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The television in the den was going. The footage of Richard Crowe’s failed announcement for his bid for presidency had been running on repeat for the last twenty-four hours. I learned that a few things had taken place yesterday; not just my rescue. While they’d been breaching their way into the brothel, Ava and her right-hand man Vas had gone after Drew and Brittany.
Both of whom were now dead.
I could breathe easier on that front.
At the same time all of this was going on, Crowe had been in the middle of giving his speech on doing what was right for the country and how if the people elected him as president…blah, blah, bullshit. Unbeknownst to him, the screen behind him began to play every depraved home video he’d made with the underage girls he’d trafficked into the city.
Shocker.
So much for family values.
He’d been arrested on the spot. A lump grew in my throat as I watched the footage replay. Reporters hammered down the door at the house, and cameras flashed as Sarah was led away in handcuffs for her part. Complicity was a bitch. She’d gotten what she deserved.
“Dalia. Dalia.” The reporter on the screen hounded my former “half sister.”
“What do you have to say about the actions of your parents? Were you involved? Did you know what they were doing?”
She pressed by them, her gaze hidden by a pair of dark sunglasses. Were they red rimmed from crying, or was she as stone cold as her mother? The twins hadn’t been able to find anything that linked Dalia to her parents proclivities. But that didn’t mean she never knew.
The screen flashed to show Crowe’s face, and I flinched. It was the same look he’d had back in that room. It was full of anger, but there was a knowing twist to the corner of his lips. What did he know that would give him such confidence? Did he believe that the charges wouldn’t stick? The entire city—no—the entire nation, had seen what a despicable, corrupted individual he was.
“He won’t be a problem anymore, Bailey,” Toph whispered next to me. His assurance felt confident, and it warmed me.
“He’s got nearly every judge and politician in his pocket,” I murmured, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen. Toph grunted.
“He won’t live long enough to even get bail. Trust me.” He flipped off the television just as my name and photo filled the screen. The Crowes weren’t the only ones to have their lives blasted on television. My entire life story had been laid out for the world to see.
They heralded me as a victim.
But I was much more than that.
I was a survivor.
Toph waved for me to take a seat. I sank into the warm leather chair across from him, gratefully accepting the tumbler of whiskey he offered me.
“You were three when I last saw you,” he told me, taking his own seat. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fixing me with his full attention. No one except the twins had ever done that before, and it stirred something in me. “I’ve seen…” he hesitated, “photos, but they were…”
“After I was beaten,” I finished for him. His hand clenched tightly around his own glass. He gave a terse nod.
“They never told me about you,” I told him. “I was raised as an outcast. Told lies and manipulated to believe that each of those beating was something I deserved. They had a therapist who repressed my younger memories until all I knew was what I was told. He made it seem as if I deserved and needed to accept whatever I was given. I was raised to believe that the beatings were for my own good. I never questioned them…I just accepted it. I was weak.”
“You are not weak. Not then and not now.” He growled the words so fiercely it startled me. “You were manipulated and groomed. None of that is your fault. The only weak one here is me. I should have—I should have listened to your mother, but I chose my club over her.”
He took a swig of his whiskey. There were tears in his eyes, the crystalline blue shining under the lights of the room.
“Your mother was the center of my world.” He smiled fondly. “The first time we met was fate. She’d been chasing down the same scumbag we had. He’d stolen from us, but your mother never cared about that. She cared about what he’d been doing to his teenage daughter. She and her ragtag group of biker women swooped in and took him right from under our noses.”
He laughed.
“Then she delivered him to our door a day later with our missing money and a note stapled to his forehead that he was ours now.” He shook his head, smiling. “She’d castrated him and used it to…” He coughed. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at his reticence.
“After that,” he smirked, “I was a goner. She was everything. Took me forever to get her to agree to a date. Made a fool of myself trying to take her to some upscale restaurant. I’d dressed up and everything. She’d laughed in my face and made me drive back to the compound to change. Ended up having hot dogs and beer at the pier. It was one of the best days of my life.”
I smiled at him warmly as I took a sip of my whiskey.
“What was the second-best day?” I’d asked the question expecting him to say the day that he married her or describe some other memory of my mother.
