His father trafficked slaves. His mother was a drug addict. She looked at him, really looked into his insidious silver eyes. What must they have seen in his thirty-something years? Had he spent his entire life in a dark light, dragging the sins of his parents behind him? How could he not be anything but fucked up?
Don’t make excuses for him, Amber.
He dug into the food and spoke while he chewed. “You followed the news story?”
“Some. He kidnapped that girl and held her for years. And the football player from Baylor.” Enslaved them in a suburban house doing unimaginable things to them. “They shot him.”
“Yep.” He leaned back in the chair and leveled her with his luminescent gaze. “Don’t remember their names, do you?”
She shook her head, dread creeping into her bones.
He chewed, swallowed. “Liv Reed and Joshua Carter.”
Liv and Joshua got away. They all got away.
The trembling started in her chest and rippled to her arms and legs. They lived right next door all this time? The reason he was on her porch?
She could guess why he’d returned for them, and it slammed her heart into a laborious frenzy. Even if she could return home and save her mortgage, would she feel safe living beside Liv and Joshua? Van would come back for them. For her.
“You should really get out more.” He raised a glass of water to his lips, grinning.
She choked, wanting to argue this unbelievable story. “The news reports said he worked alone.” Her voice strangled, rising in pitch. “There wasn’t any mention of a son.”
He drained the glass, set it down, and leaned in to stroke her jaw. “Because I don’t exist.”
CHAPTER 18
As Amber paled and scooted her ass away inch by inch, Van questioned the brilliance of telling her who he was. He put his elbows on the kitchen table and rubbed his aching head. Despite how familiar he’d become with her strained fearful look, she now stared at him through new eyes. He already told her he’d trafficked slaves. Apparently, connecting him to the infamous Eli Eary had sent her over the edge. Literally.
She’d scooted so far, she fell over the side of the chair and crashed to the floor, giving him a glorious view of all her taut little lines and curves beneath the splayed towel. He bit his lip, halting his grin. Her clumsiness in these frazzled moments was such a contrast to the image of her decorously posed on a stage.
With a huff, she jumped to her feet and retied the knot at her chest. “What do you mean, you don’t exist?”
Here we go. He’d opened the door. Might as well give her a tour of the shit hole. He dug a toothpick from his pocket and slid it between his teeth. “Eli Eary—we called him Mr. E—never mentioned me to anyone in his lawful life.”
“Why not? You’re his son.”
“The bastard son of his first slave. Not something you brag about over donuts at the police station.” He gnawed on the toothpick. “And in his criminal life, I only existed to the slave buyers—who don’t talk because they’re dead. And the slaves—who don’t talk because they killed the buyers.”
She touched her throat, her voice disbelieving. “That’s how the others got away?”
Should he worry about her connecting Liv’s escape with hope for her own way out? Nah. She couldn’t even look at the windows, let alone step outside. And by the time she overcame the agoraphobia, she would be too attached to him to leave. “Yep.” Liv had been a very naughty girl, but her ability to outsmart him and Mr. E lifted his chest with pride. “I didn’t know Liv had freed the others until I started watching her.”
“Stalking her.” She flashed him a reproving glower. For long moments, she didn’t move, but she seemed to be calming herself. It was a fascinating thing to watch. The heave of her torso slowed, and her hands loosened around the knot of the towel. She had no idea how strong she was. “You said you were twenty-five when he brought you into the...business. Does that mean you and your mom had escaped before that?”
Not quite. He smiled as his acidic existence burned him from the inside out. “Mr. E took my mother from a US-Mexican border ghetto when she was sixteen. He broke her, impregnated her, and returned her where he’d found her.” She’d been his first, after all. His guinea pig. And a pregnant slave, so far beyond mentally ruined, had no value on the market. So he’d thrown her away like a used condom.
She stepped toward the kitchen table and sat two chairs away. “And you went with her?”
“Yeah.” The unwanted spawn. He rolled the toothpick with his tongue and relaxed against the chair back as every organ inside him twisted and turned. He’d only ever shared this with Liv, and he’d been weak from her bullet when the truth spilled out with his blood.
Her slim eyebrows pulled in, her face pinched in thought. “What did her family do when she returned? Wasn’t there retaliation? An investigation?”
He laughed and shook his head. “My mother was a run away, and we lived in a colonia. The dumping grounds for America’s uneducated, discarded waste. No drinking water, no working sewers, no law, and certainly no care for someone else’s problems.” A wave of bitterness tightened his muscles. It was no wonder he took pleasure in human suffering.
She gripped the knuckles of one hand. He waited for the four cracking pops, a mechanism he’d noticed she turned to when she was upset. But they never came. She flattened her palms over her thighs, staring at them, and spoke quietly. “You were cursed at birth to be fucked-up. Just like me.” A ragged inhale. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’re so...” She closed her eyes.
He leaned toward her, his heart knocking at his ribs with anticipation to hear the rest of
