Because whether or not I physically lived, I wouldn’t be alive after tonight. Not without her.
I pushed away from the frame, and let every emotion overwhelm me as I approached the bed I’d loved and cherished her in during these last months with her, and I pressed my mouth to hers.
“I love you,” I whispered against her lips. “Forever. Forgive me.”
An ache so profound it nearly brought me to my knees tore through me, but I forced myself away and somehow made it out of the room and downstairs where the driver was coming in with breakfast.
“I need you to do something for me. Do not question me, and do not alert anyone—especially Briar.”
His worry was blatant as he looked quickly from me to the stairs. “Anything, Mr. Holt.”
“You know her life will be in danger tonight. If something happens, do everything to get Briar out of there alive. Force her to leave,” I said, my voice sounding strained.
He didn’t move from his spot, and for once, his stare didn’t waver from mine. “Mr. Holt?”
“Do everything to get Briar out of there alive, and force her to leave,” I repeated in a low tone. Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed the folded paper and shoved it in his direction. “This man will find you. Make sure she goes with him.”
“Of course, Mr. Holt,” he said automatically and flinched away from me when I stalked past him on my way to my office.
He didn’t look toward the stairs or notice the way each step away from where I’d left my heart was destroying another piece of my soul. He was too focused on not pissing me off. I knew I needed to keep it that way.
Because this was for the best.
As soon as I was seated at my desk, I took out my phone and pulled up the number that had been sent to me over Facebook an hour before. My thumb remained hovering over it as I stood on a cliff that my entire being was trying to recoil from—thrashing and writhing in an attempt to get back to that girl who held my heart.
I pressed down and lifted the phone to my ear.
One ring.
Two.
“Hello?”
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
With a ragged breath out, I hurled myself over the edge, shattering the last part of my soul. “Kyle . . .”
Chapter 45
Breathe
Briar
Years of planning wouldn’t have been enough to prepare me for what we’d walked in on late that afternoon. And I’d only had months.
I’d known how many men were in this world that I’d been sold into—this world that my devil had been taking part in for years in order to take it down. Lucas and David had said the number so often that it continued to bounce through my mind even when I tried to sleep.
Thirty-three. There were thirty-three men, including Lucas.
The number had only shocked me for half of a second before I realized that I’d already known. My shopper had said dozens on more than one occasion, and I had a feeling I’d known from that very first day.
I had stared down what had looked like dozens of one-way mirrors while dozens of lights flashed on and off as the men hiding behind them had bid on me.
No, that number didn’t shock me, but maybe it was because I couldn’t grasp what it really meant.
Standing in the enormous hall where every one of those thirty-three men were gathered for their annual celebration, I was beginning to understand just how terrible the number thirty-three was.
Because each of those thirty-three men had anywhere from one to fifteen women standing close by their side—most had the latter. One to fifteen women who had been stolen from their homes and sold in an auction like I had.
All of those stolen girls . . .
And they hadn’t had a Lucas.
What was worse, nearly all of the women looked deliriously happy with their men—just as William’s did.
Lucas had told me that, at some point, nearly every woman had a chance to leave and go back to whatever life she’d had before she’d been kidnapped, and none ever did. From the stories that William’s women had told me of their previous lives, and from the little I’d heard from Lucas, I was sure I knew why . . .
The women only came from the worst of lives—lives that the women would be thankful to get away from.
Like Jenna would’ve, I’d thought numbly when I realized why they’d targeted her in the first place.
It was a way for these men to feel like they were saving their women from awful lives, and in turn, it was why most of the women thought they were in love with this life. Because even if the beginning was terrifying, it nearly always turned out better than what they’d had.
And now we were about to tear this life away from all of them. We were about to tear away a world where they’d grown comfortable with their brain-washing men and send them into a world full of therapists and agents in the hopes they would one day live the normal lives they always should’ve had.
Looking at the hundreds of women filling the hall, it terrified me to know that some of them would never adjust—to know that most of them didn’t want to get out of this world—to know that being freed from these disturbed men would be harder for them than being torn from their homes had been.
I’d already been queasy before the event had begun, but my nausea had worsened since we’d arrived a couple hours before, and I felt close to fainting as I stood in the sea of lost women.
Lucas murmured a low curse under his breath, and I lifted my heavy head to look in the direction he was facing.
A couple of men and their women were walking in our direction and I instinctively backed up against Lucas’s side when I noticed who one of the men was.
I didn’t know his name, and I didn’t want to. All that mattered was that when I looked at him, I remembered Lucas’s words from my first weeks with him, and I understood just how badly this all could’ve gone for me when I was first sold at the auction.
“It’s possible that if you’d been bought by someone else then you would have ended up as a sex slave.”
This is what Lucas had meant that day. He was one of two men I’d seen at the celebration like this—and he made my already weak stomach churn until it felt like I would lose the remaining contents right there on the floor. I felt sick as I watched the man approach us, and I suddenly couldn’t swallow anymore. My tongue felt too thick, my mouth too dry. I needed to get out of there.
The man was tall with a large, drooping belly. And in one of his meaty hands, he held the ends to leashes. Leashes that were attached to his women. Women who were crawling after him on the floor like they were dogs.
Lucas flinched away from me so quickly that I stumbled toward him, only catching myself when he gripped my upper arm and made me face him.
“Sorry,” I whispered automatically. I knew I couldn’t touch him. I hadn’t meant to; I’d just wanted to get away from what I was seeing.