“Well, maybe if he’d told you the truth, you would have,” I said, taking a drink from the glass in my hand.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Mac growled. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us you were adopted?”
I laid my head back on the couch. “It didn’t matter. Daniel and Tabitha were my parents. They were the only parents I wanted. I never looked into where I came from because it didn’t matter.”
“And now?” Duncan asked.
“Now it fuckin’ matters.” I sighed. “Eamon brokered my adoption. My birth mother was raped, and she went to him to get rid of me. Only, she never told him who had raped her. If she had, he would have killed me years ago, rather than just threatening it. Caity found the information in his office.”
“So, who are they?” Mac asked, his arms crossed over his chest. I knew he was angry I hadn’t shared the truth with him, but it was my life. It had nothing to fucking do with him.
“My mother was Sylvia St. James.”
Mac’s arms dropped to his side.
“Fuck,” Duncan cursed.
Sal eyed me. He was waiting for me to reveal the worst of it. But I needed him to ask. I needed to hear the question in the tone of his voice. I needed to know for sure that he didn’t know and kept the truth from me.
“And your father?” he asked. The fear I saw flash in his eyes told me what I wanted to know. I emptied my glass and set it on the table in front of me.
“Henry Craven.”
“Holy fuck,” Mac gasped.
Sal opened his mouth to say something when his phone rang. He looked down at the name, and a small smile broke out on his face.
“Son,” he answered, putting the phone to his ear. He listened for a moment before his smile dropped. “Hold on.” He pressed the button for the speaker and placed the phone on the table. “Start from the beginning.”
Sal’s son King began, “I have a woman here. My enforcer’s old lady. Her name is Kate Porter, but she goes by Indigo Cambridge. She grew up in the Trick Pony.”
Sal stiffened as he looked at me.
“Hey, King, Cian here,” I said, standing up and moving to my computer. “Is she okay?”
“Well, that’s subjective,” he answered.
“What does that mean?” Duncan asked.
“Physically, she’s more than okay. Emotionally, well, when I tell you what we know, you can come to your own conclusion,” he said cryptically. “Kate Porter was abducted from a mall in Arizona when she was four years old. Her mother had taken her school shopping. She escaped the Trick Pony ten years later, where she moved around trying to stay ahead of the people who were hunting her.”
Likely my parents.
My fingers flew over my keyboard as I typed in the girl’s name. I quickly typed in the names Sylvia St. James and Henry Craven into two other searches.
“King, I’m not finding much on Kate Porter,” I told him when a dozen articles came up about her disappearance, but nothing after that.
“You won’t. Not unless you have access to the files that were taken from the Trick Pony.”
I looked at Sal as he paced my office, Duncan and Mac both staying out of his way.
“Son, what does this have to do with us?” Sal asked. King was quiet, and I expected him to snap back at Sal, but all I heard was a deep sigh.
“I’m getting there. Kate and eleven other girls, all between the ages of four and six, were taken and placed in a special program.”
“Jesus fuck,” Mac cursed.
“Whatever you’re thinking, Mac, trust me, it’s worse,” King said. “When Indie opened up to us, she told us what she remembered.” King took a deep breath. “The abuse is exactly what you’re thinking, so I won’t go into detail, but it’s worse. So much fucking worse.”
