Page 74 of Vicious Seduction
LINA
Oran’sentire body recoiled as though I’d physically struck him. It was an enormous relief. Since the moment I’d heard that he was connected to the strip club, I’d worried he was somehow tied to my sister. Even now after seeing his shock, I still struggled to believe that Amelie working at Moxy and Oran entering my life were purely coincidental.
I would ask him about it, but first, I had to force myself to finish the story.
“She only worked there a couple of months when…” My breathing hitched. I felt like I was reliving that horrible day all over again.
The day I figured out mysister was missing.
“We were in the habit of having Friday lunch together since she worked most of the weekend. I texted that morning asking where she wanted to meet, but lunch came and went, and she never responded.” I wrapped my arms around my middle to help keep me in one piece because I felt like my heart was shattering. “The only thing worse than learning she was missing was figuring out it had happened two days earlier, and I’d been too damn preoccupied with my own life to notice.” The words faded to a broken whisper as my tears got the better of me.
Oran crossed the room and wrapped me in his arms. It felt so damn good, but I hated that. I didn’t deserve to be comforted. Amelie was alone out there somewhere, probably already dead, because I hadn’t protected her well enough. I knew the chances of her being alive this long after her disappearance were slim. I was too much a realist to entertain ridiculous fantasies, and Amelie was too thoughtful to have gone off voluntarily without telling me. And besides, I preferred to think she was dead than trafficked. That reality was too horrific to even consider.
“Something terrible happened to her, and it was all my fault.”
He pulled back and clasped my shoulders firmly. “This isnotyour fault, Lina.”
I squirmed away from him, shaking my head. “Don’t, Oran. Don’t say crap to try to make me feel better. I knew she could be in danger from the Society and our mother. I should have kept a closer eye on her.”
“No, Lina. Listen to what I’m telling you. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t the Society.”
I stilled at the remorseful timbre of his words. If he knew it wasn’t the Society…
I looked back at him, my heart already rejecting the implication that he knew what happened to my sister. That this whole time, he’d known.
Oran ran an agitated hand through his hair, then sat on the coffee table with his elbows on his knees.
“You said she was using a pseudonym. She went by Darina, didn’t she?”
My lungs seized, a vise clamping tight around my entire rib cage.
“Yes,” I wheezed. “Darina Somova. It was the name of a dancer she’d idolized while growing up.”
He knew her. Oran had known Amelie this whole time.
My shaking legs lowered me down to sit on the edge of the sofa as I waited to learn what had happened to my little sister.
“I don’t have much to do with the operations at Moxy, but since I have an office in the building, I’m around often enough. One day, I was drinking at the bar when Darina asked if she could talk to me privately. We stepped out front, and she told me she’d talked to Torin and Jolly—her bosses at the club—and asked about dancing instead of waitressing, but they’d both refused. She wanted to know if I’d consider talking to them. They’re both surly assholes, so I could understand why she thought I might be more receptive, but it wasn’t my place. She told me she could use the experience and started tearing up. I didn’t want the kid crying, so I tried to console her.
“What I didn’t know at the time was that my wife was in the process of betraying me and my family. She happened to come by the club that night and saw Darina and me together, making the false assumption we were having an affair. Wanting to hurt me, Caitlin came back the next day anddrugged Darina on her way in to work. Caitlin knew of a Russian man who was involved in trafficking, so she took the girl where she thought she could find him.”
God, no. Please don’t tell me that was her fate. Not my sweet little sister.
My hand clamped over my mouth to hold back the sob clawing its way from the depths of my soul.
Oran continued, his voice somber and foreboding. “Caitlin made an error, however. The house where she’d seen the Russian previously wasn’t his. It was Lawrence Wellington’s house. The two were doing business together.” He paused, his eyes lifting to mine. “And before I say any more, I want you to know that I didn’t figure out any of this until much later. It’s taken months to sort through it all and involves so much more than you can imagine. I’ll explain the rest later, but know that I interrogated Caitlin about what had happened after figuring out she was responsible, and I learned that Lawrence’s son had been there the day she went looking for the Russian. He took possession of an unconscious Amelie.”
Oran grimaced, slowly shaking his head. “It’s complicated to explain, but it turned out that bastard was fucked up. He got off on torturing women, but he won’t be hurting anyone ever again because he’s dead now.”
Dead? That couldn’t be. “Lawrence told me his son had moved.”
“Guess he and your parents had the same idea of pretending the kid moved and hoped no one asked any questions.”
I was stunned. It had never occurred to me that Lawrence’s son could have been responsible. “I tracked her phone GPS. The last known location was Lawrence Wellington’s house,” I said in a stunned, haunted voice. “I kept tabs on Olympus and my mother as best as I could. I knew he was a member. It seemed too convenient to be a coincidence, or so I’d thought. I thought the Society or Eliza and Charles had found a way to lure her over there and had taken her. My mother swore they weren’t involved, but I didn’t believe them.”
“You had no reason to. The deductions you made were perfectly logical.”
“But I was wrong.”