage.
“And now?” Cade asked. His voice shook me out of my stupor, and when I regained my ability to focus again, he mouthed, Breathe, baby.
My breaths were short puffs, but at least they were viable.
“Up until ten minutes ago, I was still going to sell her and make a nice chunk of change.”
“You’ve made plenty over the years, getting a percentage of the gun sales for my debt with you.”
Slave’s scowl deepened. “I got a percentage of the sales in exchange for not killing you, remember?” He shifted his attention back to me, and it was a burning cut to my skin. “But he’s right. I did make a lot of money on the sales, so I don’t think I’m going to sell you anymore. I think I’m going to keep you.”
Something sour coated my tongue, but I would rather have taken that knife and opened up the old wounds on my arms before allowing these men to see me scared.
“I’m sorry to say it…” Bain stepped forward, and the room fell silent as he walked all the way over to his father, an inch away from the barrel of the gun. It was as if everyone else faded away, and Bain and his father were the only ones in the room, a spotlight shining down on a very damaged father-and-son relationship. “But that isn’t going to happen.”
A gulp was lodged in my throat like I’d swallowed a golf ball, and I shifted past Bain’s firm jaw and landed on Cade. His eyes widened, just barely, but enough for me to understand that something was about to happen, and I needed to be ready.
Slave laughed. “Excuse me?”
Bain stared into his father’s eyes, ignoring Slave. “I will gut you if you think you’re going to sell my fucking sister to him. I don’t give a fuck if you hate my mother for fucking someone behind your back. I don’t give a fuck if I die trying. I won’t let you take her. Mom’s last dying wish to protect her only daughter is so much richer than anything you have to offer, Dad.”
I knew what was going to happen next, so I put my hands over my ears and caused a distraction by yelling, “I’ll go with them! Just stop! No one else has to get hurt trying to…to…save me!”
Silence fell upon us, and that was when I flashed a stern look in Cade’s direction, and what was once a feud between Bain and Cade turned into something else entirely. The two of them formed an invisible bond, and I knew this was the moment we were all waiting for.
Chaos erupted when I caught a glimpse of bright blood on the tip of Slave’s knife, and then I was running straight for Callum’s gun that Bain had kicked off to the side.