Page 65 of Love From the Ashes

“You ungrateful bitch!” She spat on me. “I’ll tell Denny where you live. You’ll be sorry you kicked me out.” Her voice was shrill as she screamed at me, her face contorting with her rage.

Reid grabbed her from Anderson, seeing him struggle to hold her. She was like a wild animal, trying to kick, scratch, and bite to get to me.

Anderson opened the front door while Reid and Lawrence tossed my mother and Nick out of the house. The three of them stood on the front steps for a few minutes, and then they came back inside, Reid taking one last look toward the street before locking the door. Lawrence and Anderson disappeared downstairs. Reid headed toward the staircase, his expression dark.

I hurried toward Reid, stepping in front of him in the foyer to block his path. “Reid, I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.” I reached out to touch his chest.

He grabbed my hand and looked down at me with ice-cold eyes. “Don’t touch me.” He brusquely tossed my hand to the side.

“Reid, please, don’t do this. Don’t be mad. Please. I’m sorry.” I reached out again, and he brushed my hand away.

“I said don’t touch me. I can’t even wrap my mind around what I just heard and saw. Those people are your family. They’re disgusting street trash. You lied to me. All this time, you’ve been lying. And you were a prostitute in training by your mother’s pimp? God knows what all her other boyfriends did. I don’t even want to be near you. This garbage makes me sick. I’m leaving. I’ll stay in a hotel tonight.”

“Reid, please, I’m begging you. Don’t be mad at me. I don’t want you to leave.”

“Move out of my way, Sofie. I need to go upstairs and pack a bag.”

“No, please,” I sobbed.

Reid pushed me to the side and headed toward the stairs.

I leaned against the wall, tears streaming down my face, my whole world falling apart. I heard Reid coming back down a few minutes later. Desperate for him to stay, I rushed to the bottom of the staircase to stop him from leaving. “Reid, please don’t go.”

He shook his head. “I can’t stay here. I can’t stomach being near you right now.” He brushed past me and went out the front door.

I crumpled to the bottom step, my head leaning against the rail. My heart felt shattered, my mind and body in agony, the emotional toll too much to bear. I sobbed, the tears endlessly falling as I felt myself slipping away into a pit of despair.

CHAPTER 23

Gone

Awake most ofthe night, Reid couldn’t get the scene with Sofie and her family out of his mind. It played over and over, the images it evoked of what those men and Sofie’s mother had done to her making him both angry and sick. Finally falling asleep sometime around four o’clock this morning, he’d overslept, arriving to work an hour late. Although Sofie would be at work upstairs, he didn’t want to see her. The emotion and pain from last night were still too raw. With a moderately busy calendar, he’d have to push his personal situation aside and try to make it through the day. He would deal with Sofie and her unsettling revelations at home this evening. Although at this point, he had no idea where their conversation would take them or what he would say.

After grabbing a cup of coffee from the kitchenette around the corner from Mavin’s desk, Reid walked past his mother’s office on his way to his. He heard her call out his name and backtracked several steps until he was standing in her doorway. “Mother? What did you need?”

“My God, you look horrible. You’ve got bags under your eyes and look exhausted and pale. Are you ill?” she said, looking him over from head to toe.

“I stayed in a hotel last night and didn’t get much sleep. I need to change. I’ve got an extra suit in my office.” Reid turned to walk away.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Sit down.”

Reid sighed, his shoulders sagging. He slowly turned around. “Look, I’m still upset and confused, and I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve got some work I need to get done this morning, so you’ll have to excuse me.”

“Based on your appearance, I’d say you need to talk about it. I suspect this wasn’t a little argument.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Reid gazed down at the floor as he shook his head. He looked back at his mother. “I’m still trying to get a grip on what happened. It almost seems too bizarre to be real.”

“Sweetheart, sit down.” His mother’s voice had changed and was now softly comforting. She motioned to the chair in front of her desk. “Nothing helps better than talking about it.”

“Fine.” Reid sat in one of her guest chairs. He rubbed his forehead, feeling as horrible as he knew he looked. “We had a visit from Sofie’s mother and brother last night.”

“I didn’t know she had a brother, and I thought her mother had died years ago.”

“That’s what I thought based on what Sofie had told me. After seeing them in person and hearing Sofie’s mind-blowing and grossly disturbing stories, I can see why she chose to pretend they didn’t exist. I don’t think ‘degenerate street trash’ even adequately captures their disgusting qualities. To put it bluntly, her mother is a prostitute and, from what I could gather based on her looks and the comments flying back and forth, is also a drug addict. As far as Sofie’s brother goes, he’s probably worse. If I had to guess, I’d categorize him as a street hustler and drug dealer, maybe a pimp, who knows. Sofie said horrific things about them and informed me she’s been hiding from them for several years. Her brother is the one that broke into our house, and he’s been threatening Sofie, which she didn’t bother to tell me. I ended up punching him out and then escorted him and Sofie’s mother out the door with the help of Lawrence and Anderson. To say it was an ugly scene is a huge understatement.”

His mother’s expression changed while he spoke. Her eyes suddenly clouded over as if hiding something.

“You need to start from the beginning. I want to hear what happened from the time Sofie’s family showed up to the point you left,” his mother said.

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