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“It’d be a hell of a coincidence otherwise,” Ransom says, then grimaces. “Could this have something to do with Nikolai?”
Vic shakes his head. “It’s very unlikely. We’ve been dealing with X since before we even knew who Nikolai was, and if X knows about what we did and wanted to use it against us, he would have done it already.”
“Yeah, good point. But that just leads back to Malice’s question: what does X want her for?”
Vic’s fingers do theirtap, tap, tapthing against his legs, and I can tell he’s trying to get his thoughts—and feelings—in order.
“It could be a test,” he says after a moment. “He knows we have her, and he wants to see how deep our loyalty goes. Maybe he doesn’t know the reason why she’s been staying with us, but he clearly assumes that she matters, and he’s trying to see how far we’ll go when he tells us to.”
I scowl at the prospect of that because it makes sense. And I hate it. “We already jump when he says jump. Why the fuck does he need to test us?” I demand.
“Most likely, it serves two purposes,” my twin murmurs thoughtfully. “One, it lets him see just how far we’re really willing to go, and two…”
“What?”
“He probablydoesactually want Willow. She has a certain value.”
My brother doesn’t spell it out, but we all know what he means by that. In our world, the world where bad shit happens to good people, pretty young girls go missing all the time. Especially if they’re untouched. People like Nikolai, disgusting assholes with particular fetishes, pay good money for virgins, so that they can get off on being the ones who pop their cherries and break them.
We’re all thinking it, but Ransom is the one to say it, a look of disgust on his face.
“He wants to sell her. She’sproduct.”
Hearing it out loud makes my jaw clench. It happens all the time in this city, but this is the first time it’s happening to someone I know. Someone I…
I shake my head, caught up in a hurricane of emotions.
Getting rid of Willow, handing her over to X like he’s asking—demanding—would benefit us in the end. She’d be out of our lives the way I keep saying I want her to be, and not able to rat us out to anyone, including whoever the fuck is poking around about Nikolai’s death.
That would be that. We wouldn’t have to keep her under our watch anymore, and we could get her out of our lives and get back to the shit we’re supposed to be doing.
On top of that, defying X isn’t really an option. He has the power to ruin our lives or send me back to prison, and I’m pretty sure he won’t give a shit about our track record of jobs done well if we say no to him now.
So the choice should be fucking easy.
Maybe a few weeks ago, it would have been.
But now it’s fuckingnot.
Now I’ve seen too much of this damned girl. I’ve seen her smile and laugh, seen her defiant and scared. I’ve seen her vulnerable and hurting, clinging to me like a fucking lifeline. The thought of handing her over to be broken and used by some scumbag lowlife who won’t give a shit about her other than what’s between her legs pisses me off.
A voice in the back of my head whispers“soft,”and it sounds like everyone who’s ever treated me like shit in my life, all rolled into one.
But that doesn’t change the way I feel.
“So what the fuck are we going to do?” Ransom asks, saying what we’re all thinking again.
Only this time, no one has an answer. Vic shakes his head, uncharacteristically at a loss, and I just keep scowling at the computer screen, wishing the message would go away if I glare at it hard enough.
It’s pretty fucking telling that none of us are leaping at the idea of handing Willow over to X. With every other job we’ve ever gotten from him, we’ve gritted our teeth and done it no matter what it was, because it’s not like we’ve ever had a choice.
But this? None of us want to do this. Not even Vic seems to be able to rationalize a way to make handing her over easier.
So we’re left with nothing. No answer. No plan. No fucking idea what to do.
“We have some time,” Victor says after a while. “We can… try to come up with something.”
Fuck knows what we’ll come up with, but it’s not like we have another option right now.
