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Because he’d probably have been more brutal than I was if he had been by my side right now.
Johnathan stumbled back into the room a few moments later, a piece of paper clutched in one hand and a towel pressed to his quickly swelling face with the other.
"Here," he snapped, shoving the piece of paper towards me. "This is the note we got from the man who handed her over. It was his debt she was paying off. Drugs, gambling, shit like that …"
I snatched it from him and scanned the piece of paper in front of me quickly. It was far from a legitimate contract, nothing but a few lines scrawled on paper, signed off with a messy signature. I squinted down at the letters, trying to make out who had signed this.
"Dimitry Markov," I muttered to myself, and I lifted my gaze to Johnathan to make sure I had taken this in right. "That’s the name of the man who did this to her?"
Johnathan nodded, eyeing me warily. He just wanted this to be over, and I was distinctly aware of that. He might just have been saying whatever it was he thought I wanted to hear to bring this to a close.
Markov, though. That was her last name too. Was this her husband? Anger rushed through my system.
"Who the hell is this?” I demanded. "Her husband?”
He shook his head. And then, at last, he said it.
"Her father."
Her father? I stood there in shock for a moment, hardly able to wrap my head around what I had just heard. But, as I started to think about it, it began to make sense to me. Of course, it had to be a family member—it would explain why she had been so willing to do what she had done, take it to that level, even though it was clear the thought of selling herself like that had terrified her.
And it would explain why she had been able to give herself to us without so much as a shadow of a doubt. She didn’t feel like she was cheating on anyone because she wasn’t. There wasn’t some man waiting at home for her, a man just waiting for us to grow tired of her before he took her back. No, the only man in her life was her father …
And he had sold her off to pay his debts.
I crumpled up the paper in my hand.
"Gambling, you said?" I repeated, my voice taking on a harder edge. "Drinking? That’s what she was paying his debts for?"
Johnathan nodded warily. He couldn’t tell if this newfound anger rushing through me right now was aimed at him or not. I gritted my teeth. How could a father do that to their daughter? When I thought of Maxim and Olya, I knew he would never have even considered using her as a piece in the games he played. He had even sent her away to study for college in another country, making sure she would never be pulled into this before she was ready.
But Mina’s father? He hadn’t been so kind. No, he had been a downright fucking monster. How could any father let that happen, let alone facilitate it? Judging by the handwriting on this contract, he must have been drunk out of his mind when it had happened, but even that wasn’t an excuse. I knew Maxim could have been incoherent with booze and he would have rather shot himself than signed Olya away to something like this …
No fucking wonder Mina had tried to hide what had happened from us. She must have known how it would made her father look—how hard it would be for me to hold back on going after him and making him pay for what he had done to her.
Did he even care what had happened to her? Did he even give a damn what she had been through? I doubted it. Doubted he wanted to know, either. No, it was simpler for him to just sit back and pretend he was innocent in this, take his debts being paid off and forget that he’d ever had any duty of care to her in the first place.
I drove back to the penthouse, speeding through red lights, Johnathan’s blood still smeared on my hand. I was gripping the wheel so tight it looked like my knuckles might burst through the skin at any moment. I wished it had been her father’s face beneath my fists, making him pay for what he had done to her …
I pulled up outside the club, which was buzzing with people, and pushed through the crowds, ignoring the cries of protest from some of the guests around me. I needed to get to Maxim, needed to tell him what I had just found out. I knew he was going to be as shocked as I had been. And maybe just as angry.
I stormed to his office, pushing open the door without bothering to knock. Maxim looked up, and as soon as he saw the look on my face, he rose to his feet.
"What did you find out?" he asked. I pulled the paper from my pocket and tossed it onto the table in front of him.
"Her father," I spat. "It was her father who did this to her."
He stared at me for a moment, and I could see him processing the news just the same way I had. He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think for a second that anyone would have been capable of doing something like that. But he knew it made sense. It was obvious.
He picked up the contract and looked down at it, reading the name that was scrawled there, the signature that had signed her away to a life of servitude. If we hadn’t gotten there in time to get her out, I didn’t even want to think what price she would have paid for what her father had decided to do to her.
"Why?" he asked quietly. The rage was brimming in his voice, the fury, the anger. He was doing a better job containing it than I was.
"He had debts with them, apparently," I muttered. "Gambling, drinking, probably other shit too. This was how he paid them back. He sold her to them."
The words caught at the back of my throat. Fuck. I couldn’t believe someone would do that to her. I couldn’t believe someone would actually use their own child like that. How had he treated her before he had sold her? I couldn’t imagine it had been anything good. No wonder she’d been so wary of us. If this was how she thought the men in her life were going to handle her, she had every right not to trust us.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he shot back, running a hand through his hair. "Her own father, I …"
