“Not us,” Torin says softly, “which is the source of all our problems.”
I eye him warily. “I don’t understand.”
“When you know all of their secrets and refuse to join in their sick club, they can never let you wander too far in case you tell those secrets to someone who might lock them up,” Callum says.
I sit back on the couch, my eyes flicking between them. “How bad are those secrets?”
“Rape, murder, abduction, trafficking,” Torin says. “Bad.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just go to the police and tell them that. They’d go to jail, and whatever hold they have over you would disappear,” I say.
“It’s not that simple.” Callum leans on the brick wall beside my window and crosses his arms.
“They held auctions where they literally bought, sold, and traded omegas,” Callum says. “They have tried to control us by taking our independence from us. Torin and I have trusts that were set up a long time ago. We inherited a lot of money from our grandparents, and it's ours. Our parents can’t take our millions, but theycancontrol us in other ways.”
I’m almost too afraid to ask, “What ways are those?”
“They have Lottie,” Archer explains.
Scrunching my nose, I shake my head. “Who’s Lottie?”
“Charlotte Meeks. She was our neighbor. Since we were kids, we planned to get away from our families, but then she started to get sick.” Callum glances at Torin. “Other stuff happened later.”
“What he’s hinting at is that I had an old girlfriend, Sophie.” Torin takes over, avoiding my gaze. “Growing up, my mom was too much in love with my dad to have much time for me. Her indifference turned to hate when she accused me of tipping the cops off about where my dad was one night, and they arrested him for trying to abduct an omega.”
“Abduct her!” I stare at him, horrified.
He meets my gaze, bright green eyes hooking mine with their intensity. “They are not good people, Juniper. Be glad you’ve never met them and hope you never do.”
An icy chill settles over me, and I wrap my blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Didyou tip off the cops about your dad?”
“Yes,” he admits. “It’s why she’s made it her mission to destroy me any way she can.”
“And she used Sophie?” I ask.
He nods. “My mom paid Wilkes Booth, my old best friend, a lot of money to seduce her.”
“Did you love her?” I whisper.
“I won’t say it didn’t hurt finding them in bed together, but I should’ve known my mom would get revenge somehow.”
Torin doesn’t answer my question, but he doesn’t have to. He must have loved Sophie a lot for his mom to use his best friend to hurt him like that. “What happened to Sophie?”
“Left the country,” Torin says. “Wilkes used her and threw her away, and she was never the same after.” The look on his face says he isn’t surprised by that, and neither am I.
If I knew someone used me to destroy someone else, I would never be the same either. “And your mom sent Wilkes to use me to hurt you?” I ask.
Torin nods.
I feel sick and afraid. My eyes settle on Callum. “There’s more, isn’t there? You said you were going to run away before, but something stopped you. What was it?”
Callum says, “Lottie is sick. Her parents died when she was a kid, and her uncle, who raised her, is involved. We got her away from her uncle, but my dad has her now.Hecontrols the medicine she needs to survive. That’s what stopped us from running. He could stop giving it to her anytime he wants, and none of us can do a thing to save her.”
I stare at him. “That’ssick.”
Archer rubs a hand over his face, looking tired. “We know.”
“What do they want you to do?” I ask.
