Page 60 of Protecting Addison
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Brady Vogel paced his small piece-of-shit apartment. Back and forth, back and forth, stewing in his anger. Today hadn’t gone as he’d hoped. His bitch of an ex justhadto bring her new husband, and he’d asked too many questions. Questions Brady wasn’t willing to answer.
And not because he wasembarrassed. He wasn’t a goddamn janitor. Hadn’t been a janitor for the last decade…but he couldn’t afford to let Addison’s husband actually follow through on that background check.
Because he was a con man. He made money off anyone and everyone he could. Men or women. Drug addicts, millionaires, old women who were desperate for a man, young men who trusted him to invest their money. You name the con, he’d done it.
He’d actually come back to California because he’d gotten connected with a new contact. A man who made more money than Brady had ever seen in his lifetime…and he did it by peddling human flesh.
He bought babies from desperate women who didn’t want or couldn’t care for their children, and sold them to families desperate to adopt.
He befriended runaways and “introduced” them to pimps who needed new employees.
Befriended sick men and women, old and young, with no families to protect them, and convinced them to give him medical power of attorney. The second they died, he sold their usable body parts to big corporations for thousands of dollars.
And Brady was lucky enough to become a small part of it. At the request of his contact, he volunteered at the free clinic downtown, which gave him access to people and information that helped the man’s business. He noted the women who came in to give birth alone. Who were addicted to drugs. The sick and dying who were desperate for a friendly face. He passed all the information along to his associate, who in turn funneled money back to him.
Brady didn’t feel bad about any of it either. He’d been conning people for too long to have a conscience. Hell, he’d felt no guilt abandoning his own child all those years ago. A kid was just something that would’ve gotten in his way and cost him money.
When he ran into Addison on base, it was a surprise—one he’d hoped to benefit from. If there was anything easier than swindling strangers, it was conning people he knew well. And for a minute there, he’d actually looked forward to meeting his daughter too. You never knew where opportunities might arise in his line of work.
But now? Not so much. She waspathetic. Puny. Looked too much like his ex. If something was wrong with her bowels, that meant she probably had shitting problems.
Despite what he’d told Addison, the worst part about his job at the hospital was cleaning up after people who lost control of their bowels. The fact that his daughter was one of those people disgusted him. Twelve years old and her intestines didn’t even work right…
But he bet herotherorgans did.
He stopped pacing and stared into space, thinking hard. It was one thing to sell the body parts for someone who died of disease or old age. But the demand for organs and other parts from children was sky-high. People would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an undamaged child’s heart. Or liver. Or eyes.
Desperate people did desperate things.
He knew that so well, considering what he did for a living.
The longer Brady thought about the day—about the asshole Addison had married, about his daughter and her disease—the stronger the idea in the back of his mind became.
He didn’t want anything to do with his daughter. Didn’t want to get to know her. He couldn’t deal with the kind of issues she had. But…what if he could make some money from this situation?
Everything he did was about making money. Brady had no problem throwing anyone under the proverbial bus if it earned him some cash. And knowing his daughter would live a shitty life—literally—suffering from an incurable disease, made what he was thinking seem less…horrible.
He spent a few minutes debating with himself.
Ellorywashis own flesh and blood…could he really do what he was thinking to his own kid?
But she was suffering. Crohn’s seemed like a horrible thing. Surely she wouldn’t want to live the rest of her life that way.
Bonus…it would piss off Addison’s new husband. Maybe even devastate him. Hit him in a way a physical confrontation never could.
Brady screwed people over all the time, but it was a huge leap from taking an unwanted kid from one woman and selling it to another who was desperate for a child, or waiting for an old man to die so he could sell his organs, to selling someone he had a cellular-level connection with. Ellory had his DNA in her veins.
Could he really hand her over to his contact, knowing what would happen to her?
The answer was…yes.
Brady scrunched his nose. He was an asshole. But truthfully, he’d be doing Ellory a favor. No one wanted to live with a chronic disease. She’d help other children and be relieved of her pain at the same time.
The more he thought about it, the better the idea seemed. He’d sell his daughter to his contact, who in turn would get hundreds of thousands of dollars for her body parts, which Brady would also get a cut of.Hewouldn’t actually be killing her, which made him feel better in a twisted kind of way.
His idea was foolproof. He just had to play the game a little longer…something Brady was really good at. He’d conned people all over the country. It would be even sweeter to see the new husband suffer when Ellory disappeared.
