The alarm was deafening where it blared in the small room, stampeding my heart even faster.
Like every scream urged me to hurry.
I clicked open the file that was encrypted and moved through about fifteen options for passwords before I found the one that was right—a combination of Bennet’s phone number he’d had when I’d met him and his mother’s birthdate.
The file popped open.
Vomit pooled and sloshed.
Had to give the asshole credit. His blackmail skills were on point.
There was a copy of the same picture Grace had managed to smuggle out originally.
Reed down on the docks with the armed guards.
Only there was another one that had clearly been taken at the same time, Lawrence caught whispering with someone off to the side as they inspected the opened crates that had been brought up from the bowels of Reed’s ship.
I continued to click through the photos kept in the hidden folder.
There were a ton of Reed with prostitutes climbing all over him, the man caught in the act of Bennet’s depravity, clearly spanning years. I raced to click through them, the images getting older and older until it came to one where Reed couldn’t have been much older than a teenager.
Clearly set up.
Hooks sunk into him just the same as Lawrence had done with me.
All of us corrupt.
Lawrence at the helm driving the debauchery.
Round and round.
I quickly flicked through the pictures of Reed.
My eyes squinted, studying the grainy photos.
Every single one of the women had a tattoo on her shoulder, a broken circle with a number.
The realization slammed me.
These women were numbered.
Possessions.
Marked.
Disgust churned, and I struggled to see through the haze of repulsion.
The proof of what Lawrence had been involved in mixed with the horrors of my childhood ripped me open wide, old wounds bleeding, that hatred and shame of what my mother had had to do right there at the forefront.
I tried to stop them. But images flashed.
Pulsing from where I’d tried to keep them trapped in the recesses of my mind.
The tattoo my mother had always had since I could remember.
On her shoulder. The full circle with a Roman numeral one in the middle of it.
It was the same as what had been engraved on the bottom of the silver box. The one thing she’d had left of my father.
Nausea rolled, so violently my body recoiled, lurching with a sickness, bowing me in two.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I could barely see.
Could barely stand.
I sucked it down. I could deal with the implications of this shit later.
Grace needed me.
Those kids needed me.
I pushed print on a few of the pictures, before I quickly clicked into the Dear Industries folder and started printing every document in there.
My own personal glowing accolades.
Document after document.
Companies I’d falsified, helped Lawrence create, laundered money through.
I found three that I realized could be directly tied to Reed.
Alarms continued to blare.
My blood pounded in sync.
Harsh and hard.
I froze when I heard the cocking of a gun at the back of my head. I’d been so caught up on this suicide mission, clicking through as many documents to print them before someone erased them, that I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t alone.
Sweat gathered at my nape. Cold and clammy. I swallowed hard.
“Having fun?” Bennet’s voice was a growl at my ear.
Hatred flooded out with the low roll of my laughter. “Best day of my life.”
“Make the wrong move, and it will be your last.”
He grabbed me by the back of the collar, gun still rammed tight against the base of my skull, and forced me over to the alarm pad. He punched in the code and the alarm cut off. He reached over and grabbed the receiver from the phone on his desk and dialed a number.
“Yes, this is Lawrence Bennet. I came into the office in the middle of the night because I woke up realizing I forgot to do something important.”
He emphasized the word. Just for me.
“Apparently, I was a little too sleepy and tripped the alarm. I apologize for any inconvenience . . . All is good . . . No need to send anyone . . . Thank you for your help.”
He tossed the phone back onto the receiver.
“Sounds good to me,” I gritted out, facing the wall he had my face pinned against, going right back to the threat he had made. “Won’t be able to look myself in the mirror after seeing all this shit anyway.”
He scoffed. “Don’t act like you didn’t know full well what was going down. You did it of your own free will. Didn’t take a whole lot of twisting your arm.”
“I was a kid.”
“You were growing into the man you were always supposed to be.”
Anger boiled, and I tried to bite it back, biding my time, praying Mack at least got here before Bennet had the chance to take a shot and disappeared with the evidence.
With the gun still aimed at me, he stepped back, releasing his hold.
I slowly turned, hating the man I saw standing four feet away.
“No wonder I ended up with you,” I gritted, bile on my tongue.
He shook his head. Haughty and contemptuous. “Is it?”
I gulped around the fury that flamed at my insides. “Is it true?”
His eyes narrowed, and mine were frantically searching his face for clues, for the resemblance I’d been too much of a fool to look for all along.
“What? That you have always belonged to me?”
Revulsion shook my head. “I’ve never belonged to you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve been mine since the day you were born. Your bitch of a mother might have tried to get away with you. Steal you from your legacy.”
He took a step forward. “From your destiny.”
My spirit thrashed. “What are you saying?”
“Your mother belonged to me. She was mine. The first one. The only one I cared to love. Big mistake.”
Sorrow pinched my eyes. I tried to fight it. Not to show any weakness in front of this disgusting man.
“I found her, homeless, living like gutter trash with a baby pressed to her tit. Wasn’t all that hard to get her under my roof and into my bed. Only mistake I made was not treating her like the rest. Treating her like she was special. But that’s what happens when you let someone get under your skin.”
Everything drew tight, the air thin, the world spinning. “How?”
Brilliant.
But I couldn’t get anything else out.
Everything crashing. I was struck with the realization that I’d known nothing, and it’d been right there under my nose all along.
Bitterness twisted up his face. “She took off with you and your whiny brother when you were just two weeks old. I’d hunt her down, drag her home, and then she’d do it all over again. Refusing the life I offered, instead thinking she was giving you a better one. What bullshit. She was a junkie, just like the rest. A whore. She never changed.”
Rage coiled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “After your brother got arrested, she came crawling back. It’d been twelve fucking years since I’d seen her, and there she was, begging at my door, willing to do anything to put a roof over your head. I put her back to work, not because I gave a fuck about her any longer, but because my son was finally home.”
Grief creaked through my bones.
Forever and ever.
“You were responsible from the get go? Got her hooked on drugs?” My face pinched. “Fucking pimped her out?”
My mind was adding up the fucked puzzle faster than my spirit could tolerate it.
Could feel it, splitting me in two.
Gutting.
Gutting.
I struggled to breathe.
“A woman’s a lot easier to control when you’re the one holding that control. Don’t you get that? Which is why that bitch you’ve taken up with has got to go. I won’t let her destroy what I’ve built. What I’ve built for you.”
Disgust boiled in the pit of my stomach. “I want nothing to do with you.”
A scoff bled from him. “Don’t be dramatic, Ian. I’ve been shaping you into who you were supposed to be for years. You weren’t ready to hear it. Not until now. Now it’s time to take your place. Reed and his ex-wife have become an issue. Now you’re going to fix it—end it—sweep it under a rug and make sure it disappears, and then you’re going to take your place at my side.”