Page 109 of Reckless Seduction
“He’s got nearly every judge and politician in his pocket,” I murmur, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen. Toph grunts.
“He won’t live long enough to even get bail. Trust me.” He flips off the television just as my name and photo fill the screen. The Crowes aren’t the only ones to have had their lives blasted on television for the world to see. My entire life story is laid out for the world to see.
They herald me as a victim.
But I am much more than that.
I am a survivor.
Toph waves for me to take a seat. I sink into the warm leather chair across from him, gratefully accepting the tumbler of whiskey he offers.
“You were three when I last saw you,” he tells me, taking his own seat. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fixing me with his full attention. No one except the twins has ever done that before, and it stirs something in me. “I’ve seen…” He hesitates. “Photos, but they were…”
“After I was beaten,” I finish for him. His hand clenches tightly around his own glass. He gives a terse nod.
“They never told me about you,” I tell him. “I was raised as an outcast. Told lies and manipulated to believe that each of those beatings was something I deserved. They had a therapist who repressed my younger memories until all I knew was what I was told. He made it seem as if I deserved and needed to accept whatever I was given. I was raised to believe that the beatings were for my own good. I never questioned them. I just accepted it. I was weak.”
“You are not weak. Not then and not now.” He growls the words so fiercely it startles me. “You were manipulated and groomed. None of that is your fault. The only weak one here is me. I should have—I should have listened to your mother, but I chose my club over her.”
He takes a swig of his whiskey. There are tears in his eyes, the crystalline blue shining under the lights of the room.
“Your mother was the center of my world.” He smiles fondly. “The first time we met was fate. She’d been chasing down the same scumbag we had. He’d stolen from us, but your mother never cared about that. She cared about what he’d been doing to his teenage daughter. She and her ragtag group of biker women swooped in and took him right from under our noses.”
He laughs.
“Then she delivered him to our door a day later with our missing money and a note stapled to his forehead that he was ours now.” He shakes his head, smiling. “She’d castrated him and used it to…” He coughs. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
I can’t help but chuckle at his reticence.
“After that,” he smirks, “I was a goner. She was everything. Took me forever to get her to agree to a date. Made a fool of myself trying to take her to some upscale restaurant. I’d dressed up and everything. She laughed in my face and made me drive back to the compound to change. Ended up having hot dogs and beer at the pier. It was one of the best days of my life.”
I smile at him warmly as I take a sip of my whiskey.
“What was the second-best day?” I ask the question, expecting him to say the day that he married her or some other memory of my mother that he would open with.
His gaze holds mine and he smiles. “The day you were born.”
Shit. My inner child is openly crying while holding on to her stuffed unicorn. Not small cries either. These are big gulping sobs that could probably start a tidal wave.
“I used to play you AC/DC while you were growing in your mother’s stomach,” he snorts. “She told me that if you were born with a mullet, she’d never forgive me.”
I let out a watery laugh, tears welling in my own eyes.
“You weren’t.” He sighs dramatically. “But you were still beautiful all the same. I remember the first time I held you. You wouldn’t stop crying, and then the nurse placed you in my arms. The world shifted beneath me, and I swore I would do everything to make sure you always felt loved and cherished. I swore I’d protect you and your mother with my life but…” He hangs his head.
“What was she like?”
Another fond smile. “You look so much like her,” he says. “You’ve got my eyes and hair, but everything else is hers. Lizziewas all fire, but where I was brash, she was calculating. Her world had been tainted in college, but still, she managed to see the good in it. Her smile could light up a room, and her laugh—her laugh was infectious. She’d give you the shirt off her back and never ask for anything in return. She’d built a community around her. A community of people she loved and respected. One she trusted.”
I beam. “The Vixens.” Yelena gave me her number after the rescue and ordered me to call her when I was settled.
“The Vixens were her family. Victims of sexual assault or trafficking. Some were family members of those who fell into those categories. They wanted justice any way they could get it. They ran an underground network of vigilantism. People reached out to them to exact the justice the courts refused to give. It was her life’s work.”
He rubs a hand down his tired face.
“Your mother was supposed to meet a potential client at the warehouse her club operated out of. She’d taken you with her, set you up in your playpen in your room there. She often brought you along to the club because she hated being separated from you. There was no way of knowing it was a trap. One of the club girls I’d banned for doing drugs had somehow managed to gain access to the warehouse. She sold the information to one of your mother’s old friends.”
“Sarah Crowe,” I breathe.
