Page 3 of Point Proven
Brushing my fingers over the folders, I gave Liam a reassuring squeeze. “And what exactly isbusiness?”
“We came across some fucked shit,” Thorne started, flipping the first file open. “Seems Andrew Valen’s illegal interests went far deeper than merely selling guns, artillery, and government information.”
“Like what?”
Andrew had always been a terrible man, but for the corruption to be even worse than we already knew?
“Child trafficking and black market schemes.” He slid the photographs toward us, and I felt Liam tense beside me.
Glancing at them, a rolling nausea settled in my stomach at the amount of evidence Thorne had collected. It was infuriating that this had been going on the entire time we worked with him.
“This… This is insane.”
Squeezing Liam’s thigh, I rubbed over the space to keep him here. These kinds of topics were difficult for him, more than others, because he had more empathy than the average person. He wasn’t sensitive, just deeply caring. It made him emotionally aware, but it was also sometimes a detriment to his sanity.
Leg bouncing, his jaw feathered as he turned to me. “I’m going to run to the bathroom really quickly, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, sunshine.”
Slipping from the table, he exited as I sat down on the leather seat once more. Blowing out a breath, I glanced back at Thorne and Oren. If Liam didn’t return in a few minutes, I would check on him.
“This is only the surface of all the bullshit, Simon.” Thorne raked a hand through his dark hair. It’d grown since we were in the ranks, and part of me wondered if he kept it that way becausea specialsomeonepreferred it. “And because of that, Oren and I came to a consensus.”
“Consensus?”
He dipped his chin once with a curt nod. “We are starting an organization to dismantle this from the inside out, and we want to offer you and Liam a position alongside us.”
CHAPTER TWO
LIAM
Shoving the door to the men’s restroom open, my footsteps drummed against the tile as I made my way to a stall. Practically taking it off its hinges, I barely made it inside before I collapsed on my knees, purging my stomach’s minimal contents.
Child trafficking. We served beneath a man responsible for fucking child trafficking.
I heaved until nothing remained, my head resting on my hands as I braced them against the toilet. We had picked a restaurant whose bathrooms stayed nearly pristine, which meant my vomit was now polluting the overarching floral undertones that hung in the air.
“Fuck,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Pull yourself together, Liam. You’re fine. Everything isfine.”
Thiswas the side of me I didn’t want them to see. After Simon’s accident, they’d all treated me differently, as if I were a fragile doll that would easily break beneath the pressure of reality. They no longer saw me as a soldier who’d earned his position but as someone weak because of how much I cared.
My past was the furthest thing from light, and because of it,Iwas the hardest to break. That all happened to me by the age ofeight. After that? It was a mask for survival, a lightheartedness I wore to conceal the demons lurking beneath.
Simon didn’t know.
Oren didn’t know.
But Thorne? Thorne did.
And now he was asking me to join in arms to combat the very thing I’d been trying to escape my entire life, as if he didn’t understand the implications it left behind. While my “buyer” hadn’t left many physical scars on my body, none that could’ve been deciphered outside of mere combat wounds, the mental ones were gaping wounds that still festered—wounds that still kept me up at night and robbed me of my sanity with each passing day.
Escaping a child-trafficking ring was the most considerable feat of my fucking life, and now I was being asked to step back into one?
My breath hitched as I shook my head, trying to stifle my cries. Trailing my fingers across my arm, I mimicked a stroke Simon often offered me, a tenderness that Icravedat this moment.When I’d asked for reprieve, he’d looked at me with understanding, with an assumption that I merely needed to run to the restroom for the mundane implications of being human. He’d gazed past the truth in my irises. He hadn’tseen me.
Again.
Flushing the toilet, I pushed myself to stand. With one leveling sigh, I unlocked my selected stall and slipped out into the openness. Approaching the perfectly spaced mirrors, I avoided my reflection as I’d always done, turning on the faucet with a simple flick.
