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She nods. Fuck me, Carlo spared me the mean mercy of finding my mother dead.
“I hadn’t seen her for a whole day,” she says. “So I went looking for her. She was in the bath.”
My eyes widen. “The bath.”
She smiles a little. Knowingly. “The bath,” she confirms.
Fucking hell. “And you had no other family? No one to check up on you?”
“My mother’s parents were dead. My father’s parents were terrified of Bernard. They were very old. Mum and Dad’s estate was left to me, but it’s in a trust until I’m twenty-five. Bernard had to wait until then for me to sign it over to him.”
“Or he could have killed you too.”
“Would look a bit suspicious, wouldn’t it?” she says, so candidly, and I know she probably considered death to be more appealing. Like her mother. “He got away with killing my father. Mother killed herself and saved him the trouble. Me too? His pumpkin? Why risk it when he could live like a king on my father’s twenty-million-pound estate anyway, and then force me to sell it when I turned twenty-five?”
Christ. I feel like I need another timeout. “Pumpkin?” I ask, tentative.
She reaches for a lock of her vibrant red air, and I look away, holding up a hand again, digesting all the information. What the fuck is this madness? He was going to keep her until she was twenty-five. Torture her. And something tells me that even if he got the twenty-million-pound estate, he wouldn’t have freed Pearl. Kill me now. I don’t know how much more of this I can bear, but she’s on a roll, looking strangely lighter with each word she shares, but heavier too.
“I learned to keep out of his way.” She pats the covers around her thighs, as if getting herself settled for more of the horror show. “I only angered him. One time, I went a whole week without seeing him. But I heard him. The parties, the drunken men, the guns, the explosions. He liked fishing in my father’s lake too. Would blow the fish out of the water.” She bites at her lip ring, tugging it.
Fuck. Me.
Please, God, surely he didn’t . . . her lip . . . no. She peeks up at me, finding me staring at the piercing. “You don’t need to hear the rest.”
“Tell me,” I demand, giving her my eyes. They’re surely full of lethal intent. “I want to know.”
“Brad—”
“Tell me,” I snap.
“He would . . . put a hook . . .” Pearl bunches the sheet in her good fist, and I swallow. “You don’t need to kn?—”
“I need to know.” I lower to the chair and brace myself. She endured it. I only have to hear it.
“If I didn’t go to him, he would put a hook in my lip and reel me in. Punch me in the side of the head.” She winces and reaches for her right temple, as if feeling one of those punches right now. “Put a leash on me and make me crawl like a dog. Put me in a cage outside. Naked.”
I bury my face in my palms, my fingers clawing into my cheeks. How the hell do I help her put all that behind her? It’s why she’s so fucking strong. Why she tolerated my hostility, seemingly unaffected. How she “accepted” Allison when I used her as a shield. Fuck me. I wasn’t physically as cruel to her as her uncle, but I certainly didn’t show her any grace. And yet, she forgave me. Loves me.
“When he told me he’d sold me,” she says, almost wistfully. “I was happy.”
I blink into my darkness. Happy? Jesus Christ, she has no idea that she was heading for worse. Because she wouldn’t only be beaten . . . but raped daily too. And I haven’t got the heart to tell her.
“Then you found me.”
I still.
I found her.
“He hasn’t been paid the money for you, Pearl,” I remind her, braving looking at her. I’m a fucking coward. She’s sustained all of that, and I’m struggling to even keep eye contact while she tells me her miserable story. “Because you never made it to your new owner. Because we took you.”
She stares at me. “How did he know you took me?”
“There aren’t many people who would take on the Polish. We did. Your uncle has made a point of being friendly with our enemies.” I’m sure Pearl knows many things about Sandy, the girls talk, but I’m not going into details. “King’s made a deal to supply their weaponry. He won’t if?—”
“I heard the rest,” she says, looking away. “Intact.”
What I can’t figure out is why a private detective would come looking for her at the club if King knew where she was the entire time. So . . . when did he find out Pearl was here with us? We know he landed in Miami a few months ago—Otto confirmed that. But Pearl’s been with us for six months. And another thing . . . “Kennedy?” I ask.
