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Just like so many other kids who hadn’t been found in time.
Tears stung my eyes as I lowered my voice, wavering with hate and passion. “What you people don’t get is...the hardest thing to overcome isn’t what happened to us but the fact that we have no fucking idea who we are anymore. We listen to so-called specialists who think they know how to heal trauma. We take the pills that promise to straighten out our nightmares. But none of that works. Know why?”
Tony shook his head quickly, licking his lips. “Why?”
“Because unless you’ve lived it. Unless you’ve felt it. Unless you carry the scars and screams of every day that you fought to survive, then you’re not qualified to tell us how to heal. I’m sick of thinking I should be better. I’m sick of doubting that I’ll ever heal. I’m sick of being afraid of myself. I’m sick...” I sighed and pinched my nose.
Ah, fuck, what the hell am I doing?
I was having a meltdown in front of a total stranger who didn’t give a rat’s ass about me.
Gemma pressed against me, trembling harder than I was.
It broke my mania, and I groaned. Lifting my head to the ceiling, I was blinded by a big glittery ball with rainbows refracting off its mirrored surface. Inhaling heavily, I dropped my head and shrugged at Tony. “I’m just sick of...being sick, okay? I’m sorry for my outburst. I should probably go. I understand that you’d rather not enter into any collab—”
“Can I say something?” Tony interrupted.
I held my breath while Gemma wiped away her tears and nodded on my behalf. “What is it, Tony?”
He never looked away from me, his hands curled into fists by his sides before one rose and pointed a finger in my face, just like I’d done to him. It was an aggressive stance. It sent whispers of anger and self-preservation through me, but I locked my knees and waited for him to say his bit.
After all, I’d shouted at him. So I supposed it was only fair that he shouted back.
The crowd around us didn’t disperse, not being polite or feigning that they had no interest in our little debate. One even had her cell phone out, recording the entire thing.
Tony sucked in a breath, his finger shaking. “That. That right there is why I want you to do this. Why I need you to do this.”
I frowned at the raw agony in his tone.
The mask of successful businessman fell, revealing a truth I’d never expected.
Tears didn’t just glitter in his eyes; they fell unbidden down his cheeks.
What the fuck?
My heart raced.
He looked like a man who knew firsthand what I’d said. He looked as distraught as I felt.
With a tattered inhale, he shook his head and spread his arms, uncaring that the crowd around us had grown. That the music somewhere in the ballroom had been turned off, making it deafeningly quiet as every man and woman in their fancy getups watched two men break apart.
“I have the greatest of respect for you, Kassen.” His voice caught, but he cleared his throat and continued. “In fact, I owe you everything, and you don’t even know it. I owe you my greatest thanks and my undying support for what you’ve done.”
“What the hell have I done?” I scowled.
He ignored me. “I’m not going to say I understand how hard it must be to suddenly be back in normality. I’m not going to say I understand how hard it must be not to lash out at those who have no idea what you went through. You don’t know who to trust. You don’t know how to ignore your instincts that have been trained to fight and run. You have filth inside your head that can never be washed clean. I know what it must be like to act as if you’re not a threat. But that’s the thing...it is an act. All of it. I know it’s an act because...”
He dug his fingers into his eye sockets before dropping his arms and bracing his shoulders. “I know because my daughter just came home. After she’d been missing for almost eighteen years.”
I froze.
Something prickled the back of my neck.
Something hissed in my guts that I wouldn’t like where this was going.
A sixth sense sent my pulse skyrocketing as Tony sniffed with a mixture of joy and grief. “She was taken on her ninth birthday.” His voice wobbled as he glanced at the fascinated crowd around us. “I’ve...I’ve never spoken about this publicly. After those first few years of her disappearance, the countless police searches, the endless dead ends, my wife and I shut down. The horror of not knowing what was happening to our baby girl destroyed us. Every day she was gone was a nightmare of our own kind.” His lips twisted. “But it wasn’t until three weeks ago that we knew firsthand just how easy we’d had it.” His tears fell faster now, unchecked and real. “We got the call we didn’t think we’d ever receive. She was delivered to a hospital by a man who wouldn’t leave his name. A man our daughter says she grew up with. Who—” Tony choked and wedged a fist into his mouth.
No one spoke or moved while he gathered his composure and continued. “She has scars on her body that she can’t talk about. She has nightmares that make me sob into my pillow. She has a haunting in her gaze that I doubt we’ll ever be able to cure—no matter how much love we give her.”
