Page 81 of Damaged

“I remember waking up in some kind of warehouse. Vanessa was with some guy named Keith and they were arguing about how much money to ask for and where to get it.”

I could tell the pieces were falling into place.

“They were talking about your ransom.”

Silver’s brows furrowed. “Ransom? What is that?”

“It’s money that someone pays to get back a loved one who’s been kidnapped,” I carefully explained.

He sat up in the bed as understanding dawned. Sadie was there to cover his lap with her front legs. He automatically began petting her. I could have kissed the dog.

And Jace for pulling strings to get her for us.

Actually, I wouldn’t kiss Jace, just like I’d never be kissing any other man if I had my way.

“So Vanessa took me to sell me back to my parents?” Silver asked.

“Yes,” I responded grimly. I suspected that it wasn’t just the adults who’d trusted Vanessa. During such a long trip, she would have built up bonds with each child.

“But she and the guy she was with… Keith, they sold me to Ivan.”

“They did but only after the ransom drops kept falling through. Your parents agreed to their demand of three million dollars without hesitation—they just wanted you back. Vanessa and Keith would tell them where to leave the money and then they’d leave you in some other spot and call them—that was the plan, anyway. But they never showed up to pick up the money. They changed the drop location several times but they probably knew the German police would be watching the drop point and they just plain freaked out about getting caught.”

“But Vanessa… she liked us. She was nice to all of us,” Silver murmured.

“It was all an act. Her criminal background check was clean, but it never mentioned Keith, who she’d been dating for years before your family hired her. They were both drug addicts, but Vanessa had managed to pass a drug test before your parents hired her. Vanessa and Keith’s original plan was to take one of you in London and ransom you there, but with one of the adults in your family always joining Vanessa to help her handle so many kids, she and Keith couldn’t make it work. They knew how much money your parents were worth, so Keith basically followed behind you guys to all of those places and was waiting to help Vanessa take one of you the second she was alone with you.”

“One of us?” Silver croaked. “What does that mean?”

I’d hoped to skip over this part until Silver was in a better place emotionally, but I’d figured he would pick up on it. Despite all the times it had seemed like he wasn’t listening to something because he was lost in his own little world, he’d heard some of the things that were said.

“It was never confirmed, but the police believe you were the one they randomly chose to take. Even though there were a lot of kids in your extended family, you and Aggie were the ones who were the youngest in your immediate family. You were sharing a room with her in the house your family had rented.” I paused so I could work up the courage to finish telling him things he wouldn’t want to hear.

“Do you know what bunk beds are?” I asked.

Silver shook his head.

I’d kept my tablet handy for this exact purpose, so I pulled it out and quickly found a picture of what I was talking about.

“I remember that,” Silver said with a nod. “Aggie slept in the top bed because I didn’t want to be so high off the floor. So I slept in the bottom—” His already pale skin went whiter. “Wait,” he croaked. “Vanessa took me because I was in the bottom bunk?”

I reached out to cover Silver’s free hand with mine. “She needed to take whoever was the easiest for her to get out of the room and ultimately out of the house. She didn’t care which one of you it was.”

Understanding dawned for Silver as he began to make sense of what I was saying. He would have been spared the life he’d had with Ivan and grown up as a normal little kid, but if he hadn’t been the one taken, his twin sister would have been the one to suffer a similar fate.

Since I could see Silver was on the verge of falling apart again, I rushed through the remaining details of his abduction. “Your parents actively searched for you for nearly a year. They never left Berlin in all that time. Your brothers and sister were sent home with your relatives. Your parents offered huge amounts of reward money for anyone who helped get you back to them safely. Hundreds of leads came in. The police checked them all but there was never any sight of you, Vanessa, or Keith. Every year around the time you’d been taken, your parents returned to Berlin and did TV and newspaper interviews in the hopes of getting any kind of lead on where you were. It’s likely Vanessa sold you to Ivan within days of deciding it was too dangerous to ransom you to your family. Their bodies were eventually found in an abandoned building. They’d overdosed. There was no sign of you. Not then, not ever. The only evidence the police had to go on was the sighting of a black car in the area at some point, but no one could remember when or any specific details about the car, so police couldn’t find it.”

“They sold me to Ivan for the drugs that killed them?” Silver said with a harsh laugh that also carried a deep sob with it.

The irony had cut me to my core, so I could only imagine how Silver was feeling.

“Silver, I?—”

“No!” he shouted. “No!” he repeated as he tried to scramble past me, shoving Sadie away from him in the process. I managed to catch him by the upper arms before he could get off the bed.

“Don’t touch me!” Silver screamed. “Don’t touch me!”

He kept repeating the words, his voice getting louder each time. Sobs racked his body. Angry sobs.

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