Page 80 of One Step After Another

The proof her mother hadn’t changed. Monsters never did. They were who they were. Of course, she knew Allegra was the same bitch she had been when Penny was under her control ... the actions and business of The Elite was more than enough to tell her that.

But she had to know ...

Those little girls—were they next?

Were they Allegra’s next Penny? The next perfect little girl to train and groom and sell to the highest bidder ... after bidder.

Because it wouldn’t end.

Once it started, there was no stopping the lifelong horrors that followed. Even after Penny escaped through cutting and misbehavior that caused her parents to discard her to whatever private institution would take her, it still didn’t fucking end. She felt it in every scar; lived with the pain in her mind that wasn’t physical but affected her all the same.

Her memories lived on, too.

Crystal clear.

It didn’t matter that her mother had been living under the radar since her deceased husband’s arrest years ago and his subsequent murder behind bars. The woman hadn’t stepped back from the pedophile ring her father—Penny’s grandfather—had been running for decades. The sex trafficking business was lucrative one but especially when it came to the filthy rich where cost was no issue to feed their addictions and depravities.

Penny already had her answer; she didn’t need to look for another sign to further prove what she believed to be true. Jules and Jennifer Tracey were in the mouth of a lion—only ten and twelve years old, how could they possibly know?

Did their father?

How could he not?

It made Penny angry. Drunk and pissed off wasn’t a good combination for her—especially not when she was already dancing between the present and the past while she stared at the photo of her mother, the senator, and his two daughters on the laptop screen.

Underneath the photo was an article discussing the happy couple and their next plans. The announcement of an upcoming engagement dinner at a restaurant owned by the Tracey family in New York City.

Penny could end it ...

All of it.

She just needed the chance.

Scrolling back up the article to the photo, she stared at the monster looking back. Allegra smiled her smile. The one that blinded the world to the dangers and vile truths hiding behind her beauty. A smile she had turned on Penny like a weapon time and time again.

She couldn’t forget.

She tried.

Sometimes, she was lucky enough to go days now without a memory or a dream that threw her back in time. The PTSD that once kept her locked in a constant haze of hell had lessened with training, purpose, and life.

But those things did nothing for her then. It didn’t protect her from slipping into a memory of a six-year-old her that had finally started to learn what it meant when her mother smiled.

“Don’t you want to make Daddy happy, Penny?”

Her mother smiled, her perfect white teeth matching the color of the dress that swished when she walked, her tall heels clicking against wood floors as she came closer. The rest of the world saw that smile and grinned back. Penny saw her mother’s smile and shrunk away, knowing what it meant ...

“Stop your crying—good girls don’t cry.” Only a few feet away from where Penny sat on the edge of the piano bench, Allegra sighed where she stopped. “Are you going to wipe away those tears, or should I?”

Penny did it.

Pretty girls didn’t cry, either.

“Now, are you about done?” Allegra asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

A promise she had to keep.