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Ava shrugged. “All that matters is that it worked.”
Bailey began cackling again, and Matthias sighed before saying, “Move this along, Red. Otherwise, we’ll be here all night long, and I have plans for you later.”
A flush crept up her neck. “Right. So back to the story…”
Ava went back to regaling Bailey with how Matthias had taken her from Elias. Who’d, of course, insisted she spy for him. She never did, much to my surprise. Or maybe she simply didn’t have the opportunity. Then continued on about how Dashkov forced her to marry him.
I was waiting for my father to jump across the table and strangle the poor sod. He didn’t. Much to my utter dismay.
His jaw was still clenched, his teeth grinding together, but he didn’t make a move.
Damn.
Her voice was choked with sadness and regret as she remembered Libby, the one she called sister. The one she would always call sister. The poor lass had been shot in the head by a sniper during a trap they had tried setting for Elias.
“So that’s how you ended up at the stables,” Bailey reiterated after Ava explained that her getaway car had been hijacked and then plowed off the road. My sister nodded, biting into a small bit of cake Nan had brought out.
“Christian kept me there for nearly two weeks before Liam and the twins rescued me.” Ava’s smile glowed. “Then they blew it all up. That was my favorite part.” She laughed lightly.
“What does any of this have to do with my father?” Bailey questioned.
Ava set her fork down on the porcelain plate and stared across the table at Bailey, her emerald eyes lit with determination, but I could see the sorrow lining the edges. She didn’t want to reveal to Bailey the secrets she held. Ava may have been quiet and submissive in her time with Elias, but she listened and learned. He paraded her around like a prize to his meetings, believing he would always control her.
He was wrong, and now she used those secrets to crumble his empire and those associated with him.
“Because your father is the reason Elias and his associates have had such success with trafficking in Seattle,” Ava told her, face calm, emotionless. “He’s the one who started it.”
18
Her words hung heavy in the air around me.
Choking me.
Suffocating me.
Suddenly, it felt hard to breathe as denial and panic surged through me. This couldn’t be right.
“He’s the one who started it.”
I stared down at the file I had disregarded on the table in favor of my coffee. It sat there, taunting me, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. The table had grown quiet. My father was in no way a saint, but what these people, thesecriminals, were accusing him of made him out to be a monster.
A trafficker.
The very men he had sought to put away were the men who surrounded me. My father was nothing like these men. He couldn’t be.
“Open the file, Bailey.” Liam Kavanaugh’s voice brooked no argument. Gingerly, I set my coffee down on the table and slid the file toward me. With shaking fingers, I opened the folder, the blatant truth staring back at me.
A smoking gun.
Still, this couldn’t be what they thought it was.
Dashkov wasn’t pulling punches when he put this file on my father together. The first paper that rested on the top of the stack was a photo of my father at the Ward stables they had blown up a few weeks ago on Mercer Island. He wasn’t just admiring the horses.
“For fuck’s sake,” Seamus growled, grabbing the photo from the top, only for it to be replaced by a worse one. A strangled cry escaped me at the sight of the photo. “Dammit, Dashkov.” He grabbed the file and sorted through the photos, pulling out the ones that clearly showed my father nailing underage girls in various positions. My stomach turned, bilious and sour, bile creeping up my throat. I barely held it back.
“Was that really necessary?” Liam raised an eyebrow at the Russian. Dashkov shrugged. “No use in sugar dusting.”
“Coating,” Liam corrected, receiving a sneer from his son-in-law. Glaring at the Russian, Seamus placed the folder in front of me, sans photos. Steeling myself, I pulled up the mental walls I had learned to erect, pushing forward with a dissociated interest.
