Page 21 of Mine, Forever

He laughed, turning back to me from the doorway. I could only see his outline, and it haunted me in a way I couldn’t quite describe. A part of me wanted him to come back, and a part of me wanted to set him on fire for what he was doing to me.

“Don’t lose that fire in you, doll face. It’ll be the only thing you have left at the end.”

Tears reigned free down my face as I fought to keep the sobbing at bay. I couldn’t get out of this predicament. After all those years of manipulation at the hands of those bitches in prison and keeping myself alive while on the streets, I knew I couldn’t get myself out of this, and it scared the hell out of me.

I had to make a promise to myself so I could stay alive long enough to get free. I would focus all my effort on playing the game until I sought vengeance against Jett Black for everything he had done to me.

JETT

I watched the guy squirming in the chair, the tape so tightly wrapped around him I could see his skin on his arms turning a reddish-purple. For the past two weeks, I’d been tracking down Giordy’s friends who had been associated with him around the time Ebony was fifteen.

This was friend number four.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about!”

York whacked him across the knees with a stick. He screamed like a little girl, tears running down his cheeks. Usually, this would bring me joy, but right now I wasn’t feeling it, and I knew it was because I wasn’t making any fucking progress. My patience was long gone, which meant my gun was about to be pulled out to waste yet another guy fucking with me.

“Ebony Caine,” I said, holding up her mugshot. “Remember?”

“Oh... you mean Adora-Lee’s kid?”

“Yes...”

“What about her? She’s a felon.”

“Do you remember her a little more… vividly?”

His eyes widened, and he shook his head quickly. “No, I’m not like that. She was just a kid.”

“Who else showed a particular interest in her, if not you?”

“I can’t. He’ll kill me.”

“I’ll kill you,” I said, angrily. “Either quickly, or I’ll drag it out. Kill your family. Your kids. Then as you watch your world wither away around you, I’ll slowly torture you until your body gives up.”

He sobbed while I waited for a name. Yes, I was a sadistic man who enjoyed the pain of others but for the last couple of weeks, I’d been on a mission to find out who had hurt Ebony. I found myself caring about her, somehow she had wormed her way into my cold, dead heart, and I didn’t like it. When I found the man who had taken her away from her innocence, I was going to hurt him and all he held dear, and then I was going to flush the memory from her mind and send her on her fucking way into a new life so I could get back to mine.

“Name.”

“I only know one person. He wasn’t the one that did it, but he’s hiding the man who did. His name is John Lambert.”

I sat back on the chair I’d been sitting on, annoyed this fuckhead was wasting my time with names I knew didn’t exist anymore. “John Lambert is dead.”

“No, he’s not. Just in hiding.”

A flurry of emotion made its way into my chest. Although I had closed that part of my life down, I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard. I nodded to York who hit the guy over the head, knocking him out cold.

“Who the fuck is John Lambert?” York asked.

“Someone I had buried a long time ago, or so I thought.”

“Someone I should track down?”

“Yes. I need to find out where he is, if he’s alive. This fuck may be lying… let’s hope he is.”

“Anything I should know first.”

“I guess I should tell you the first thing you’re going to find out. John Lambert is my father.”

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