Page 57 of Seducing Selena

“I’m not what they say I am,” I said, voice quivering again and tears rising. “I don’t know how this happened, or why I’m here. I’m not supposed to be here.”

Seb held out his hand in a familiar gesture, and I found myself leaning into his touch, shifting to rest against his knee. His hand stayed on the back of my head. This was the only place I’d really found peace. I didn’t know if that was the most fucked thing in the universe, but right now? I didn’t care.

“What’s on the phone, sweetheart?”

“Their instructions,” I mumbled.

I heard the phone unlock, and the deathly silence as they read through the letter. No need to read it out loud. The words were burned in my brain.

“Fucking hell,” Derek said. “Did you know anything about these people?”

The question wasn’t directed at me.

“No,” Seb said. “But I’d like to give them a piece of my fucking mind.”

“Are the jammers on?” Nick asked.

“Always. But I’ll double check.” Sebastian stood and gently pulled away.

Derek came down on his knees in front of me, pulling me up into his arms. “I am so sorry,gattina. Nothing is going to happen to Anna, baby. I promise.”

I melted into his arms, even though I knew I shouldn’t. “How can you be sure?”

“Because we’re going to take care of it,” Nick said. “We have all the information they want, and it’s nothing like they think.”

Lifting me off the ground, Derek settled back on the couch with me on his lap. “We have some truth to tell you too, and I’m so sorry we couldn’t tell you sooner. We’re not who you think we are.”

I looked up at him as Sebastian returned and sat. Nick’s hand soothed up and down my arm from where he sat behind me, and then he stood, moving to perch on the coffee table so I could see all three of them. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Derek said. “Our names are the same, but we’re not… we don’t sell people, Selena. Or own people. We’re trying totake downthose people. All the women at the auction? They were Betas. Specially trained andwearingOmega hormones in order to pass so they could trace the people who bought them. We’re close to having all the major players within reach, and then we’re going to arrest all of them. Including Delano.”

His words sank in, and I couldn’t wrap my head around them. “What?”

Sebastian reached out and put his hand on my ankle, rubbing slowly. “We work for the government and have been undercover for three years trying to take this trafficking network down.”

Derek held me closer. “So when you walked out into the middle of the auction smelling like you did, we didn’t know what to do. Delano offered to pay an unlimited amount of money for you. And he isn’t like us. He would torture you for sport. Make you a real slave. He would have broken and killed you. And I…” He shuddered. “I couldn’t let that happen. Because as soon as I scented you, I knew,gattina. I knew that you were mine.”

I pushed up away from him, and he let me go. My body needed to move. Clutching the blanket around my chest, I started to pace. “So the Syndicate sent me in here to find the hormones, and you’re not even the people who are making them?” Rage flowed through me. “This was all for nothing? Everything I did—”

“No,” Nick stood and came to me. “We know who makes them and harvests them. That’s a separate operation, and we couldn’t shut it down until ours goes first because they’re so tangled together. But I promise, the hormones we use… they don’t inject them. That’s not what you’re supposed to do with them. The ones who are injecting them are looking for the high, and you know firsthand how that can work out.”

My mind whirled, and I didn’t know how to think or feel. “So all of this? Everything… You don’t really like this? You don’t…”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Sebastian said. “There’s a reason we were chosen for this mission. But in our own lives, you would be a willing slave, Selena.”

“There’s no such thing.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t there? Come here.”

Everything was out in the open now. I didn’t have to obey him, but I still did, and I didn’t resist him when he pulled me down to straddle his lap. “Will you let me paint a picture for you?”

“Okay…”

Slowly, he lifted his hand and slid it behind my neck. His touch felt different now. It was just as possessive, but there was less expectation there.

“You’re a nurse?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

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