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“So, they’re sold for what? Because you can’t do things to a child that small.”
“People do, and you know that.”
Yeah, I fucking knew that. I knew that the most twisted of spineless bastards started with those too little to fight back, but newborns?
“But there’s a good chance the child wasn’t sold at all.”
“So, you think—”
“I think, if they were selling the baby, taking it to term would have brought more money.”
I could feel tears fill my eyes, and the boys fucking saw it. They saw the pain brought to me by a child I’d probably never see.
“Hey, man.” Dec tried to reach out.
“I’m fine,” I told another lie. They were just rolling off my tongue now.
I shrugged Dec off, and he knew better than to push compassion onto me.
“Remi, that’s something that you need to push from your head, along with the guilt you carry over it and over what happened to her. There’ll be answers there you’ll never get. And it will eat away at you, and this is exactly why I thought you getting too close was a bad idea.”
“Ollie, enough.” My fingers covered my face, and I dragged them over my mouth as I tried to stop what I was thinking from blurting out in a rush of anger that my situation was no different from his with Loren.
But you know, he never fucking led Loren to the wolves’ den, did he. He didn’t sell her out for a bag of powder that made him forget her for only a few hours. No.
Because he wouldn’t have done that.
He was a better man than me even now because part of me itched to make him hurt the way I did.
But I remained quiet until I couldn’t anymore.
My stare said enough.
“This is a human life. An innocent life.”
“One of the ones that we couldn’t save, Remi. We weren’t there.”
“Exactly. We weren’t there. We don’t know that child died, and until I have proof of that, I won’t let it go.”
“And you won’t like what you’ll find.”
“Maybe not. But I still have to fucking know.” I was done with them and had to get away.
I left Ollie and Dec out in the yard, where they were both happy to stay until they knew I’d fucked off to bed.
I entered the house, and the perfect scent of blended coffee greeted my nose. Woodrow was back, probably woken from his sleep by my tantrum in the truck, and he was in the kitchen, acting like my personal barista and holding out a cup for me. I took it, thanked him, and headed to my room, where I spent the rest of my night trying to draw a design for Cat.
I thought teddy bears would be good, matching mine, but more lovable looking. And yet, every time my pencil touched the paper, the little bears would scowl up at me.
I spent every night that week doing the same thing, cuddling Cat to sleep, visiting Rothbart’s home, drawing angry bastard bears that were meant to be caring and smiling, not showing their fangs to the world.
But after every day, spending hours with my teeth digging into my tongue, not to upset Ollie as he watched every movement I made around Cat, who I also tip-toed around on eggshells because I didn’t want to give her hope that I could find her missing child, I needed an outlet.
Something that didn’t involve me breaking Dec’s jaw because I clocked it every time he watched her move around the house as she snapped pictures of me and everything else, including him because he photobombed most of the bastard things. If he were anyone else, I’d have killed him by now. Because there’d been lustful drool on his chin more than once, and it rubbed me the wrong fucking way.
Chapter 25
Remi
