Page 17 of Two Hearts' Christmas Homecoming

And as time went on, they’d seen less and less daylight, and rarely had the opportunity to leave the squalor of the barn where they were housed, except for when they were transported for their designated assignations with clients. Zane had been certain that someone else had taken over, and after a while Lex had to agree.

One night, Lex had been escorted from the farm to meet a customer at a nice hotel somewhere in or around Milwaukee, within an hour’s drive of the farm.

At least as far as Lex could remember. He’d been especially groggy that night. For some reason, he’d been drugged up a lot more than usual. Maybe because they’d been taking him to a brand-new client, someone who was obviously more important than others he’d…serviced.

But there had been a difference between this man and most of the other clients that Lex had been sent to.

Despite the fact that he’d done everything he’d been told to do, none of them had beat him and choked him so badly, that he’d nearly been suffocated to death.

After surviving three other encounters, each one more brutal than the other, the worst that could happen did. Jay, his handler, had shaken him awake in the hotel room.

“Damn it, Lex,” Jay had been screaming. “What did you do?”

Wearily glancing around the room, which had been difficult to do since one of his eyes was swollen shut from the beating the client had given him during the night, Lex had slowly sat upright, puzzled to see that he was alone with Jay.

Usually, when Lex was getting ready to be taken away from the hotel room to return to the farm, not only was the client in the room, but also one of his bodyguards, who usually paid off Jay while Lex got dressed before they left.

“What do you mean?” Lex had asked, completely confused. Nothing unusual had happened as far as he could remember. Again, he’d been beaten and punched in the face, choked so hard, he could barely breathe. And, well…abused much more aggressively sexually than he had during their previous encounters.

As drugged as he’d always been during their hours of long assignations, one thing Lex would always remember was the man’s face, his eyes in particular. Dark, black, and…soulless.

“Youkilledhim,” Jay had screamed with surprising annoyance as he stood, grabbing his scattered clothing from around the room. “We need to get you out of here. Hurry up and get dressed.”

Jay threw Lex’s clothes at him.

Lex had always questioned that moment. There’d been something puzzling about the fact that Jay had simply been impatient at the time, rushing to get Lex away from the hotel.

His entire body feeling broken, his legs had given out from under him a few times as he’d tried to stand. Finally, he was able to pull on the khaki pants and button-down shirt that he was ordered to wear so as not to look too out of place when he was walking through the hotel lobby.

His mind still wasn’t processing what Jay had told him.

“What do you mean Ikilledhim?” Lex had asked.

“You shoved him off the balcony, you idiot. His bodyguard saw you and he’s calling the police right now,” Jay had growled. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before the cops arrive. We can sneak out in the service elevator which will take us directly to the car that I left in the parking garage.”

They’d managed to leave the hotel rather quickly through a doorway into the garage that was obviously intended for hotel employees. For some reason, Jay hadn’t bothered to drug him like he usually had before they’d returned to the farm, and as distressed and in pain as he’d been, Lex managed to keep track of the route that they traveled back to the farm.

As much as Lex had wanted to imagine that Jay’s account of the night before was some kind of fiction, he went out of his way to get Lex alone the following day and recite the newspaper headline for the day along with some of the text.

“Billionaire Murdered—suspect at large,”Jay had read, pointing at the paper.

Instead of letting Lex try and read more, which was hard for Lex to do in the first place since he’d only attended school when he’d been very young, Jay had threatened him instead, much to his surprise.

“Don’t you ever try to escape or I’ll turn you in. The cops wouldn’t have any trouble matching your DNA from objects left in that room.”

It had been about that time that Zane had talked about a plan of escape. Both Zane and Lex had noticed that besides the couple that had always been in charge, there appeared to be no one but Jay and one other person taking care of them at the farm. Believing Jay after what had happened with his client, Lex had decided not to go along with Zane when he made his escape. If Zane got away, there was still a possibility that he could still get help for everyone who was being held at the farm.

But then Caleb had arrived, and within a few weeks, there were rumors circulating that he would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Lex had become aware that there weren’t many new kids arriving anymore, and he had a feeling he knew why.

They were phasing out the prostitution ring and were going to begin focusing more on trafficking. More than likely, their location had been compromised, so everyone was probably going to be moved. Lex had never told Zane that this wasn’t his first go around when it came to being held in captivity. Although he pretended to be an open book, Lex knew Zane would probably be shocked by the things that Lex had been forced to do to survive for as long as he remembered. As close as the two had become, Lex was ashamed that his life had ended up in the gutter, especially after he’d supposedly killed that client. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing the only true friend he’d ever really had, so he’d kept quiet. At least Zane had never given up hope that life could be better.

But to Lex, everything that had happened during the last few days seemed too good to be true.

“Lex?” Zane sat up suddenly in the bed across the room. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Lex replied. “I slept pretty good last night, so I’m having a little trouble falling asleep.”

“You’re nervous about having to hear what the doctor has to say after the blood tests, aren’t you?”

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