Page 70 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

She widened her big brown eyes at me. “Cristian, please.”

“Relax. I won’t kill him. Not yet.” I paused. “But there’s something serious that I need to talk to you about. And … you might want to finish that glass of wine before I tell you. You’re probably going to fucking need it.”

Instead of finishing the glass, Roxie pushed it away and leaned forward, worry etched onto every inch of her face. “Please, don’t tell me there’s another crazy woman who wants you. I don’t know if I can deal with another.”

My lips curled into a half-smile. “There is.”

Roxie crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me with so much intensity that I thought she’d pull that gun right out of her purse and threaten me with it again, which did a little bit more than just turn me on. She had looked beyond sexy, pushing the muzzle against my temple and making all those cute deathly demands of hers.

Before she could kill me, I grinned wider. “And I’m looking right at her.”

“Fuck you,” Roxie said, letting out a breath. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Taking her hands in mine, I dropped the smile and frowned. I didn’t want to tell Roxie about her family. I really fucking didn’t. It felt like one big thing after another, one big step backward after a small one forward. It was always something in this family.

“What is it?” Roxie asked, pulling her hands out of mine and pushing a strand of hair off my forehead.

“We found more people who have ties to child trafficking and … a video.”

“A video? Of it happening?” Her lips formed a soft O. “That’s terrible.”

I swallowed hard, loathing this. “Yes, of it happening, and … your family is in it.”

Roxie pulled herself away from me and stared at me with wavering brown eyes. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Please don’t lie to me. Was my brother abused by my grandfather too? Did it happen to—”

“No. The video was of you when you were a child.”

The emotion drained from her face, an unreadable expression crossing it. She stayed quiet for a moment too long, making me feel beyond uneasy. I should’ve kept my mouth shut, shouldn’t have said anything. I could’ve easily taken care of this myself. But … this was the right thing to do. Roxie deserved to know and deserved to take action herself, if she wanted.

“I want to see the video.”

I sat up and clenched my jaw. There was no way that I could let her see something like that. Last time, she’d had an anxiety attack in the middle of the hotel room and broken my damn heart with all those tears. If she saw a video of that actually happening to her, I feared something worse than that would happen.

“Roxie, you really don’t,” I assured. “It’s not pretty.”

After a few moments of silence, Roxie shook her head. “Nothing is pretty in this business, apparently, Cristian. I killed a woman today”—she lowered her voice and leaned forward—“put seven bullets right through her skull, and I don’t feel any remorse. Let me see the video.”

Though she hadn’t shown one ounce of regret for killing Alessa—hell, I didn’t either—I knew that, later on, she would feel something. Killing someone for the first time had really fucked me up, and Roxie might’ve been strong, but she hadn’t been around this shit all her life.

“Roxie …”

“Now, Cristian.”

Letting out a sigh, I pulled my phone from my pocket, scrolled to Chiara’s messages, and found the video of Roxie being sexually abused that she had sent me after our meetup. It wasn’t a pretty fucking sight, and I had wanted to delete it the damn moment that I saw it, but things had come up last night. Yet, still, I wished that I could refuse because it was sickening.

“I muted it for you. Don’t turn it on. You’re—”

Instead of listening to a word I’d said, Roxie turned the sound on the lowest damn setting and tapped the play button. The determination on her face faded quickly as she saw those terrible things happening for the first time in her life. While it wasn’t happening to her now, she could really see and understand what had happened.

And the look of despair on her face told me everything I needed to know.

No matter the facade Roxie had put up this past night, she was hurting. Bad.

59

roxie

My family.

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