I lean forward and wrap my good arm around his neck. He hugs me back, although our positions make it a little awkward.
“Did you pass out?” Sly asks from the front as we pull apart.
“Does it matter?” I ask, not rudely, but I genuinely am not sure that it would help them to know the details.
“Yes.” Four voices echo at once, including Elias.
I drop my hand from Dex’s shoulder as I huff out in defeat, “Fine, yes. I passed out. At least once. Is that what you want to hear? That I can’t control my fear even when I’m in a life-threatening situation?”
My eyes grow glassy as I sniffle. I try to take a deep breath, to push the tears back as Dex squeezes my hands. “Baby, it’s okay to be upset. What happened was not okay. It must have been terrifying.”
I shake my head. “I hate that I always seem to be crying around you guys. I swear I barely ever cried before, and things are so much better with you guys. Why am I always crying now?” A wipe at my cheeks as a few stray tears fall.
“Wren,” Elias says my name softly, and I turn my teary gaze to him. “I’m not sure if you realize the extent of what you’ve been through with Robert.” I open my mouth to respond, but he holds his palm up to me, stopping me. “I know these guys explained that he was psychologicallyabusing you, but it’s more than that. He was treating you as a slave, sweetheart.”
My head reels back in shock. A slave? I shake my head. “Tell me, Wren,” Elias presses, “What do you think a slave is?”
I think about it for a minute before describing the picture in my head. “Someone who’s kept in chains, who’s forced to do what their owner tells them to do. They are barely given any food and kept in terrible living conditions. Their owner wouldn’t see them as a person, merely as property.”
He nods along with each word as if I’m proving his point. “The chains Robert had on you may not have been visible, but they were still there. You literally couldn’t leave the property,” he says, ticking a point off on his finger. “You were forced to do everything Robert asked. He just convinced you that it was your choice, which we both know wasn't true.” He ticks off another finger. “He restricted your diet and forced you to wear what he wanted, and he saw you only as a commodity he could trade.”
His words hang heavy in the air as my brain tries to piece it all together. Elias just proved that everything I knew about a slave could be applied to my life growing up with Robert.
Over the past few weeks, I had slowly come around to the fact that he never cared about me. But to be considered his slave? It just takes everything to a new level of evil.
“Why does he hate me so much?” I ask, my pained eyes flicking from Elias to Dex.
“I don’t think you’ll ever get an answer to that, Wren,” Elias says gently as he places a hand on my thigh.
Dex instantly slaps it away with a frown, and I let out a strained laugh, surprising myself. Both of them smile at me, and just like that, my shoulders relax as my eyes grow clear.
Robert may have treated me like a slave, but I am free of that life now, thanks to all five of these men. And they had just proved that even if someone else tries to drag me back to that life, they would never stop searching for me.
Even with the head of the Russian mob after us, plus Robert and the FBI, they aren’t going to back down.
They’re fearless, and they’remine.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PETE
“Better,” I say with a pleased grin as Wren’s knife hits the center of the tree trunk. I move to pull it out as she smiles proudly.
I’m amazed at how fast she bounced back from being kidnapped. I expected her to be unable to sleep and to jump at every sound, but the fact that she is able to fall asleep between two of us with no problem says a lot about her resilience and her trust in us to keep her safe.
I was actually pretty grateful for Dex’s leash, and when I slept with her, I made sure to attach her to my own ankle so I could actually sleep. She used to untie it to go to the washroom in the middle of the night, but in the two nights since we rescued her from Ivan, she hadn’t gotten up without waking one of us first. Something we were all grateful for.
“Okay, try it again,” I tell her after retrieving the throwing knife and passing it back. It was too long ago that I promised to teach her how to use a knife to protect herself, and I decided that as soon as she didn’t need the slinganymore, I was going to teach her. I wouldn’t leave her unarmed again.
Unfortunately, Elias had insisted on helping, since he had actual tactical training from the FBI. He was very convincing in his demand when he explained how valuable it would be for her to have both professional training andstreettraining, as he called my lessons. I couldn’t argue; the more training and knowledge she had on how to protect herself, the better.
I’m not sure if having this knowledge would have helped her when she was taken before, but she had admitted she wished she had a knife in the trunk with her.
“Yes!” she cheers loudly when her knife hits the trunk again.
I grin at her as I move to yank it free. “Great job, angel. I think you’re ready for some morehands-ontraining,” I say with a waggle of my eyebrows.
Her eyes turn a little heated. “Oh? And just howhands-onare we talking?”
