Page 342 of Tempted By her Daddies

“I don’t know how much you remember,” Roman said. “But Mark, our work colleague, came to our house and drugged you. He kidnapped you.”

Mark.

Oh God. Yes. She remembered Mark. She started shaking.

“Fuck, she’s shaking,” Alexei snarled.

How could he see that? It was so dark in here that she could barely make them out.

“We need to stop upsetting her,” Alexei snarled.

“She has to know what’s going on,” Salem said. “Baby, Mark kidnapped you and then brought you here. There’s a bad man, a criminal that we’ve been trying to track down for a while. He was behind your kidnapping. He wants to kill us all, he’s just waiting for Alina’s men to get here before he’s going to blow this place up.”

Oh.

They knew all that.

“You saw him?” Tamsyn asked.

“Pinky? Yeah?” Alexei said.

“Or perhaps we should call him by his real name. Patrick O’Connor. He’s got the whole world fooled,” Roman said in a strangely bitter voice.

Yeah. He did.

“What did he . . . what did he say to you?”

“Not much,” Salem said. She could hear the curious note in his voice. “He had Mark kidnap you to lure us here. He has a beef with us for trying to take him down and with Alina’s menfor thwarting his plans to get hold of Escana. To put Jeric on the throne with him as the puppet master.”

Right. Yeah.

That had been the plan a while ago.

And when that plan was thwarted, he’d gotten mad, because no one crossed him.

“Come here, Pet,” Salem told her. “Come here to me. I need to hold you.”

“And me,” Alexei said.

“Me too,” Roman added.

Would it hurt to take one more moment? To have one last hug?

Surely not.

She needed this. So she shuffled over toward Salem, bit by painful bit.

God, she hurt.

But it was nothing in comparison to what was coming.

“I would grab you and lift you, but I’m scared I’ll hurt you more,” Salem told her.

She wasn’t sure it was possible to hurt more. This was, by far, the most painful beating she’d ever endured.

Finally, she was close enough that Salem could carefully lift her into his lap with his free arm, holding her loosely.

“Baby,” he murmured. “God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you were kidnapped because of us. Hurt because of us.”

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