Or the ones who enjoyed watching me be afraid.
One of them hit me every time I mouthed off. Open-handed at first, then fists when I didn’t stop. Bruises spread dark across my ribs and jaw, yellow blooming into purple while they argued over how much my father would pay to get me back.
I remember hearing them talk about me as if I wasn’t even there.
‘Pretty enough to sell.’
‘Young enough to make good money.’
‘If Jonas doesn’t pay, we’ll move her south.’
I didn’t understand what that meant at first.
Not fully.
Until one of them grabbed my chin hard enough to leave fingerprints and calmly explained what happens to girls nobody comes for. How men pay extra for frightened ones. How easy it is to make young virgin girls disappear.
I remember throwing up after he left the room, then sitting on that mattress afterward with my wrists bleeding from fighting the restraints and realizing, with this horrible sinking clarity, that they weren’t bluffing.
That this wasn’t just ransom.
I was merchandise to them.
And the fear that settled into me after that was different—the kind that crawls into your bones and stays there.
But then Vegas Defiance came through the doors like violence given shape.
Sin at the front.
Gunfire exploding through the warehouse.
Men shouting.
Somebody grabbed me while I flinched because by then I was afraid of everybody.
Blood coated the hands that were cutting my restraints apart, none of it mine.
Then Sin was in front of me, calm and solid, while I shook hard enough to rattle my own teeth.
‘You’re safe now.’
Three words.
That was all it took for me to start crying.
Dad never stopped paying the club back after that. Every month, unreported gold quietly left the mine and found its way into club hands. Protection traded for loyalty at first, until somewhere along the line the arrangement stopped feeling like a business transaction and started feeling like family.
And family protects their own.
Movement to my left startles me back into the present, and my stomach twists violently, adrenaline spiking so fast my fingers go cold.
No!
Not here.
Not tonight.
Not on my own damn property.
