27. Anna
ANNA
I knew it.
I knew I got it right.
I couldn’t help the tears pouring down my face. I couldn’t help the way I clung to Brutus when he was finally out of that cage. Harnessed like a fucking animal.
I never wanted to see it again.
I had put the pieces together, of course.
The interrogations were much too soft. Or maybe I just watched too much television.
I heard some of the other girls in their interrogation rooms around the same time I had to answer all of my questions.
And the entire time, there was always one of our police officers in the room with us.
Not just the DOJ agents, but an actual officer posted up in the corner.
That was my first inkling that something wasn’t quite right.
The spaghetti dinner was another cue. They allowed all of us to gather in a room together so that we could eat a hot meal.
That wasn’t protocol, that much I knew for certain.
It was hard to get Char to eat. The poor girl looked like she was thrown right back into the clutches of the trafficking ring.
And when one of those officers tried giving her a plate of spaghetti with parmesan cheese on it, I spoke up about her lactose intolerance before they even set the damn plate down. The garlic bread had cheese on it, too.
That prompted me to go with them so that I could watch them make her food.
It was the only way we got her to eat.
It was while we ate that I told the women my theory: I was pretty sure the arrest was staged. But I didn’t quite get the reaction I assumed I would. I figured most of them would have jumped at the fact that this was planned. That the guys knew what was happening.
They pretty much all stayed silent, though.
I couldn’t blame them. This entire saga culminated into something we didn’t see coming.
And I knew they were thinking what I was thinking: why tell us everything else, but not this?
None of it made sense. It made for some hard interrogation moments, because if I zoned out in the middle of questioning, I knew they did, too.
One time, I even heard Char crying down the hallway.
But when the interrogations stopped and we were told that they would be released, that was when Jasmine fired off questions. That paralegal mind of hers was sharp, and before we knew it, the DOJ officers who took our testimony spilled their fucking guts.
The guys were arrested as a distraction just in case my home was being watched.
Before I could even ask the question, one of the DOJ officers told me that an entire team of agents was posted up in the shadows and woods around my home, waiting to see if anyone would strike it in retaliation.
They were sure as shit the ring knew where we were all hiding out, and apparently one of Brutus’s demands was that they did everything in their power to make sure my home was safe while we weren’t in it.
Goddamn it, I loved that man.
“Anna, let me know when you can hear me. Anna, let me know when you can hear me. Anna, let me know when you can—”
“Sorry,” I whispered.
His thick fingers stroked through my hair, and I felt at home. “No need to be sorry. I’ve got you.”
“King!”
I turned my head toward Char’s chirping sound long enough to see my brother barreling down the hallway toward her.
I perched my cheek against Bee’s shoulder and watched with a sort of sideways look as the two of them collided in the hallway.
My brother scooped her up like she was nothing but a wounded bird.
She curled against him, and for the first time since the shattering of my windows woke me up, I smiled.
It was a small one. My teeth didn’t even make an appearance.
But when my brother sank to his knees with that woman in his arms, I knew I’d have to get to know Charise a little more.
Because it looked like she’d be sticking around in the family for a while.
Brutus stood with me in his arms. He turned us toward King, and that was when his gaze raised.
“Anna,” he said breathlessly.
“King,” I whimpered out.
He placed Char down long enough to move toward me, and I wiggled out of Bee’s embrace. I ran toward him, not caring about what I looked like as he held his arms open for me. I rushed into him, hitting him so hard that he grunted when I wrapped my arms around him.
“Oh God, I hate you so much for this,” I whispered.
“I expect to catch hell for a while,” he muttered.
I squeezed him around his waist. “You’re helping Bee fix my house.”
“Duh.”
I allowed a few tears to fall. “Don’t ever keep us in the dark like that again.”
“It was the only way t—”
“It wasn’t, and you know it,” I said as I released him and took a step back, glaring up at him. “Don’t give me that ‘secret balls club’ bullshit. You could have told us, and you know it.”
He stared down at me for a little while. “It was the only way we would know, one hundred percent, that you girls were safe from any backlash from the arrests and raids that we knew were coming.”
“What did you know exactly?” Ariel asked as Cap trailed behind her.
The man looked like a hit dog on a leash.
“Answer her,” I said when my brother didn’t initially respond. “What exactly was the plan? Because I put a bit of it together when the spaghetti dinner was served to all of us. That’s when I knew that maybe, just maybe, this was all part of some grand plan.”
“I want to know what the plan was,” Ariel said with a heat in her voice I’d never heard before. “So someone better start talking now.”
Cap’s lips moved a million miles a minute. “For the last forty-eight hours, the DOJ has been in town conducting the raids. We were concerned about backlash, seeing as how they were going to be doing that for a while.”
“Splinter groups. Factions. That sort of thing,” Bee said behind me.
King continued. “We were all concerned about backlash against you guys, especially since a couple of you are runaways from their rings.” He pulled Char close to him.
“No way in hell we were putting you guys in danger any longer. So when the DOJ suggested arresting us just in case we were being watched, we agreed to the plan.”
“A raid in the middle of the night, just like with the ring,” Bee said.
I peered over my shoulder at him before Jasmine piped up, walking over with Ghost. “It’s actually a pretty ingenious plan, outside of the fact that we didn’t know about it.”
I shot her a look. “You’re okay with this?”
She grinned. “I didn’t say all that now. But plans like these are pretty common.”
That relaxed me, but only a smidge.
“Did it work?” I asked.
One of the DOJ officers nodded and stepped back down the hallway. The room went quiet enough that I could hear Char breathing against my brother’s shoulder.
“It’s done,” the officer said when he came back. “All seven installations. Thirty-two men in custody. The raids wrapped up about an hour ago.”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Thirty-two men. I didn’t know what I expected that number to feel like. I thought maybe it would feel like relief, or triumph, or something big and obvious. Instead it just sat there in the hallway with the rest of us, quiet and final.
Ariel made a sound beside me. Cap got an arm around her before she could fully fall apart.
Char pressed her face harder into my brother’s chest.
Marla reached for Ranger’s hand and he gave it without looking down.
I turned back to Brutus. He was already watching me, that steady, patient look on his face that I’d spent weeks learning how to read. I pressed two fingers against his chest, right over his heart.
“You’re still in trouble,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“My house.”
“I’ll fix every inch of it.”
“The windows weren’t standard size.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to have to find a guy.”
“I know a guy,” Ranger said from somewhere behind me.
I almost laughed. I didn’t quite make it, but it was close. Brutus felt it anyway because his mouth curved up at the corner, just slightly, and he pulled me back against him.
“You still mad?” he murmured against my hair.
I thought about it for exactly one second. About the arrest. About the terror of it. About watching them drag him out of my bedroom in handcuffs while I screamed myself hoarse.
Then I thought about thirty-two men in custody. About Char finally being able to breathe. About all of it being over.
“Ask me again tomorrow,” I said.
He tightened his arms around me. “Fair enough.”
Down the hallway, my brother was still on his knees with Char curled in his lap, and I watched her shoulders slowly stop shaking.
Ariel had her face tucked against Cap’s neck and her fingers knotted in the front of his shirt.
Amanda leaned into Wrecker’s side with her eyes closed and her chin tipped up like she was just now letting herself breathe.
All of us beat up and exhausted and standing in a police corridor in the middle of the night.
All of us still here.
I decided that was enough for tonight.