Gemma openly cried beside me, her hand latching around mine. “I’m so sorry, Tony. So unbelievably sorry.” Her voice hitched. “So that’s why you were so keen to have Kas do this? To open a line of communication and a safe space for those who have been found. Because...your daughter is one of them.”
He nodded. “That is one reason. Yes.”
My hackles rose. “The only reason?”
Tony slowly shook his head. Standing taller, he swiped at his tears and spoke with a much braver voice. “There is another reason. A reason I wasn’t going to mention. I’m not a man who believes in coincidences. I’m not overly religious. I don’t know how the universe works...but—” He smiled at Gemma for a second as awe filled his teary gaze. “But I can’t deny that something bigger than us is at work.”
“What do you mean?” Gemma whispered, her voice soft but loud enough to scratch my heart.
“I mean...a few weeks ago when your live video went viral, our algorithms kicked in. The most popular videos of the day are posted on my direct feed so I can check out why a certain topic has hit the public so profoundly.” Tony shook his head at me as if he couldn’t believe it. “And that’s how I ‘met’ Kas. A long-haired, bearded bear who looked into the camera with so much pain, so much wariness, so much distrust. I remembered that look. I remembered his name and—” His tears started again. He ran both hands over his face, forcing himself to finish. “And when my daughter came home with that very same look in her eyes and the countless scars on her beautiful body, there was one scar that didn’t look like the others. It was black with lead instead of silver from age. It looked...deliberate. It made me fucking sick to think some bastard had autographed my child. That he’d hurt her then signed the very pain he’d given her. But she...” He blew out a harsh breath, glowering at the crowd and the insensitive cell phones recording such a private, agonizing moment. “She told me it was self-inflicted. That she’d sat in the dark with her older brother and dragged a sharp pencil over her forearm. He’d told her to stop. But she’d added his name instead. She said it was the only thing that gave her comfort. The name of the boy she loved, inked into her skin, a hero who did what he could to protect her.”
For a second, my mind was blank.
But then it detonated with images. Of memories. Of sitting on our beds, drawing blood with a pencil, imprinting wounds on a body already riddled with them.
“We have to stop. It’s too addictive.”
“I know, Kas. Just...one more.”
And I’d let her.
She’d drawn a K and then an A, finishing it off with an S.
I’d felt so protective of her, so in love with her, so damn afraid that I would let her down after she’d just called me her hero.
Bile rushed up my throat.
Fuck.
Fucking...
I’m going to be sick.
Motherfucking sick.
I stumbled backward, clutching onto the bar.
Tony came closer, crowding me, crushing me. “I don’t know the extent of what went on in that place, but you were there for my daughter when I couldn’t be.” Tony choked on a sob, his arms reaching for me. “You were there to hold her, soothe her. She told me that for the first part of her imprisonment, you did your very best to save her from—”
My ears roared, blocking him out.
Whiteness gathered on my vision.
My head pounded.
My knees tried to give way. “You-your daughter...” I blinked, trying to see Tony through all the fucking white. “What’s...what’s her name?”
I knew.
I fucking knew.
Jareth.
He’d done it.
He’d found one of our sisters.
He’d—
“Her name is Isabella. Isabella Creed.” He fell on me, wrapping his arms around me in a fierce embrace, making my head disintegrate, my heart a
Holy shit—
The room pressed in.
Panic clawed.
“God, Kas. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did.” His arms tightened around me. His hot body pressed to mine. His clinginess. His passion. He pulled me even closer, his thigh going between mine, rubbing against my cock. “Thank you. Thank you so—”
I lost it.
I snarled.
I shoved him.
I leaped over him even as he fell to the floor.
I bulldozed through men in tuxes and women in dresses.
All of them.
So fucking naïve. So pretentious. So self-absorbed.
None of them cared that Jareth had freed someone we both loved. Someone I’d rocked to sleep after the bastards had used her. Someone who I’d wiped away her blood as she cried in my arms. Someone who’d spent eighteen goddamn miserable years being a toy to absolute cunts.
And for eleven years, I wasn’t there to save her.
Quell had always been a favorite. She’d always had an angelic grace that the bastards wanted to stamp out.
Without me there to take some of her punishments...
Oh, fuck—
I retched.
Vodka splashed on my shoes.
Eyes watched me.
Men whispered.
Women gossiped.
And I couldn’t do it anymore.
I kept ru
Ru
Motherfucking ru
Out the door, through the night, away from everything.