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He winced. “You could let me try.”
“You don’t have to.” Now it was my turn to make sense of what was in my head. “There are other children. They wouldn’t have touched Ben, but you needed to be in Rouxier’s inner circle to save other children. Kids like my son. Right?”
Ethan seemed uncomfortable and sad as he shook his head. “Rouxier and the whole goddamned mess of cartels, and human trafficking, they take the vulnerable kids, the ones without families, or ones where the families don’t care, or fuck… ” He pressed his fingers to his eyes and leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “Some families are desperate to get their children into new homes. That is what they’re promised, and then they will never see them again. The children are… ” he paused and took his hands from his eyes before he stared right at me. “… they’re lost.”
I nodded. My story was a tiny part of a much bigger story. Ben had been safe, but I’d been a pawn in a larger game I had no hope of understanding.
“What happens to these lost children?”
Ethan closed his eyes again, but not before I’d seen a glimpse of the horror in him at what he must have seen. He looked broken, devastated, and so damn angry. “I can’t… ” he offered after a while.
I was relieved in a way that he wouldn’t share the details because I knew what might happen to the kids, and I needed to process that for myself.
“I never liked Rouxier from the moment Ruth started talking about how she wanted Ben because it looked good that her, Ben, and that asshole looked good as a family. It only got worse when Rouxier and her were engaged.” I muttered.
“Why?”
I glanced up at Ethan. “Why what?”
“Why didn’t you like Rouxier? Was it simply because your ex got engaged to him?”
“No. God no. It’s because of Ruth’s father—a man like Rouxier. To her dad, Ruth and I were a mistake, her taking a walk on the wild side, dating the guy from the wrong side of the tracks, the hopeless one.”
“I don’t call holding down a career hopeless.”
“I’ll get to that. Anyway, she might have hooked up with a rebel without hope but sucks to be her taking a walk on the wild side, because when she fell pregnant, I cleaned up my act. I wasn’t some rebellious kid with a car and a nose ring—I was a different rebellion—the absolutely worst thing her daddy could imagine—I was poor.” I snorted a laugh, and he raised an eyebrow. “My dad died young. My mom was in and out of rehab. Hell, we were so poor and fucked up that we’d become invisible. I cruised school, hiding myself away, no hope, heading for some low-paid, uncontracted work or unemployment, with no prospects. But Ruth made the biggest mistake of picking me. She’d pretended to want me, and you know what? I actually fell in love with her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, shit happens. Anyway, her rage against her rich life backfired because when she fell pregnant, it changed me. I wasn’t some kid with no hope, because I was going to be a daddy, and I was determined to change my life around. She wanted an abortion, and her dad was so behind that, even booked a private hospital that promised discretion, and it devastated me.” I huffed a laugh, and he raised an eyebrow in question. “Ironically, it was histeamwho decided that if anyone found out, they’d even considered an abortion, then it might hinder his political climb, so they dumped money on her to keep our child. To keep Ben.”
“Fuck.”
“There was a tiny part of me that thought we might make it work. I wasn’t stupid. I mean, it was obvious I was being used, but I liked to think I knew her a bit. She was always so sad, and I’m not the bad guy here, and I wanted to be there for her. She used the money to get us a small apartment. Even though I hated that, I was happy she’d be somewhere safer than us sofa-surfing with friends. I tried hard to make it feel like home. I studied. I kept shitty hours at shitty jobs to bring in money. I qualified, and I made something of myself.”
Ethan settled back, and I took a moment to compose myself. How we ended up with Ben was a mess of a story and went some way to explaining why I hated Rouxier, and it all started with Ruth’s father.
“I tried really hard to see all the good in Ruth. As to her father, he wanted what was best for his daughter, the same as we all do for our kids, only I kind of understood him.” Ethan opened his mouth, but I held up a hand to forestall his reactions. “I’m not defending him. Fuck no. Her father was the worst of men, smarmy, controlling, all about the public image, all chiseled jaw and perfect hair, and impeccable standing in society. I didn’t fit into his narrative, but neither did Ruth nor our baby.”
“You were the fly in the ointment.”
“Yep, pretty much. Until her father’s team decided wedidfit into his political story. They defended any criticism thrown at his family values platform. Like why his daughter had left college and was married at nineteen, why she wasn’t living at his expensive home. Like the story of who I was and who my parents were. They whitewashed it all, wrapped it up in religion, as if she’d chosen a path in life as a mother, and hell, why would a mother need an education, anyway? They said we were young kids in love determined not to rely on daddy’s money, who forged their own path, and formed a nuclear family along with a baby, a shining example of his politics. He could spin anything and there was something about him, something manipulative and evil, and I hated Ruth’s father for it. I’ve never had hate inside me that burned so much, and Charles Rouxier is no different. My ex went for a man she knew the measure of—someone like her daddy.”
“I get that.”
“Is it wrong that I also feel so lucky to have Ben safe? When other kids aren’t.”
“No.”
“It feels like it.”
“We’re working on fixing what we can—”
Regrets burned like acid in my heart. “I fucked things up for you. I gave you a conscience.”
“It wasn’t on you, I was already—”
“I hate the fact that you kissed me, fucked me, but worse than that, I hate you came back.”
