Page 54 of Hidden Heir

“Bedroom.”

I take the stairs two at a time, not giving a shit about my father right now, although the urge to track him down and fight him is pretty damn strong. Brooke is my responsibility and I know there’s no way this was an accident. I don’t know what the fuck kind of game he’s playing, but I shove it aside for the moment.

Brooke is more important.

Sprinting into her room, she yelps in fright at my sudden appearance, then glares at me through tear-filled eyes. “Get out!”

A suitcase is open on the bed, half filled with clothes dragged from her closet. Drawers hang open in her room as well as the ensuite. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Brooke sniffles, grabbing another armful of clothing. “I’m leaving.”

“No,” I snap as coldness spreads through my limbs. “No, you’re not.”

“You can’t stop me!” She tosses the pile of clothes, hangers and all, into the suitcase. “People, Leon? You’re sellingpeople? Do you have any idea how…” She pauses, all of the color dramatically draining from her face. I step forward as she places a hand against her chest and winces, immediately stepping away from me. “Don’t you dare come near me. Don’t you dare!”

“Brooke, please?—”

“I can’t evenlookat you!” She shouts as fresh tears roll down her cheeks. “All those poor people, I–I knew you were dangerous. I knew there was something going on but I never would’ve guessed this. I thought maybe you were stealing weapons and reselling them at a higher profit, or perhaps embezzling money, something along those lines. I didn’t give it much thought because I didn’t want to. I even considered drugsbut you—!” She points one sharp finger at me, panting. “You sell people!”

“Brooke, you have to listen to me. You’re distraught. You need to take a breath and calm down.”

“Don’t youdaretell me to calm down!” Brooke yells at me. “I saw them! I saw all those people and it sickened me. How can you do that? How can you ship people like they’re livestock?”

The chill under my skin turns into a blazing inferno, feeding into the anger that seeps through my chest. “It’s business, Brooke. You had no problem with that when I was taking on your debt, did you? Did you never stop to think about where my money came from? My family has been making millions for generations. How we do it is?—”

“Slavery!” She screams. “You kidnap and sell people into slavery, don’t you? I saw their faces. I saw how scared they were. It’s not like you’re rescuing people.”

“Some of them come from?—”

“Don’t you dare try to justify what you’re doing. I didn’t think it was anything beyond drugs or guns.”

“Is that any better?” I snap. “Selling shit that kills people?”

“At least those people have a choice!” She yells louder than I’ve ever heard her before. Red flushes across her face and she resumes dragging armfuls of clothes from the closet. “Even Ant has a fucking choice to take those drugs but kidnapping? Slavery? What do you sell those people into exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I say, taking another step forward. “I don’t look into that. People pay and?—”

She barks out a sharp, pained laugh and stops packing. “You don’t even know? You’re a monster, you know that? I can’t believe I thought I was falling inlovewith you. You’re disgusting! How can you do that to innocent people? How can you be so cruel?”

Her words wound me deeply but my anger quickly snuffs out the pain. “It’s just how it is, alright? Generations ago, my family did what they had to in order to survive. There’s a market for it, and if we weren’t filling it then someone else would. So we took it on. The Koval family has been doing this for decades, and my father put his blood, sweat and tears into making sure this business was successful.”

“But you’re in charge now!” Brooke yells through her tears. “You’re the boss! You could have stopped the suffering of so many yet you’re now responsible for it!”

“Brooke.” I close the gap between us and grab her shoulders. “Those people aren’t real, okay? You don’t know them. They shouldn’t matter to you because they are nothing. They are simply product, understand? They are numbers on a piece of paper that you send where they need to go for payment. That’s all it is, just business!”

She glares at me with pure venom in her eyes. “Is that what you tell yourself to justify such cruelty?”

Suddenly, I’m thirteen again having this exact argument with my father and my stomach twists into a thousand knots. When he let me in on the family business, my reaction was much the same as Brooke’s. Of course, my father was quick to beat out any sympathy I had for the product and I changed my view. It’s my family’s legacy, and things work this way because that’s how he set it up. How his father set it up.

It’s this way because it just… is.

“Those people are nothing to you,” I snap, forcing myself to lower my voice as my grip tightens on Brooke. “I’m the one saving you. Paying off your debt. That money is saving your family’s life and suddenly you have a problem with it?”

Brooke wrenches herself out of my grip. “If I knew where it came from I never would have accepted your offer. Hell, I neverwould have come here because… how can you think about what those people are sold into and not feel utterly sick?”

My hands curl into fists as rage at my father blooms in my chest. If he’d just kept this to himself, or let me tell Brooke in my own time, this would never have happened.

“It’s not my responsibility to think beyond that,” I reply tightly. “Do you think about the flowers you sell? Or do you forget about them after they’ve served their purpose?”

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