I closed my eyes and my head fell back. I wished I could call her a liar. I wished I could say it wasn’t true and she’d hurt us for nothing. But I knew she was right. Sanderson wouldn’t have hesitated to take her out if she became a problem for him.
“What did you know?”
She made a face. “He likes underage girls. He pays them for sex. Fifteen, fourteen years old. It doesn’t matter to him. He told me, when my father sold me to him to pay off his debt, he considered me first as a sex slave. But having a wife who couldn’t talk about hisproclivities, as he called them, who made him look like a respectable politician, was even better. I was his long-term plan. He believed he owned me. There was no divorcing him. This was my only way out.”
“No, it wasn’t. You could have told me. You could have told George,” I insisted, looking at her now, sitting with her head down and her fingers linked together.
“George would have attempted to come after me. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t take any chances, and I can’t tell you why now, you just have to believe that there were bigger things at stake.”
I looked down at my hands. At the fingers and knuckles I’d broken slamming them, over and over again, into a concrete wall. Something, anything to pull the pain from the inside and put it on the outside.
“I have evidence,” she said.
“What?”
“I have proof of what he did. After we got back from Las Vegas, when my father locked me in the house, I was able to remove the door handle on my door so I could get in and out when I needed. I got access to his computer in his study. I told you the password was most likely my mother’s birthday, and it was, but it was a convoluted order and used numbers for some characters. He’d documented everything. The money he borrowed from Evan to cover his investment losses, the clubs they used to frequent together. My father, it seemed, shared Even’s interest in young women. There were pictures.”
“You have all of that?”
She nodded. “It was my safety net. In case Evan found me. I also planted a nanny cam in his bedroom at the Harborview house. He spent most of his time in New York, but now that he’s running for senator, he’ll be in New Jersey more. I don’t see him changing his habits. If anything, he’ll need to be even more discreet. Fewer private clubs, more activity in places he can control.”
“You think someone running for senate is going to risk that by messing around with girls?”
She looked at me, and her face, her precious face, almost knocked the wind out of me again. “He’s a man who believes he can do anything. He thinks he’s impervious and in total control. The type of person who thought he could own me.”
“I want it. The evidence.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know.”
“Give it to me and I’ll take him down. He ended you. He took more than a year of my life. He took my future. I was going to destroy him because I thought he’d had you killed. But I’ve still got enough motivation to end this guy, now that your father…”
Shit. Did she even know?
“Now that my father what?”
“He’s dead, Ash. He killed himself. A couple months ago. Shot himself in the head.”
She let out a slow, deep breath. “Okay. He’s dead. Then that’s it.”
“It’s not it,” I said. “There were two of them. They did this to you. To me. Let me end it.”
She closed her eyes. “He’s so connected, Marc. So much money, so much power. If you don’t do this right, if you swing and miss, he’ll come after you.”
“That’s not your problem. You’re dead, remember?”
I could see her thinking about it, considering the angles. Finally, she gave me a tight nod.
“Meet me here tomorrow, after the bakery closes. I’ll give you what I have then.”
“Meet you here? Take me home with you now. I’m not waiting for this.”
She shook her head. “It’s too risky. You can’t know where I live. If someone followed you…”
“No one followed me! No one gives a shit about me, especially now. You think I’m on Evan Sanderson’s radar?”
Again, she bit her bottom lip and I had this insane urge to tell her to stop. To stop hurting that bottom lip, because it was mine to bite.
She shook her head. “I can’t risk it. I told you. There are reasons. Meet me here tomorrow and I’ll give you what I have. That’s all I can promise. I have to go.”
