Page 227 of Legacy
“And that’s when we found them.”
My throat tightens. “Found who?”
He finally glances over his shoulder.
His eyes are dark. Not just stormy. Drenched.
“Trafficked girls,” he says. “Locked in cages like animals. All different ages. Some too young to understand what was happening to them. Some too old to pretend they didn’t.”
I cover my mouth. A chill spreads down my spine.
“We should’ve told our fathers. Gone to the table. Planned it properly.”
“But you didn’t,” I whisper.
He shakes his head once.
“No. We were young. Stupid. Angry. Thought we were invincible. So we did it ourselves.”
He ladles sauce into a pan, movements precise, controlled. But his voice is unraveling.
He keeps talking, steady—like he hasn’t just shifted my entire world.
“We made a plan,” he says, stirring the sauce. “Stakeouts. Tracking shipments. We figured out where they were storing the girls.”
A pause.
“And one night… we struck.”
My pulse spikes.
I want to say something.
But I don’t.
Because his voice shifts. Just barely.
“We got the girls out,” he continues. “All of them. Safe. Alive. We locked the doors and burned the place down.”
For a second, it sounds noble.
Heroic.
I exhale shakily. “You—burned it?”
Angelo nods sharply. “With Vartan and Arsen Sarkisian inside.”
I gasp. My blood ices over.
“What?” The word escapes before I can stop it.
He looks at me, eyes dark. “They were there. I saw them.”
My breath catches hard in my throat. “Vartan and Arsen Sarkisian?” I whisper. “That Vartan?Everyone thought—there were rumors, no one ever—oh my God.”
He nods again. No denial. No spin.
“You’re the one who—” I press my palm flat to my chest, trying to calm the pounding. “You killed Vartan?”
