There are many things I regret in my life.
Not protecting my mother from my father as a child.
Not being strong enough to run away after all the times the men in my family hurt me.
Leaving Wynter without saying goodbye.
Each regret hurts more than the last, but this one, this is the worst. Every single bone in my body screams at me to move toward her, it screams to tell her the truth. But the moment my eyes clash with Storm’s, I know I can’t. Not until this is over.
He knows the truth. He knows I would never be a part of the vile things they’ve accused me of, not in any way that really counts at least. But those photos are damning, and I have a feeling that even when I can tell Wynter the truth, she’s not going to believe a word I say. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.
One by one, my uncles stand from behind Wynter’s desk and walk toward the door where I’m frozen in place. Every step they take away from her allows me to breathe a little easier, but when Angelo stops to whisper something in her ear and her body visibly stills, it’s only Storm’s hand that stops me from lurching forward and tearing him away from her.
“She’s okay,” he whispers.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm my racing heart. If only we got here sooner, maybe we could have controlled what she saw, maybe we could have stopped them from filling her head with lies. Maybe we could have stopped her from hating me.
Angelo straightens and joins his brothers before making their way toward us, smug smiles on each of their faces. Paul and Tony file out of the room, the man holding Tommy following after them and leaving us alone with Angelo. “Now she knows the truth, dear nephew, perhaps now you will accept my generous offer. Isn’t she the reason you always turned it down after all?”
My eyes lock with the back of Wynter’s head, her body trembling as she tries to appear unaffected. Part of me wants to praise her for being so strong, for being the woman, no, the queen, I always knew she was, but that’s not the plan.
What my uncles don’t realize is that they’ve just given us the in we needed. We had a hundred alternative plans, but none of them are as good as the opportunity that has just presented itself.
I nod and take one more look at my beautiful girl barely holding it together and silently promise I’ll make it all better once this is over, but until then I’m going to have to live with the fact she hates me.
“Shall we go?” he asks.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, my voice sounding more even than I feel. Every ounce of my body is off balance.
My eyes lock with Storm’s and he gives me a small nod to tell me he’ll take care of her until I can get back to her. It should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. Every moment Wynter hates me is worse than the last, even if it is for the best right now.
There’s every possibility I’m being driven into a trap, but I’ve kept close enough to the family for them to extend me a certain amount of trust. Will they tell me all their plans for the Saint James family? Absolutely not. But will they let things slip about their operations with me around? It’s how we’ve freed as many women as we have. By now they probably should have worked it out, but every time a shipment of women arrives in the harbor, I’m with them, and I’ve been with them from the moment I found out about it.
They were probably suspicious, but even when they frisked me and scanned me for bugs, they found nothing because there was nothing to find. Well, nothing they could find. The tracker embedded into my neck is so deep and protected any detector they would have access to scanned right over it. And the app I designed a couple of years ago allows Storm to listen to every conversation I have without me lifting a finger. The perfect combination to allow Rayne and Tommy to free as many trafficked women as we can before they can be sold to men who will be worse than even their darkest nightmares.
Chicago is full of men who take. They take from their families, from the city, from the people who trust them. And when they get the chance to have a pretty young girl who has no option but to obey them, there’s no end to what they’ll take from her. Which is why we do what we do. And why I’m allowing Wynter to hate me right now.
Unlike every other time, I knew this shipment was coming in well in advance. It’s been planned because it’s the biggest they’ve ever brought into the country. A thousand women will be delivered to the farm tonight. Women who have been sold or taken from their lives, women who are scared and broken. If my uncles have their way, they will be beaten until they submit, and then they’ll be sold to men so cold not even I can fathom what could happen to them.
My knowing about this shipment puts our whole operation in jeopardy. If Rayne and Tommy show up and save them at the farm, there’s no way they won’t know it was me who set it up, and that’s what makes tonight such a delicate situation. We need to have The Legion in just the right place, at just the right time, that they never know the girls were even taken because they’re six feet under by the time tomorrow comes.
“That woman of yours.” Tony blows out a whistle. “She’s quite the spitfire. I bet she’s fun in bed.”
I swallow the growl climbing up my throat. The men surrounding me are vile and despicable in every sense of the word, and any of them even thinking about Wynter like that makes me want to kill every single one of them. But that’s not the plan.
“That mouth needs to be put to better use though,” Tony adds, but I don’t look over at him sitting beside me in the back seat. I can’t. If I look at him now, I’ll fucking kill him for scaring my woman.
“Once this is all over, he can keep her if he likes, but I think we might want to bite off a piece too, see what all the fuss is about.” Angelo smiles back at me and red blinds me. Over my dead fucking body, would any of these assholes be touching my woman. They got as close as they’re ever going to get to my sweet dove today, and any closer, I would have ended it all right there in that office. “What do you think, Everett? Do you think you can share your girl with us?”
“She’s mine,” I grind out, my eyes moving to the window to distract myself from the rage bubbling inside me like hot lava threatening to erupt.
Angelo chuckles. “We’ll see about that.”
