Page 43 of Damaged

Rebel nodded. “Rob you, and if you’re young like me, they keep you.”

“Wait…you’re a fucking assassin. How the hell can theykeepyou?”

The boy had just been outside in the backyard. Rebel could have leaped the fence and disappeared.

“I can’t leave.”

The words were whispered with so much agony that Wrath paused while casing the bathroom. He led Rebel over to sit on the edge of the bathtub and Wrath put the lid down on the toilet to take a seat there.

“Talk to me. What do they have on you?”

Rebel pulled out a picture from his pocket and handed it to him.

It was of Rebel, a lot younger, but clearly discernible along with a slender dark-haired woman who looked just like him.

“Your mother?”

“Yes. She lives in Northridge. They know her address and I can’t afford to move her. She’s blind and has lived in that house her whole life.”

“Well, fuck,” Wrath snarled under his breath. “So, they what? Keep you here to do jobs?”

“Yeah, That Jeff guy knew Solomon and Tanis, so he’s making me do jobs for money,” Rebel said, ducking his head.

“And you don’t see a fucking dime.”

With resignation in his eyes, Rebel gazed up at him.

If Jeff had previously worked with Solomon and Tanis, then that meant that Rebel was being used as an assassin and probably for sex.

Those motherfuckers.

“What are we going to do?”

“Don’t worry,” Wrath smiled evilly and then winked. “I have a plan.”

He caressed his weapon before tucking it beneath his shirt.

Turning toward Rebel, he detailed exactly what they were going to do.

Rogue took an Uber back to his place to get his truck and hit the road to Redding from there. It was a few hours later that an incoming call came from Real.

“Real?”

“Hey, Rogue, it’s not Azrael up there, it’s more than likely Boston.”

Okay, that threw him for a loop.

Boston didn’t seem to be the type to run off after being encased in Dave’s safe house—which was actually Dave’s home, but the former Secretary of Defense was known for his charitability.

“What the hell is a sixteen-year-old doing running around,” Rogue muttered to Real.

Boston had briefly come through Solomon’s facility and then disappeared weeks later. He had always thought that Boston had escaped, but what he hadn’t known at the time and found out later was that Boston had been sold by Solomon to Tanis.

“Boston just turned seventeen!” Azrael’s shout came over the phone from somewhere near Real.

“Hush,” Real told Azrael.

“Well, seventeen makes all the difference,” Rogue growled with annoyance.

---