Page 87 of Massacre
“I knew something had changed when he stopped wanting me. At first, I thought it was because I had done something wrong, or maybe I had embarrassed him. He never really said anything. He just came home one day and told me an associate of his was coming to dinner and that I would be expected to be‘extra nice’to him.When I asked what that meant, he got angry and slapped me. He told me I owed him and it wasn’t my place to question him. For two more years he used me to broker deals until one day the man he worked for decided he didn’t want to share me, and Dan sold me to him,” she said, then shook her head as she turned to look at me, tears streaming down her face. “You saved me from hell.”
“Yeah, I did, baby,” I said, gathering her in my arms, holding her close. “And I always will.”
“Dan has friends, Massacre. Lots of them. They used to come to the house all the time. They would talk for hours about things that made no sense to me. Like moving shipments of pizza and hot dogs in and out of Miami, Florida. Which I thought odd, because Dan only ate pizza from the bakery down the street.”
I stiffened and slowly sat up before I asked, “He specifically said pizza and hot dogs from Miami?”
Amber nodded. “Yeah.”
“What else did he discuss, baby?”
Leaning on her elbows, she frowned as she looked at me. “I don’t know. I didn’t really listen when his associates were around, but I do remember Dan showing me pictures of a place called Sunshine Kids. He was very happy that the place was up and running. I just thought it had to do with his work.”
FUCK!
FUCK!
FUCK!
Getting to my feet, I started pacing the room. Reaper and Gio were going to lose their fucking minds when I told them this shit.
Fuck me. Lorenzo was going to go fucking ballistic!
Sunshine Kids was the brainchild of Sylvia St. James, one of the founding members of theSociety. The bitch was stark raving mad and thank the fuck dead, but if Amber was right, her fucking charity, the very one that worked with Devlin Scott and the Trick Pony to move children in and out of the country, meant that we still had a fucking problem.
“Massacre, what’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”
Rushing back over to her, I sat, taking her hands in mine. “No, baby. You didn’t do or say anything wrong. You said Dan showed you photographs of that place. Can you tell me what you saw?”
“Just a bunch of kids running around. Some were playing outside. Others were in classrooms learning. Dan told me it was a safe haven, a charity for kids the system failed.”
“Did he ever tell you where this place was exactly?”
“No.” She slowly shook her head. “He never said, but I remember the emblem embroidered on their shirts. It was of a black pony with yellow and orange sunrays behind it.”
A chill crawled up my spine as I connected the fragments in my mind. Amber, her adoption, Dan, Sunshine Kids, Trick Pony, theSociety—it was all part of a tangled web, a network of secrets and shadows that I thought we and others brought down years ago. But my gut was telling me we had only scratched the surface.
I squeezed her hands, steadying my own nerves. “That emblem—can you draw it for me, baby?” I asked, handing her a pen and a scrap of paper from the battered nightstand.
She nodded, brows knitted in concentration as she sketched the outline—a black pony rearing against a burst of yellow and orange. I watched the image bloom in ink, a grotesquely cheerful badge for something so sinister. When she was done, she handed it to me, and I slipped it into my back pocket.
“It’s not a place that helps kids, is it?”
“No, baby. It’s not,” I said as she sighed, then laid back down on the bed and rolled over, giving me her back. She’d already been through enough. I didn’t want this crap touching her.
Climbing onto the bed, I laid down next to her and pulled her into my arms.
“This nightmare will never end. Will it?”
“As long as there are sick people in this world, Amber, there will always be nightmares for some. Maybe not for most, but for the innocent few, that’s where the Golden Skulls come in. It’s what we do.”
“That’s why you were there that day in Louisiana, wasn’t it?”
“Partly, yes. The club got a lead on Remi. When we got there, that’s when we learned the whole truth.”
“And when you found me.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “When I found you.”
