Page 97 of Sacrifice (Corrupt Empire 2)

My suspicions about who it was burnt in my lungs. I put the mug down, afraid I’d throw it at the wall. It was him. It had to be. Fuck. This was the worst fucking thing that could’ve happened.

“Tell me.”

She looked away.

“He showed me a video of my father… I… Aiden, I can’t. It’s too much.”

I reached out, cupping her face and stroking her cheek with my thumb. I had to know. I had to fucking know what she saw.

“Tell me.”

“It… it was my parents and your mother,” she whispered. “He… he whipped her and then he was going to… to… and I couldn’t look. I threw up over myself and the floor and made him turn it off.”

My stomach dropped along with my hand. He’d made her sit through that. She started talking about what else he’d made her watch, but I was only half listening. There was video evidence of what Mitchell had done to her. How could I have never known this? I’d found his journal, which went into depth about how he’d used her, but a video. Fuck.

“Then he let me go, he said we’d meet again but the next time he’d tell me everything. I don’t understand, Aiden. None of it makes any sense. I don’t know why he’d show me all that stuff when he’s involved in it. He was awful. He kept calling me darling, but he didn’t pronounce it like that. He kept dropping the g, it was like darlin’.”

“Take it darlin’.”

“Don’t lie darlin’.”

Her words snapped me back to the present. I looked at her. The dread in my chest worsened. The knowledge of who had taken an interest in her burnt through me. I’d known he would never leave me alone. Hell, I’d fucking known he was probably keeping an eye on me just as I was him. And now he was threatening everything. He’d proven to me just how fucking untouchable he was by taking her. The girl he knew I loved.

“Because he could. That’s what he does.”

Her eyes widened.

“You… you know who it is.”

I took a breath. I could no longer ignore my suspicions. It was the only logical explanation.

“Yes.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I told you one day he’d come after me and perhaps you.”

She put her mug down on the coffee table and shuffled closer to me, wrapping a hand around my neck whilst the other cupped my cheek.

“Your… sperm donor?”

If this wasn’t such a serious conversation, I would’ve smiled at the term she’d used. It was apt. I’d never call him, my father. He hadn’t earnt that right. He was no one’s fucking father. A monster in a fucking shiny suit with slicked-back hair and soulless eyes.

“Yes… Rick Morgan.”

“Why have I heard that name before?”

“Because he’s the CEO of The Harris Corporation in the US.”

“My family does business with them regularly.”

“Yes, they do and I can’t do a fucking thing about him. He’s dangerous. Far more so than Chuck and Frazier. You want to know why he knows so much about me? About us? Well, there you go. He has his fingers in too many pies.”

Her expression was pensive, her body tense.

“He doesn’t have any kids with his wife.”

“No. Technically I’m his only offspring. I doubt she knows about my existence. He repeatedly raped my mother and knocked her up. That isn’t the type of thing a man like him wants to be made public.”

She was silent, looking at me with heart-rending sorrow. She didn’t pity me or feel sorry for me. She just felt empathy. I was the spawn of a monster. Just like her in so many ways.

“I don’t want you to worry about him, princess.” I stroked her hair. “He won’t harm you.”

---