AllFreeNovel
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Like a building storm, dark clouds of fear billowed into my head. I couldn’t hear through the thunder of rushing blood.
He squeezed my hand. “Does Dee hang out in the chatrooms?”
“Sometimes.”
“There’s a girl in a chat room for gamers. She’s new. The picture only shows half her face. Maybe it’s not her. She goes by the name little potato.”
I swallowed through the thickness in my throat. “Oh, god, it’s her account.” Painful tightness crushed my chest in a tide of panic. “Knox. Just tell me. Has she gone with them?”
“Not yet. Fuck. Byrne knows she’s sixteen and a virgin. But Ally, he knows she’s Italian. Jessie is trying to set up a meet. You gotta talk to her, keep her out of the chatroom, but you can’t tell her how you know. This can’t come back on me.”
Tears burned in my eyes. I threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you. What would I do without you?”
He held me tightly. “You’ll never have to know.”
I loosened my hold, putting space between us. “I can’t be gone too long. They don’t know I left.”
“After an ice cream cone, I’ll take you home.”
Twenty minutes later, he shoved my helmet on my head and buckled the chinstrap. He steadied the bike as I swung my leg over, adjusted on the seat, and wrapped my arms around him.
“Ready?”
I nodded. I’d ridden on the back of his bike more times than I could count. The engine roared as he twisted the throttle. I tightened my hold on the bad boy who was always so good to me.
Now, he just wasn’t keeping me out of trouble, but he protected my little sister, too.
He eased back on the throttle as we turned onto Woodland Drive. Rather than risk being spotted by the cameras, he pulled along the curb. After I climbed off, he parked the bike and secured the helmet.
“I don’t want you to take risks for me,” I said to him as we walked behind the cypress hedge. “But when I think of what could happen to Dee, I’m so fucking grateful I have you.”
He stopped me and with his strong tatted arms, pulled me hard into his chest. Maybe in another life, if I wasn’t the daughter of an Italian don, and he wasn’t a soldier in the Irish mafia, we could have been something more.
Instead, we were each other’s lifeline in a fucked-up world where young girls were sold, some to the highest bidder in the underground sex trade, and some girls were traded then celebrated with big weddings to mafia dons.
We stopped at the section of wall where Knox and I had cored out deeper divots into the cement. I’d always sucked at climbing, but I wasn’t a kid anymore and I hadn’t actually had to climb the wall in a couple of years.
I sighed. “I’m not sixteen anymore,” I said as I looked up to the top of the wall. “My ass is bigger.”
Knox laughed. “Yeah, so are your tits.”
I slugged his arm. “You’re not allowed to notice.”
“Whatever.” He linked his fingers. “I’ll give you a step up.”
I braced my hand on his shoulder, put my foot on his hands, and tried to find a place on the wall to grip.
Knox teetered as he laughed.
“Hold still.” I finally got my fingers into grooves and the toes of one foot on a thin lip of concrete. And then I hung there, like laundry on a windless day, flat and unmoving.
“Are you going to climb?”
I laughed. “I can’t. I’m stuck.”
Knox put his hands on my ass and pushed.
“What are you doing?”
