Leather-jacketed boys had tortured her every night for the past two weeks.
Leather-jacketed boys had tossed me into that fucking basement when I had gone snooping around.
And now, leather-jacketed boys were… trying to save her life?
“Julia,” Fangs said.
I snapped out of my trance and found him standing in front of me with his hand stretched out toward mine.
“Yes?” I asked as I shook my head softly.
“Come here,” he said as he wiggled his fingers. “Your sister really needs you right now.”
As I looked down at his hand, I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. Hell, it had been that way ever since he’d been tossed into that basement with me. If I didn’t follow him, I was damned to die. If I did follow him, I was damned to watch death. There was no good way out. No good way home. No good way to undo what had already been done. So, I did the only thing I knew to do as a big sister.
I took his hand and prioritized my little sister’s needs.
“Jay?” she choked out.
Fangs ushered me through the throng of jacketed men that stared down at her while some scrawny little guy hunched over a bunch of opened bags.
“I’m right here, Tee,” I said as I took her hand. “I’m right here.”
She looked up at me with a smile on her face. “He gave me something.”
My eyebrows rose. “What did you give her? Tell me now.”
The man named Goose chuckled. “Just a light sedative. It won’t knock her out, but it’ll make her loopy until I can get her inspected. She was a bit jumpy when I first started touching her.”
Tee snorted. “Because men’s hands hurt.”
My heart broke as I brought her bruised hand to my face, kissing every knuckle I could find. “I love you so much.”
“Is there anything I can do?” one of the strange men asked.
I shot him a look. “You can stay right the fuck there and keep that gun on your hip.”
“Ooooo, angry Tee. Angry Tee is possessive.”
I shot my sister a look. “Says the girl who gets angry and breaks things.”
Tee cackled. “It was a plate, and it was once.”
The man insisted, though. “I can help. Goose, if you need—”
I cut him off. “I don’t even know your name, so no. You’re not helping my sister. Strangers did this to her in the first place, and I don’t need another one I don’t know lurking around her when it’s not necessary.”
Fangs sighed. “No, Julia. Monsters did this to your sister.”
“And your sister isn’t the only one they’ve done it, too,” the strange man said.
I struggled to catch my breath. “What?”
The strange man stepped forward. “The name’s Angel, and monsters did this to your sister. Those same men that had you two in their claws? They’ve burned down buildings with people trapped inside. They’ve killed without a second thought and taken women right off the streets to sell into the sex trade.”
“Angel,” Fangs warned.
The man took another step toward us. “They’ve tried shoving us out of this city, out of our home, and when they figured out that they couldn’t do that to us, they started attacking us. Trying to pluck us off like trapped rats in a failed experiment.”
