Page 36 of Pay the Price

I hated the way my stomach warmed at his use of the nickname. I crossed my arms over my chest, like that would head off all the warm and fuzzy feelings that had come crashing back now that I was back in the company of the Beasts. “Fine, keep going.”

“Blake started spending more,” Wolf said. “A lot more.”

“But it wasn’t just the spending,” Otis said. “He was keeping secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?” I asked.

“The ‘selling girls’ kind,” Jace said.

Wolf glared at him.

“The selling…” I forced myself to breathe, positive I hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?”

Wolf drew in a breath. “We didn’t know at first, but then Blake started talking about someone else, someone he was working with, someone who had a way to make money using girls.”

“Like… prostitution?” I asked, trying to figure out what the actual fuck they were talking about.

“You’re getting warm,” Jace said. There was still an undercurrent of derision in his voice, but there was something else there too. Something like an apology. Like he wasn’t entirely thrilled to be telling this story.

“Not prostitution,” Otis said. “Trafficking.”

Wolf lowered his head to his hand in disbelief.

“Trafficking? You’re… you’re saying Blake was trafficking girls?” I felt like an idiot even saying the word because there was no way —no way— my brother had been trafficking girls.

“Well, not yet. Not then,” Otis said. Wolf shook his head and Otis blinked. “What? We said we were going to tell her everything.”

“Just… maybe ease into it a little, for fuck’s sake,” Wolf said.

“Maybe don’t,” I said, aware that my voice had grown cold. What kind of bullshit was this? “If you’re going to feed me a bunch of lies, you might as well feed them to me straight.”

“They’re not lies, Daisy.” If Wolf’s use of my actual name hadn’t been enough to scare me, his voice was, because there was real regret in it. The apology I’d heard in Jace’s voice times a million. Wolf didn’twantto be saying what he was saying. “Blake was working with someone. We don’t know who — Blake called him the boss or Mr. X, but…”

I stared at him. “But?”

Wolf sighed. “We always wondered if it was your dad.”

I stood and headed for the hall on autopilot. I wasn’t listening to this shit.

“Daisy, wait!” Otis called after me.

I turned to face them. “Blake isdead. Youkilledhim. And now you’re going to talk this shit about him? About mydad,who lost his son?”

It wasn’t like there was any love lost between my dad and I at the moment, but this was fucked up. I didn’t know what hurt more: the lies the Beasts were telling or the fact that they were the ones telling them.

That everyone had been right about them after all.

Wolf stood and walked toward me. He reached out a hand. “Please…”

“Don’t you dare touch me,” I said.

Hurt flashed in his blue eyes, but he nodded and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I promise you, we’re getting there, and it all ties into your kidnapping. Just… please. Sit down and let us finish, and then if you decide you want us to go, we’ll go.”

I eased back into the chair by the fireplace, watching them like a wary animal, because that was how I felt: trapped, cornered.

By them? By the stories they were telling? By the turn of my stomach that worried they were the first ones to tell me the truth in a long time?

Maybe all of the above.

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