“Your daughter—”
“Is none of your fucking business,” Luke cut him off sharply, focusing his attention on Zarina again.
“No,” she replied, curiosity sprawled over her annoyed features.
Luke took a step closer. “Your daughter never died.”
She frowned. “What daugh...” she trailed off as if realization dropped. Her head snapped from Luke to Kabir and back, her surprise giving way to anger. “Are you saying...” she breathed hard. “Are you saying Sixty was my daughter?”
“Yes,” Luke confirmed.
A gasp flew from my lips as realization hit me too. “How?” I asked Luke at the same time Zarina did.
“Kabir raped Zarina. She fell pregnant,” Luke explained. “He promised her she could keep the baby. Due to some complications, she passed out and had to undergo a C-section. When she came to, Kabir told her the baby had died. Sixty was that child.”
“Oh, my fucking God!” Zarina screamed, rattling the cuffs on her wrists. “You fucking bastard,” she hurtled curses at Kabir. “You stole her from me. You sick bastard.”
I shook my head, shock stealing my breath for a moment. “He raped you too?” She nodded. “So, you’re my grandmother, Kabir is my father and grandfather, Sixty was my mother and sister.” My laugh filled with disbelief, my gaze darted to my tormentor, shaking my head. “What did I do to you to deserve such hatred.”
“I love you, kitten,” Kabir smiled. “I don’t hate you.”
“Really? You left me for dead with punishment, barely feeding me, had men use my body for their nauseating pleasure. Stole my babies. How is that love?” Kabir merely smirked, not answering my question.
“I didn’t steal your babies. You made them for me,” Kabir snorted. “Two lovely little boys.”
“Made them for you,” I shouted. Xavier squeezed my arms, feeling my anger, my hurt understanding my pain over losing that last baby. “What did I do wrong?” I sighed, giving up.
“Let me tell you.” Luke looked at me. “When Kabir was seven and his sister three, his father remarried, and they moved into his stepmother’s home. Layla, his stepmother, was beautiful and treated them well until things took a perverse turn eight months into the marriage. Because he liked his stepmother, Layla coerced Kabir into her bedroom.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Kabir growled at Luke.
“Coerced? I don’t understand.” I took a step closer to Luke before realization sank a second later. “Are you saying Layla raped Kabir?”
Luke shook his head. “She didn’t just rape him. Kabir’s father died a year after their marriage. Her sexual relationship with Kabir continued until she fell pregnant. He was nine when she gave birth to twin boys. At first, she was fine with them being a family. When people began talking about her, she grew disgruntled. Kabir was eleven when Layla started auctioning him and Zarina to the highest bidder. She turned the basement into a room of greed, as she called it. Painted it green and left the children to the wrath of child rapists.”
“Oh, my God.” I slapped my hands to my mouth. A father at nine? The green room. Selling me. Everything made a little more sense now. I didn’t know whether to feel sad or angry.
Strangely Kabir’s demeanor changed. His scowl morphed into a childhood pain that was easy to recognize. I felt sick at the thought of what he must’ve gone through as a child, regardless of the pervert he became as an adult. No child deserved that.
“We suffered too,” Zarina said, her eyes finding mine as if asking for forgiveness.
“Would you like to tell her the rest?” Luke asked her.
Zarina nodded, her shoulders visibly deflating. “When he turned seventeen, Layla fell ill. One night she forgot to lock the basement door. Kabir escaped and made their twin sons watch while he fucked Layla in her bed. After that, he kept Layla prisoner in the basement. While she watched, he used her setup to sell her beloved twins to men who came looking for him and me. In between all the evil, Layla fell pregnant again.”
“What happened to the baby?” I asked, my body taut with disbelief over how similar my circumstances were to those twins.
Zarina looked at Kabir, whose eyes remained downcast before she shifted her gaze to me. “He began raising that girl as Layla’s successor while keeping Layla pregnant all the time. She finally died in childbirth after giving him eleven children. In the interim, I sold the male babies on the black market while Kabir raised the girls.” Her expression turned apologetic, but I now felt no sympathy for either. “Before her death, he had Layla transfer her home to him and give him access to the millions she’d made from selling Kabir and I. Kabir then revamped the house and equipped the basement with green and black soundproofing. Unfortunately, that first girl didn’t survive his assaults.”
Kabir’s eyes met mine, his expression was eerily calm. I swallowed hard, fearing what he’d done to that little girl.
“She died at eight years,” Zarina said.
I had the urge to vomit and glared at him, hoping I could relay my disgust without words. His eyes went back to the floor.
“The bastard merely fed her body to the rats and moved on to the next child,” Luke continued, making me clench my fists. “Once the first girl gave birth to her first baby, it started the cycle Kabir repeated with all the girls he spawned. While he waited for the girls to grow, he studied different degrees, joined the police academy and somewhere along the line, became a tech genius. Oddly, he made sure the girls always fell pregnant at nine. I figured it probably related to the age he had the twins. If they weren’t pregnant, he featured them in twisted kiddie porn, considering the money he made, it looked like he was never in short supply of sick bastards who wanted to star in his movies as the main leads,” Luke finished on a tight-lipped snarl.
By the time he did, I was shaking so hard Xavier rubbed my arms to calm me. “Are you okay, Ella?” I glanced up at him standing behind me, my pillar of strength. “You want to go?”
