“…and we believe Glory might have been a plant since before you came to us. So my next questions really need to be—”
“About Glory? How I may have worked with her—”
“No!”
I hear Wolf as my gut blurts out, “Fucking hell!”
She leans back into her chair, studying the both of us with a gaze I’m not sure how to interpret. She looks terrified but also extremely confused.
“Charlotte, we just… we need to know what happened before you joined the Wardens.”
She rightfully huffs. “Before I was forcefully broughthere by your father, you mean.”
Neither of us have any retort to her correction. So we just stare. Wolf looks at her with a plea I don’t fully understand. I know what I wish for, but I can’t comprehend what he wants from his sister who actively hates him.
“Well,” she says hesitantly. “I don’t know if this will help with the whole Glorysituation, but I learned in the past two years she was definitely manipulating me. So much so that… I’m sorry, I can’t tell you what she’s reallylike. She just made herself look as abandoned by the club as I felt.”
I watch Wolf flinch, but I barely let myself experience that pain. My eyes close of their own accord. I recall all the times I laid the blame on a young teen, when she was all but being led astray by a whore.
“Before that,” she continues as she shrugs, “I don’t remember much. My mother—our mother, I’m guessing—” She looks at Wolf blankly. “—was a bitch. Sandra Wentley barely paid attention to anyone but herself. I’d go hungry for days at a time. I was asking my neighbor to fill parental forms for the school, by the time I turned ten. She was… busy. With men. Then later, I was here. That’s all I remember.”
Christ. She never had anyone. The shame coursing through me settles in like lead in my gut. I can’t imagine having a parent who didn’t give a fuck. My parents—even though they were strict—never neglected me. And Charlotte was handed the worstcards right from the beginning.
I glance at Wolf again, who’s looking every bit of a Prez right now. “Did you see anyone coming to your house when you were with your—our mother? Anyone suspicious?”
I nod to myself. The question seems more logical than I would’ve asked. Because everything in me is boiling with rage at what we did to a fourteen-year-old, who was thrusted into a life she was barely prepared for.
Which is why it takes me a second to realize Charlotte is adjusting—and readjusting—in her seat. Her fingers digging into her palm hard enough to leave indents.
“It was…” she croaks. “Just normal. Men coming in and out. I don’t remember it all.”
My God. She’s hiding something. What the fuck happened that she’s relegating to her vulnerable self in front of us, the men she considers the lastpeople to care for her?
“Even a small detail, Charlotte,” Wolf says gently. “It might help. I wanna know who’s after you so I can protect y—”
“The club,” she sneers.
“You,” he says, not caring the way Charlotte is glaring at him, grimacing with distrust.
“Just men. That’s all. There were so many, I lost count. I knew it because I…” She pales and her body drains with a realization that doesn’t sit well with me. Her mouth drying up enough she rubs her lips together, her teeth and tongue brutally biting them with a frantic rhythm.
“Because?” I whisper after a tense pause. “Tell us, baby. We’ll figure it out.”
Something in my words makes her jolt out of the brittle stupor. Rage takes over almost immediately. “Because the moment they came,” she snaps as she stands up, looming over me, “I was shoved into the back closet in the second bedroom. I couldn’t… couldn’t make a fucking noise. For the f-first few times I did, I got punished. My Maa—our Maa—” She almost spits at Wolf.
“—was embarrassed I kept crying and sobbing while she was… doingwhatever the fuckshe wanted. So it was easier.” A brokensobs escapes her, and I can see she’s barely holding on. “Easier for her to just shove a-a sock in-in my m-mouth… s-so I don’t scream… so my voice is… or…” She pauses. Her words, her glare, even her fucking breath.
Wolf vibrates with uncontrollable fury, but my focus isn’t on him. It’s on Charlotte and what she just revealed. God. We had her gagged. I asked a random prospect to shove a rag in her mouth when I thought she was guilty. And I can seeas memories hit her. She’s not even covert anymore.
I jump when she lets out a strangled scream. Her hands gripping her hair like she’s barely ever voiced the things she just did.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.If that’s what was going on, then our club must’ve seemed like a fake sanctuary, the lesserevil.
“SHUT… SHUT UP!” she roars, her nostrils flaring, veins popping out her temple. It seems as though they’re not her words seething out her throat.
I want to hold her, make her pause before she collapses with the enraging past settling on her spine. But I’m too late.
