Page 135 of Sacrifice (Corrupt Empire 2)

“Okay, Sophie and Cora. Do you want to get cleaned up? I’m not sure you’ll fit in any of my clothes, but we can find you something to wear.”

Sophie, the blonde girl, nodded. Avery put her hand out to them. She got to her feet, pulling Cora up with her. She took the girls into the bathroom before stepping out and leaving them to it. I followed her into the bedroom.

“We’ll just have to give them something of yours for now,” she said. “They’re too tall for my clothes.”

I went over to my cupboard and pulled out a couple of t-shirts. It wasn’t like I couldn’t replace these. We could get them clothes tomorrow before we took them away from here. I handed them to Avery who took them back out into the hallway. She returned, sighing as she walked over to me and wrapped her arms around my back.

“We should probably feed them.”

“You’re right,” I replied, wrapping my arms around her. “Wait… I completely forgot to ask how it was at your parents. Did you find the paperwork?”

She stiffened in my hold.

“I did.”

“Avery…”

“I’m not going to say I enjoyed it. I shouldn’t have gone in the kitchen.”

I stroked her hair. Fuck. I really wish I’d been there for her instead of getting into a fight with Robert fucking Bassington.

“What happened?”

“I remembered everything from that day. There’s still a stain on the floor. I’m okay. It was just hard being there is all.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nuzzled her face on my chest.

“It’s fine. Honestly, I had to face it one day. It is what it is. It happened. There’s nothing either of us can do to change it. Yes, it sucked, but what they did is worse. I just don’t want to go back again. Too many memories.”

I kissed the top of her head. I wished she’d let me go with her, but I understood why she had to do it by herself. Avery was so strong. So fucking capable.

“Why don’t you go start making some food and I’ll call Chuck. We’ll talk about it properly later.”

She nodded, pulling away from me. She went up on her tiptoes and kissed me, wrapping her arms around my neck. When she pulled away, she smiled.

“You know, when I said you were a bad boy, I didn’t mean you should go around getting into fights and coming home black and blue.”

I snorted. This was not something I usually did. Yes, I’d had to rough up a few people in my time, but they rarely hit back. The idiot had brass fucking knuckles and that’s what caused the fucking cuts on my body. It was lucky I was bigger than him. Knocked the fucker right out after a couple of blows to the head. Then I’d managed to hurt myself further beating the crap out of Robert. He wouldn’t be going out for a while.

My parting words to him rang in my ears.

“You won’t fucking breathe a word of this to Chuck or I’ll be back to finish the job. And you fucking tell Rick if he ever takes Avery Daniels again, I will find him and I will fucking kill him. Do you fucking understand?”

Robert had nodded, barely able to see out of his two swollen eye sockets. Idiot. He shouldn’t have fucking laughed at me like I was some kind of joke. It was his own fucking fault. Arrogant prick thought he was safe. He had no idea who he was dealing with. I’d met him on a handful of occasions. He’d always sneered at me like I was a piece of dirt on his shoe. Didn’t matter that I was technically his friend’s son. He thought he was better than me. I’d given him a fucking wakeup call.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“Please do. I don’t want to patch you up again.”

“Mmm, I quite liked you nursing me back to health.”

She pulled away from me, shoving my chest. I winced and she immediately looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Go check on the girls and I’ll speak to Chuck.”

She nodded, giving me a smile before disappearing from the room.

I pulled my phone out. It was time I sorted this shit out and made sure we had time to hide the girls before he found out I’d taken them from Robert. If this didn’t work, we’d be in serious shit. As if we weren’t in enough already.

I had to fix this.

Fix it so I could keep Avery safe.

And then we were going to work out our next move.

Because Avery and I were in this together.

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