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“Who’s male B, Ava? Who’s Lionheart?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But Luca I do remember.” He was the one who told me that sick poem about histreat. I want to cut off his treat and stick it in a blender.
“That’s good, Ava. We’re getting closer.”
“Luca was my owner but he answered to someone else.”
“Yes. And do you know that man’s name?”
I frown. “I guess it must be a man and not a woman,” I say carefully. “But no, I don’t recall.”
He presses a kiss to my temple, then lets go of me, placing his hands over his face for a second before brushing them through his hair, agitated. A smile appears briefly. “How are you feeling?”
I blow out an uncertain breath. Truthfully, I’m a bundle of countless emotions and feelings. Obviously, I feel nauseous and scared, but they’re mixed in with a feeling of relief and nervous excitement. I’m closing in on so much. “I feel steady.”
I recount everything to Max who watches with an earnest, focused expression. “So male B bought you, and took you to Lionheart.”
I nod. “I don’t know when I went to him. But based on what I remember from before, and that I’d been with Luca for a few days and he said he was going to sell me in three, I guess this must be the day I was found. Or close to it.” A full-body shiver grips me and I blow out a harsh breath.
I’m piecing it all together and it feelsso good.Horrible, but good.
“Sounds like the day you escaped,” Max hedges, wrapping a blanket around me.
“Could be. I don’t recall anything about male B and Lionheart. So far at least.”
Rubbing soothing circles on my back, charging up my skin to flush away the shivers, Max declares, “We should get this information to the police.”
“I’ll call them in the morning.”
A tense exhale gusts over me. “God, what a memory. And on the night of an auction no less.”
He’s referencing the charity auction, how it combined with the memory of my sale. I ponder on the duality for a moment, reexamining the coincidences I’ve had since meeting Max.
“Let’s have a brandy. It’s three in the morning but I can’t sleep, and I bet you can’t yet either,” Max ventures, holding out his hand towards me.
With a blanket around my shoulders, we head down to the reception room decorated in blues and silvers and creams. Here, there’s a well-stocked cabinet with all types of booze, a pool table, and a huge TV on the wall. It’s clearly a man den, a room where the boys hang out, and I find myself smiling, imagining Ben, Laurence, Will and Mal messing around in here.
“Were you on the phone earlier?”
“Sorry if I disturbed you.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Jeremy was updating me on a project.” A muscle flexes in his jaw. “It was important.”
Taking hold of a bottle, he pours two large measures as I look at the framed photographs on a sideboard. It’s clearly Max with his parents—both white—sometimes pictured young, sometimes older, and he’s with who I have to assume are his brother and sister. At the cabin, Max told me they were adopted, but I didn’t realise his brother was black, or that his sister was mixed-race.
“My sister, Sabine, my brother, Ellis,” Max says, watching me pick up the frames to examine them.
It’s the photograph of his sister and Ben on their wedding day that captures my full attention. “They look perfect together.”
Quietly, Max nods.
“There’s something familiar about her,” I murmur, trying to put my finger on why that is.
“What do you mean? Have you met her?” he asks, handing me a drink.
“No,” I clarify, frowning. “But there’s something about her.”
