“The entire time?” I whisper as I stare down at the picture. “The entire time I knew them, they weren’t…prisoners?”
Hayk snorts and leans forward again, patting my knee with a fake look of sympathy. “Olivejan, don’t you get it? They weren’t prisoners, they weren’t even volunteers or anything like it. Jay, Dante, and Emery were working for me. I paid each of them every single time they fucked you, and I did that right up until?—”
“We left!” I shout, lifting my head and looking him in the eye as I grasp at straws, desperately trying to find a hole in his story. “They helped me escape. The four of us got out. We ran. Why would they do that if they weren’t slaves like me? Why would they risk everything if they didn’t actually care about me?”
“The almighty dollar is a powerful thing.”
I start shaking my head. “No. No, I refuse to believe what you’re saying.”
“What? That I knew the four of you were leaving? That I approved that so-calledescape, funded it, then monitored it for months? That’s the truth you’re refusing to accept. You were a job to them, Olive. A job, a payday, a way to pad their bank accounts, setting them up for life, and nothing more.”
A tear slips down my cheek as I keep shaking my head.
I don’t believe it. Ican’tbelieve it. If I accept what he’s saying as truth, if I buy into what has to be bullshit, it means my entire life has been nothing but pain and lies, and the memories I’ve been clinging to, the moments I’ve always considered the light shining through the darkness, were all bullshit. They were empty dreams manufactured in order to keep me happy.
But that doesn’t really make sense.
“If… If it wasn’t real, if they didn’t love me, why did you let them go?”
Hayk lifts a hand to his beard, mindlessly smoothing it out as he says, “For Jay. My son was weak, he was easy to manipulate, and he started to have genuine feelings for you. He came to me and asked if he could buy your freedom. He said he wanted to take you away and start a real life with you.”
I frown as the tears stream steadily down my face. “And you were okay with that?”
“No,” Hayk snorts and shakes his head. “I told him I’d kill you before I let you leave. So, my son and I made a deal.”
My heart is slamming into my chest, hammering away behind my ribs so hard it feels like I might crack a bone.
This man is heartless. He’s evil and malicious. There’s no way he would do something like that, not even for his son, if it meant losing money.
Which is exactly why I ask, “What was in it for you?”
The sadistic grin is back, one more terrifying than I’ve seen before. “Your babies.”
“What?” A sob breaks free on its own, pushing out of my body as I start to openly cry. “What do you mean,our babies?”
“Exactly that. They could take you away, start a life with you out there somewhere, but if they wanted to keep you, ifmy sonwanted to keep you, they had to promise to give me any and all children the four of you had together to make up for the money I’d be losing.”
I lurch forward as I vomit again, my head spinning, my heart breaking completely as he confirms that I was living a lie for almost half my life.
“Why?” I choke out, coughing up bile and spit. “How would they?—”
“I’ve branched out in your absence, Olivejan. There’s a demand foryoungerproducts, and I decided to expand my business in order to meet it.”
This bastard was going to take our babies,mybabies, and turn them into the same fucking thing he made me? For what? Money, and cornering the market on the next disgusting, fucked up service he could provide?
And if Jay really did have feelings for me, if any of them ever truly loved me, why would they agree to something so goddamn vile?
Then something else runs through my mind.
Hayk had them killed.
He contacted Boris to have the four of us murdered.
If he wanted us to pop out new slaves, why would he?—
“Jay had second thoughts,” Hayk says, answering my question before I can ask. “He wasn’t sure about the kids. Said it feltwrong. I told him it was either that, or I take you back and make an example out of you. I let him choose, he chose you. But I knew it was a matter of time before it came up again and since I was not only losing hundreds of thousands without the fourof you in rotation, but by losing your children as well, I cut my losses.”
My eyes widen and my jaw goes slack. “You cut your losses?That’s how you look at your own son? How you view the babies who would have been your grandchildren?”
