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He didn’t.
“Started?” Eli said quietly. “What does that mean?”
“I have access to a lot of resources,” I hedged. “After I saw the story about what happened to you and that young woman-”
“Riley,” Eli whispered.
“Riley,” I said with a nod. “After I read about what Cyrus Hamilton did to you and Riley, I wanted to know more about you…the stuff that wasn’t in the papers.”
When I’d started my search on Eli this morning, I’d expected to find the basics…credit reports, financial records, family information. What I’d found had left me completely stunned. And that was long before I’d even got into the details.
The second I had typed Eli Galvez into the internet search engine, I’d been swamped with the same story over and over and I’d instantly remembered it from the news eight years earlier. Eli had been a teenager at the time, barely fifteen. He and a young woman named Riley Sinclair had been abducted by a man who’d been the prime suspect in the disappearance of several women, mostly prostitutes. Eli’s own sister, Elena, had been among the victims. Her body, along with more than a dozen others, had been found on Cyrus Hamilton’s property after Dominic Barretti, his brother and Dom’s lover, Logan, had tracked the killer to his remote house in Summer Hill, Washington. They’d arrived just in time to watch as Cyrus’s own daughter took his life before he could kill Eli and his friend.
“What…what else did you find?” Eli managed to get out. He still looked like he was ready to bolt.
“I know what happened to you after your mom was deported and your sister disappeared.”
All the color drained from Eli’s face, but instead of turning to leave, he sank down onto the couch, the water bottle he’d been holding crushed to his chest.
“Dom said he got those records sealed so no one would find out…” Eli whispered before his words trailed off.
“They are sealed, Eli. It would take someone with a lot of skill to get to them.”
Eli’s gaze shifted from the floor to me. “Someone like you,” he murmured. I didn’t miss the accusation in his tone and for the first time in a really long time, I wasn’t proud of the tech skills I was known for.
After reading about Eli’s abduction, I’d been in a full-on rage and I’d actually had to take a break and go down to the gym and vent my fury on the weight bag they had down there. But within minutes of sitting back down in front of my computer, all the emotions I’d managed to tamp down had come roaring back when I’d discovered the arrest records. I’d suspected even before I’d opened them what the charges were, but a part of me had hoped and prayed they’d been for some stupid, immature stunt that teenage kids sometimes pulled.
They hadn’t been for a stunt.
They’d been for solicitation.
I’d read the charge three times before I’d finally accepted what my eye were seeing.
Fifteen fucking years old.
I’d struggled to keep doing my research after that because I’d felt violently ill. I’d stuck with it long enough to discover that it was Dom Barretti who’d gotten Eli off the streets and had brought Eli’s mother back to the States and given her a job at his security firm. I’d been hailing the man as a hero in my mind until I’d found a picture of him. And then my rage had come back in full force because I’d seen the man before…he’d been one of the men in the picture in Eli’s bedroom. The picture that had been turned over.
So he wouldn’t have to look at it. So he wouldn’t have to see the face of the man he’d once trusted, but who’d had turned on him for some reason. That had been my thinking up until a few minutes ago. But the passion with which Eli had defended the man…
“Why did you think it was Dom?” Eli asked sullenly.
I hated that all the fire he’d displayed down in the gym was gone and that the fragile trust I’d finally managed to establish with him – enough that he’d even felt comfortable enough to ask me to dinner – was snuffed out just like that.
“The picture in your bedroom…the one you turned over.”
Eli looked up at me. “You saw that?”
I nodded. “The man owns one of the most reputable security firms in the country, but instead of going to him for help after you were attacked, you came to me.”
Eli dropped his gaze again, but I didn’t miss the flash of shame in them. I had no doubt he was remembering the episode in the garage. An episode I finally understood now.
“Eli, look at me,” I said softly.
He didn’t.
“Please.”
Eli shook his head slightly, but finally raised his eyes. Pain shot through my chest at the gamut of emotions I saw there, but I pushed it back and said, “Nothing I found out today changes anything. What happened in the garage doesn’t matter. You survived…you’re here. That’s all I care about.”
