Page 30 of Cash

“I was five,” Penny went on like Cash hadn’t spoken. “I asked where you were and when we were going back to get you and she told me I made you up.”

I heard Cash suck in a breath.

My shoulders slumped. I could take no more.

No more.

But before I could interject Penny continued. “Your name is Benjamin. That’s what she named you. I called you Benji when I’d give you a bottle and rock you to sleep. Then she took you away from me.”

Benji.

My stomach clenched, not only for Cash’s pain but for the selfish, selfish woman who should’ve found a better way to administer the death blow she’d landed. But even as pissed as I was at her, the agony in her voice couldn’t be denied.

“I asked where you were. Every day I asked. She’d fly into a rage and tell me I was crazy and made up having a brother. Then when I wouldn’t stop, she’d beat the hell out of me. Finally, I stopped asking. She’d convinced me I was crazy and I’d imagined you—something good and sweet in my otherwise shitty life.”

“We don’t have an exact birthdate for you,” Kira started. Her voice was strong and sure, all business like she was delivering an intel brief. “Hospital records show seven boys were born in Victor Valley hospital the month before you entered the system. One of them was Benjamin Nicholas Robbins born March first. Mother listed as Eden Robbins. No father listed.”

Cash was staring at Penny, and I was wondering if he was now cataloging the similarities. The two of them shared the same mother, different fathers, so those blue eyes had to be passed down from Eden. But there were other traits like the shape of their faces, and they both shared the same hairline. Penny was a very pretty female version of Cash. Or maybe he was a handsome, masculine version of her since she was older.

“You knew.” Cash’s statement vibrated through the room, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking to me. “You fucking knew.”

“Cash—”

Or was he Benji now? No, he was Cash—always would be.

Cash is King.

Never Benjamin.

“It’s a yes or no, Lore,” he spat. “Actually, it wasn’t even a question. You fucking knew and you didn’t tell me.”

Lore.

Ouch.

“Please, Cash, let me⁠—”

“Fuck that and fuck you.” His hand came up and slashed through the air before dropping to his side. “You know, even with all those warnings you dish out about how no one should trust you, and all the times you not only admitted but acted like a total bitch, I never imagined you’d be so fucking cold and dead inside you wouldn’t fucking tell me something as important as you knowing who I really was. I’ve lived my whole life not even knowing my birthdate. My real name. Fucking hell. I get you’re a cold-hearted bitch, but you didn’t even want me to have that. A real name instead of what the state named me—Cash the dumpster baby found behind Fast Cash Depot. I guess I’m lucky the social worker didn’t decide to name me fucking Depot.”

Cold and dead.

Cold-hearted.

With each lash of his tongue, that cold and dead part of me shriveled until I was so cold I was frozen.

“Cash,” Zane rumbled. “You need to⁠—”

“What’s wrong, Lore, you got nothing to say?” Cash taunted.

Lore.

I was so deep in my head I couldn’t find the smallest sliver of Stella. Cash was right, so right. I was cold-hearted. All of this a reminder of why I built my walls. Why I protected myself. Words fucking hurt. Even if—or most especially if—they’re true. I’d take the leather of my father’s belt or palm of my mother’s hand across the face any day over the ugly words they spewed.

I took in Cash’s irate face, so different from the cocky, smug smile he’d walked in with.

He was beautiful.

The most beautiful man I’d ever seen.