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“I got away,” she whispered. “My parents tried to convince me to come back. They told me I was ruining a multi-million-dollar deal with Jonathon. That he wouldn’t follow through if he didn’t have me. That was when I decided to go completely dark and avoid phones and social media. I think that’s when they sent you after me.”
“Fucking hell,” I hissed. “And you didn’t think this might be relevant? Mattie, are you serious?”
She sat up, angling away from me to look at me in the darkness that had lightened to silver gray as dawn crept through the windows. It illuminated the moisture on her cheeks and her stricken expression. “It’s not relevant. We’re taking them down, aren’t we? He won’t care about me anymore if there’s no deal to be made. If there’s no money, then there’s no deal.”
I took her by the arms and gave her a little shake. “Are you being intentionally obtuse? Of course, he’ll care. Men like that, they don’t care about money. They care about winning. If he wants you, then he will fucking have you unless someone puts a stop to it.”
Mattie’s face crumpled. “I know, I just—if you knew, you wouldn’t have let me do this.”
“Damn right, I wouldn’t,” I shot back angrily. “Mattie, hiding this wasn’t just reckless. It was dangerous. You don’t know what kind of man you’re playing with here.”
Her throat bobbed. “I know what he is.”
I stared down at her, too consumed with fury to find the right words. She stared back, my beautiful disaster, with her hair disheveled and brown-sugar eyes glassy with tears. I’d always known that her flippant disregard for safety, for reason, had scarred roots buried deep in something dark, but this? This was far darker, far more twisted than I could have imagined. I’d figured that she’d grown up alone. Maybe her parents had been unkind or negligent. But she was being trafficked. By her own parents. It was too horrifying to fathom.
Mattie’s eyes did a worried dance over my features. “Say something.”
“You don’t want me to, trust me,” I replied tightly.
“Because you’re mad at me?” she asked, her shoulders wilting.
I laughed, low and dark. “Mad. That’s what you’re worried about? That I’m mad at you?”
That lit a fire in her, and she straightened, rolling to her knees and pinning me with a teary-eyed glare. “I’m sorry, what should I be worried about?”
“Nothing,” I said honestly. “You shouldn’t be worried about a goddamn thing. Because after I humiliate your DNA donors in front of their peers, I’m going to drain their accounts into sex trafficking charities until they have nothing left, and then I’ll let the authorities have at them. They can imprison whatever is left.”
Her mouth hinged open slowly. “Oh.”
“Then I’ll bring you Jonathon’s dick in a cute, little wooden box so you can burn it.”
Mattie blinked. “Um.”
“And I’ll ruin anyone who makes you look like this,” I emphasized, taking her soft face between my hands, “ever again. You shouldn’t be worried about my anger, or what those monsters plan to do with you, because I’m right here with you. And if you’d trusted me earlier, I would have told you that.”
She covered my hands with hers. “It’s not your fight, Kael.”
“You’re pretty smart, Bunny, but that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” I said dryly. I smoothed tears away from her cheeks. “You’ve been my fight for the better part of a year.”
“And you love it,” she repeated with mocking solemnity.
A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. “Against all reason, I do. And you’re safe with me. Are you letting that sink into your thick, stubborn skull?”
She stared, sobering again. Her lips quivered. “Yeah.”
I pulled her closer to me. “Yes?”
She nodded. “Yes. I believe you.” She leaned her forehead against mine, and with our knees touching and breath mingling, she whispered, “Admitting I needed you felt like losing.”
I shook my head, rolling my forehead against hers. “You can’t lose with me, Mattie. You won every part of me a while ago.”
She gusted out a laugh briefly, and then she climbed back into my lap, burying her face in the crook of my shoulder. I pulled her close, holding her with a foreign kind of desperation that felt suspiciously close to fear. She snuggled into me, fitting perfectly in my arms like she always did. “So, now that you’re pissy, are you going to help me finish this thing tomorrow?”
“Oh, we’re finishing it,” I said with dark confidence. “And then some.”
“I knew you were a good person.”
I hugged her tight, and I felt my expression harden. I wasn’t a good person. I was a bad person, and the people who had fucked with Mattie were going to get a first-hand demonstration.
