Page 100 of Broken Dreams

Glancing at him, I watch as his cheeks pinken.

“It was a surprise. I set up the swing in your nest, and we bought a second for the courtyard. It felt like a nice addition,” he admits.

It is. Thank you,I tell him.

“I’m going to pretend these are normal swings,” Mom teases us. My cheeks get red hot now, despite my previous occupation as a sex worker.

“So what did Miles want in return for work?” Duncan asks. “Quinn?”

“Basically,” Mom says. “Over the course of that year, the conversation between Hudson and I got more and more heated until we were having screaming fights while you were at school. What he was doing was the opposite of what any father worth his salt should ever do.”

“It sounds as if he didn’t care,” Linus whispers.

“Not at all,” Mom says. “Then, the day that you went with those awful girls to the mall, he locked me in the attic. I screamed, kicked, and tried to break the window up there, but nothing worked. I watched you walk out of the house, knowing you probably wouldn’t come back.”

“Fuck,” Callum says. “Hudson arranged the whole thing.”

“He did, and he held me against the wall as he told me all about it, the cuntbag,” Mom mutters. The curse makes my eyes widen, but my father should be called so many more things. “The girls knew you were going to be kidnapped, and he asked them to take you to a very specific location.”

Oh my God.My memories are tumbled into snapshots of the past due to how much time has passed, but I remember the way they’d acted.

What about the guards?I ask her, turning the tablet.

“They knew as well, at least the ones who were loyal to him,” she replies. “It was all timed out to ensure Miles would get his hands on you. I’m?—”

NO, I tell her, shaking my head.

She was just as much a victim. There was nothing she could have done, other than get us both out. Mom loved my dad, and maybe part of her still does.

I don’t know. My father is not a good man, though.

“Once he let me out to confirm that you were gone, I attacked him,” Mom rasps. “I scratched his face up, kicked, and acted like a wild animal. He justlaughed. Hudson grabbed me by the hair and dragged me down the stairs, throwing me at men who were wearing white jackets. I spent a week at what used to be called the Weeping Willow Institute. The doctor there gave me electroshock therapy, trying to tell me my daughter was in a better fucking place.”

By this point, my mom and I are crying again. Duncan sniffles, shaking his head, while Callum has a single tear trailing down his cheek.

Mom was a mother to them as well, and we all lost her in a sense.

“No wonder you were a ghost of yourself,” Callum says. “Hudson was such a prick to be around. Duncan and I had a really hard time being near him as he gathered the support of the community, as if he didn’t do all of this himself.”

“All of it,” she agrees. “So I just floated from place to place, and contemplated ending things many times. Until, I found out that you were alive. I called the boys and told them to come get me, but your father tried to ruin that too.”

“He was on the way home,” Duncan says. “We barely got away, right out the front gate as he was coming in.”

Wow. So many things tried to go wrong, and still, my mom is here.

“Does she still go to this dinner?” Duncan groans. “We’ve put things in place to keep her as safe as possible, but shit can go sideways quickly.”

“Insist on having it in a neutral place,” Mom says, nodding. “He has no power anymore. If you’re going to kill Hudson, you need allies.”

My mother is definitely a mafia wife, and understands power dynamics well. We’re all trying to pull ourselves together after crying, though we still look rough around the edges. I’m exhausted from all the emotion dumping too.

“Let’s get some sleep, looks like we have some work to do,” Callum says. “I’m going to go help Morris find Miles. There might be something in those emails that may help, but if nothing else, I can pull his IP address.”

“Most people don’t understand technology,” Duncan agrees.

From my memories, I can say they’re right. Alpha Miles really didn’t understand anything tech-based. He’d make me do tasks for him while naked, hack into things while sitting on his cock. Fuck, I need to stop thinking about it before I vomit.

Too late.

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