Page 96 of Arran's Obsession
The girl. My sister.
“Blackmail doesn’t suit you,” I forced out.
She sighed. “Ever since I made the connection, I knew you’d think that. Believe me or don’t. You’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll fetch the photo. You can send your friends to find Dad. Protect yourself however you need to. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
I didn’t answer, lost in memories, abandoned hunts, and dead ends.
I’d no idea what a happy family was like, but I hoped Addie had it. I tested the name. If she wasn’t real, that name was going to fucking kill me.
“Why don’t you know where she is?” Genevieve broke the silence.
Suddenly wiped out, I drowned in the lifetime of stories I had, of shit never shared, and the rigid hold I maintained on my image and how much people knew about me. I had a choice to make. Trust her and risk everything, or ignore her temptation and stick with life as I knew it.
No. It wasn’t a choice. Not anymore.
This woman had come to me for reasons I didn’t fully know. She’d taken over my world, and my senses. My ability to stop her died.
Turning my gaze back on her, I found myself talking.
“You had a list of questions for me. How I got my money, how my friends are connected to my business. What I’ll tell you starts with public record, as you put it, then goes deeper. But we’ll start with the easiest part. My father, and my friends’ father, ran a trafficking ring. They established routes through Europe and kidnapped girls and women to be sold for sex. My father is in jail for life for his sins, theirs is dead.”
Genevieve stared, her beautiful lips apart.
“My father was the chief of police and a lord of the realm. Lord Kendrick. A title that can’t be taken from him and will one day pass to me. With it came the estate I took you to as well as a lot of money. Most of it was seized by the government as it was tainted by his trade, but my father was devious. His inheritance from his father stayed locked in vaults in other countries. Untouchable by the law. His empire fell when I was seventeen.I couldn’t handle the fallout so spent months sleeping in my car and evading anyone I knew because of my age.”
“You were sleeping in your car at seventeen?”
I uttered a hard laugh. “Because I’d burned the house down. My mother was dead, my father in jail. I had nothing. My friends found me and supported me, but I was reeling. On my eighteenth birthday, I drove to my father’s lawyer’s office and told them I wanted to claim whatever was left of my birthright.”
Genevieve’s lip trembled. “I don’t even know where to start with that. What happened to you in those months?”
“I fought for money. My dad had made sure I was strong, resilient, and used to pain. I let people bet on me and took and delivered beatings for money. It’s how I met Convict. Shade was via a different path, though equally bloody.”
“You survived, then you took that inheritance and made your empire. God, Arran.”
Not one person had heard or summarised my background in this way.
Her eyes lined with tears. “How did you grow up? What kind of things did you see? Did your dad expose you to what he was doing?”
My pulse thudded, images flashing in front of my eyes that I wished I’d never seen. His parties. The bored, naked women waiting to act for him. The pain they hid. The delight in him when he got a response he wanted.
“He didn’t hide anything. Even in my earliest memories, he abused women in front of me. He hurt them for pleasure and made me watch. Punished me with his fists if I dared disobey him, real or imagined. Now, when I hunt down and kill men who I know hurt women, I do it wishing they were him.”
She recoiled, shock evident. “You… No. I don’t want to know about them. How did no one rescue you?”
“He fucking owned the police. Who would they call? The people who worked for him were scared of him. I never left his house.”
Her eyes shuttered closed. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Hugged me.
Fucking hell.
“He gifted me Alisha when I wasn’t even a teenager so I could learn his trade.”
“But you didn’t touch her.”
“Never once.”
Her embrace tightened. “That’s why you stayed a virgin. Because of everything you’d seen.”