“Besides that,” Liv cut in, “Van has a talent for training people to obey. I'm sure a sweet submissive girlfriend would say just about anything.”
He tightened his fists beneath the table and whispered furiously, “That's logical if I were trying to con anyone else. But you have both been there. You'd recognize coercion from a mile away.” He turned to Joshua. “And you read people better than anyone I know.” He flicked a hand at Liv. “If you can see through her fucking masks, you should damn well be able to see through mine and my girlfriend's.”
His former slaves stared at him with furrowed brows as if they were considering his words.
“I'm just asking for a chance.” His words rushed forth with the pump of his heart. “I've done some horrible things, and I want a chance to protect her from the kind of man I used to be. I grew up without a father's love, and I want to fucking be there to give her that.”
Their silence wore on. He scrubbed his hands over his face, and when he looked up, her expression sent a chill down his spine. Not her usual detached frigidness. In its place were soft, sympathetic features that didn't belong there. He didn't want her looking at him like that. She was about to break his heart, and he couldn't bear to hear it.
“No,” she said. One soft, excruciating word.
The pain exploded in his chest, and he struggled to breathe through it.
She wasn't done. “You coerced me for seven years, and I let you. But this isn't about me. It's about Livana. I can't let you” —her breath hitched, and her jaw stiffened— “I won't allow you to fuck with her.”
“Liv, I would never—”
“If you go near her, I won't involve the authorities.” Her eyes blazed with rage. “I'll kill you myself, and when I dispose of your body, no one will ever find it.”
His heart pounded, and his stomach soured with regret. He'd told her the same thing once.
Her voice dropped to a heartless rasp. “You know why?”
The answer he’d given her a year ago about her own death crawled from his thick throat. “Because no one will care enough to search for it.” Or wouldn’t be able to cross the porch to search for it.
Joshua wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She leaned against his chest, her eyes closing not with satisfaction but with heavy sadness.
He should've stood and walked out of there, but he needed to know his options. “You won't kill me.”
Her eyes flew open. “No? How do you think I freed eight slaves and ended your father's operation?”
The real question was how she disposed of the buyers’ bodies. “How did you come by your cartel connections? It was Camila, wasn't it?”
He hadn't been able to confirm the connections, let alone link them to the first slave they'd kidnapped together. But her averted gaze validated it.
Fuck.
Liv had cartel connections through Camila. If he approached Livana, he was a dead man. His pulse thrashed, and he yanked at his collar. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuck!
He felt sick, his throat tightening. He reached for the paper bag beside him, removed the doll with a shaking hand, and held it out. “My girlfriend and I made this. Will you give it to Livana?”
She cringed. “Ugh, you still have those things?” Her face distorted with disgust as she climbed over Joshua's lap and strode away.
Fucking moronic how he’d thought bringing a doll to the meeting in place of Amber could’ve proved anything. Didn’t matter that it was handcrafted, beautifully detailed, and made with so much goddamned hope. His daughter would never see it. His gut clenched.
Joshua gave him a pitying look. “Van...”
Fuck him. He shoved the doll back into the bag and got the fuck out of there.
The leaded weight of his feet dragged through the parking lot, the humid air pushing down on his shoulders. When he reached the Mustang, he stripped the jacket and tossed it in the back seat. With his hands clenched around the wheel and the doll in his lap, the weight of the night came surging in, burning his eyes, clotting his throat, and filling up every splintered crack inside him with thick, oily crap. Yet he felt so fucking empty.
He opened the glove box and shoved the doll inside. Then he slammed it shut and numbly stared at the closed door.
A knock on the driver's side window kicked the air from his lungs, and he jumped.
Joshua stood beside the car, bent at the waist with his hands on his knees. “Roll down the window.”
He rubbed the ache in his chest and turned the window crank, offering the man a bored expression.
“You had a look about you in there,” Joshua said, “when you talked about your girlfriend. A peaceful look.”
Joshua was a charging protector as much as a touchy-feeler, a reminder he was going to be a preacher before Liv took him. He was hardwired to see the good in people.
And Van wasn’t in the mood for it. “Get to the point.”