Page 90 of Selling Innocence

Horror washed across Kenz’s face. “He bombed an entire hotel to get to one person?”

“Yeah, he did. Twelve people died in the bombing and twenty were seriously injured.”

Kenz turned her gaze back to Vance’s hand, understanding dawning on her features.

He nodded. “This happened that day. I was luckier than many others, but the rubble crushed my hand. They saved as much as they could, but, well, you’ve seen.”

She turned her gaze back to me. “What about you?”

I sighed, hating going back to that day, to the thick, hot air, the smoke that I’d choked on. “I was protecting a man, a scientist working on an important breakthrough. I’d love to explain what it was exactly, but I’m not smart enough to understand it. He was a good man, though, and the company he worked for hired us because he’d become a target for religious extremists who didn’t like his research. Lorien didn’t target him—he just didn’t care who he hurt.”

I rubbed my palm over the top of my thigh. Admitting to one of my greatest failures wasn’t something I enjoyed doing, after all. “We were in the dining room, which was one of the main targets. As soon as the room started to shake, I grabbed him and covered him. Parts of the ceiling fell, but I protected him from them. I knew where the emergency exit was, so I pulled him that way. I checked the hallway to see if it was safe, but when I did, the building shook again because of the damage to the basement. He had time to get through, but he didn’t. Instead, he shoved a kid that was there through just before the doorway collapsed. He never made it out. He was the only client I ever lost, and he died for nothing—just because Lorien was having fun.” Fire burned in my chest at the memory, at the life that had been cut short.

It wasn’t just the loss that hurt, but the pointlessness of it.

My throat tightened and I couldn’t bring myself to speak anymore.

Thankfully, Char took over. “I told you about Isla, my wife.” He stopped there, just staring at Kenz.

Her eyes widened in understanding, which amazed me since he’d given all of nothing in terms of information.

“She was there?”

Char nodded. “We both were. It was an anniversary dinner and she’d wanted to see the place. She’d always wanted to go there, to stay in one of their nice rooms, to eat at the fancy restaurant. I gave her what she wanted, like I always did. I would have been with her, but she was in the lobby, waiting for me to come down for dinner. I was running late because I was dealing with a recent job, and she was used to having to wait for me, so she’d left the room and waited for me in the lobby.”

He sighed and carded his fingers through his hair, brushing it back roughly. Had I ever seen him so undone?

“If I hadn’t been working, she wouldn’t have left early. She might have been in the room with me and survived. Or, if I’d gone and left her in the room, she’d have lived and I wouldn’t have. Fuck, if I’d gone with her, we might have both perished but at least she wouldn’t have died alone.”

I’d never heard Char speak of his wife, of that day, but even five years hadn’t seemed to ease his feelings about it. A glance at Kenz made me sigh.

I doubted any of us would have opened these wounds again for anyone else, would have gone down this memory trip without her.

She peered at Tor, a question in her gaze.

He took out his phone, and a moment later, a text came to us all. The contract came to me, first, but I turned it down. I was busy with other jobs. Even if I had taken it, collateral damage is unforgivable. Lorien is a disease that needs to be cut out.

He slid his phone back into his pocket, but didn’t drop his gaze, staring at Kenz as if trying to explain something with that look.

It amazed me, in a way. We’d bought this girl, forced her to live with us.

When I’d first met her, I’d thought her dull. I’d seen her at the school, having gone to meet Vance, and figured her a rich spoiled brat who had attended in hopes of catching his eye.

When we bought her, when we brought her to the house, I’d still thought her a tool.

A tool I didn’t want any harm to come to, but a tool nonetheless.

That had changed the longer I’d spent with her, the more I’d seen of her. She was smart and tough and sweet enough to burrow into the hardest of hearts. She had turned a cold empty house into a home.

When I returned here, I no longer simply showered and fell into bed. Now dinners happened at the table, and we’d even watched movies in the living room. Where the four of us had seemed frozen in time, trapped in the horrors of that day for five years, stuck in our anger and our loss and unable to move forward, that had only changed when Kenz had come to us.

She hadn’t shoved us forward—she’d coaxed us. She’d been a kind person sitting outside the doghouse of a snarling beast, waiting until they felt comfortable enough to venture out. If she’d reached in, if she’d tried to haul us out, we’d have snapped.

Instead, she’d done the very Kenz thing and just waited, created a soft place, until we’d approached her.

And we had. We proved it here, sitting around her, bearing our wounds so she understood where we came from.

She remained silent for a long moment, her gaze on the ground between us. Was she working through all the information? It was the first time we’d so openly let her see who we were, where we’d not only shown her how we had gotten here, but our past without hiding it at all.

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