Page 123 of Cruel Games

“Why?”

Her single-word answer sounded miles away, drowned in a sea of desperation, sadness, and sand. I wanted to know so badly why she’d buried his memory so deep. Why she still didn’t even like looking at the horrors, at the atrocities he’d committed. Why she wasn’t interested in finding out what they’d given to the Guild to kill him.

Hell, she didn’t even seem surprised that I’d obtained that file, nor was she curious as to the how.

My eyes narrowed. “It was you.”

It wasn’t a question. No, something deep inside me screamed that I’d known, that I had suspected all along that it might have been her. But no matter how I tried to bury that stupid thought, it reared its head time and time again, the tiny fragment of suspicion lingering in the air like a mist.

She didn’t confirm or deny my accusation, which only cemented my belief that I was right. I watched those long fingers wrap around her teacup’s handle again as she brought it to her lips, calmly sipping that chamomile she used to calm her nerves.

The tiny slurp sound grated against my bones.

“I was his first domestic girl, you know.”

Her eyes were far away, looking past me, through me, to another time and place. A small, very long-dead part of me stirred, feeling shame that I had forced her to tell a story that no doubt would leave her emotionally raw and wounded. But a selfish part of me screamed that I shouldn’t be the only one to hurt. That I couldn’t be the only one who had to face shattered memories and lies.

“He was fresh off a flight from Dublin, Ireland, and looking for some fun. I was up to no good, looking for something to piss off my parents after I got off work. It was a complete coincidence we both picked the same bar for our purposes.”

A tear trickled down her cheek, landing in that half-glass of chamomile tea. Still, she lifted it, oblivious to the added saltiness of the flavor as she sipped and sipped until it was empty, perhaps a knee-jerk reaction to the thoughts in her head.

Or perhaps she longed for something a little stronger.

“When I went to leave the morning after, he promised me I’d be back. And the next day, I was. It went on for weeks, until I’d grown comfortable with him. And then he let down the curtain he’d hung between the him I saw and the true him. By then, it was too late to leave.”

She took a shuddering breath, shaking her head to steel her nerves. Roscoe inched toward her, but she shook her head, clearly not wanting to taint him with the memories she dragged from the depths of hell where she’d buried them.

“He promised me riches if I stayed with him, and, idiot that I was, I believed him. I was shallow, craving the one thing my family had always grown up without: money. So when he started to morph before my very eyes, I stayed, convinced that things would change. That it was only temporary. A side effect of the stress, maybe.”

“You were young,” Roscoe started, but she held a hand in the air and stopped him mid-sentence.

“I was a fool in love with an idea of a better life. And soon enough, he’d trained me into the perfect girl. And when he knew I’d be obedient to him, when he had me believing I owed him everything, he started to whore me out.”

She shivered, tugging the edges of her robe tighter across her torso. Even in this thick leather coat of Coyote’s I shivered alongside her.

He sold my mother to his friends. To his partners. To randomstrangers rich enough to pay the price he asked tofuck his woman.

“When he started importing girls, he stopped selling me on the side, determined to breed me so he would have a legacy. When you were born a girl, he threatened to kill you and try again.” Her eyes lifted to mine briefly, filled with a burning hatred for a man who could never touch her again, yet still tainted every aspect of her life. “I begged him to let me keep you, and I’d give him a boy on the next try. I sold myself, essentially, any chance of escape, for your life.”

I was floored. The same man who acted as if he were the only person in the world to see me as something special, the man who was my greatest champion, the man who gave the world to me every time I asked for it, had wanted to kill me because I was nothing more than a pawn in his sick game.

“Why am I an only child, then?”

“Because when you were born, I asked them to make it so I could never have another child again.”

So she’d known. She knew that she would never have another child of his.

“You made him a promise you never intended to keep.”

Her nod was solemn. “As long as I kept trying, I could feign ignorance, or take the blame, should he ever find out. Thankfully, he seemed to lose interest after a few years of failure.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and inhaled deeply. “He put me back to work when you turned five.”

And there it was. The reason my mother had drank so much when I was little. The reason she never seemed to go anywhere without a wine goblet in her hands and an afflicted look of disinterest on her face.

Her husband had been selling her body. Myfatherhad only seen a single use for her: a sex slave. And when she wasn’t actively producing his heir, she was a toy for others to play with.

My heart broke for her.

She extended a long finger in the direction of my phone, another tear escaping the corner of her eye. “I know you want answers, but I’m begging you not to listen to what’s on that flash drive. It’ll only hurt you more, and it’s not going to give you any answers you’re looking for.”

---