Chapter 48 #2
“Don’t,” I cut in, my voice flat now. The time for his excuses is finished. “You don’t get to rename this.”
I feel Lily’s fingers curl tighter into my jacket, her breath still uneven but steadying, like she knows—feels—that the worst of it is over. That she’s not alone anymore, and she never will be again.
“You’ve been running a goddamn sex trafficking ring,” I say, each word landing like a nail in a coffin. “You’ve tortured these women. Sold them. Used them and then tossed them aside. And you used Jen and my mother to find you more victims, didn’t you?”
Una tilts her head, smug and cruel. “Oh, please. Call them what they are. Expendable. Product.”
Lily makes a sound—a strangled, wounded exhale—and I feel something inside me snap.
“Expendable,” I repeat, stepping forward, voice low and dangerous. “So that’s all they were to you. Product to be sold for profit.”
“Useful product,” Una corrects, eyes glittering. Whatever calculations she’s done, she’s decided to drop the act and own her fucked up viewpoint.
The room goes dead still.
Jonathan’s voice is soft—deceptively so—as he lifts his gun. “You trafficked them. Girls. Women. Children.” His finger tightens against the trigger, aimed squarely at Antonio’s heart. “You ran the entire ring.”
Footsteps click down the hallway—too light to be a guard.
Then another set. Heavier, and unhurried.
Antonio’s jaw tightens as a woman steps into the doorway.
Isabella.
And behind her—
Nico.
The world drops out from under me.
My gut twists hard, vicious. Every instinct screams you missed something. Every check, every background search, every random detail I peeled back and I still didn’t see this coming. She looked innocent. She looked like Lily’s friend. And yet here she is, tangled in this nightmare.
I don’t have time to process Nico’s appearance before Lily reacts.
Her breath hitches. Her body tightens for a fraction of a second, like a spring wound too tight. Then she moves. Not trembles, not flinches. Lunges.
Rage, terror, betrayal, it all fuels a fire inside her that can’t be contained.
She tears past me, hands flying toward Isabella, fingers clawing for her throat, a feral snarl spilling from her lips.
Every ounce of fear she has felt, every second she spent here, every bottled-up emotion, it transforms into a violent, blinding fury aimed at the person she once called a friend.
“Lily—”
Shoving my knife into the holster on my belt, I move.
Catching her just before she reaches Isabella, my arms locking around her waist, hauling her back hard against my chest. She thrashes wildly, fingers clawing at the air, sobbing and snarling all at once, her fury vibrating through her body like a living, breathing thing.
I hold her tighter, anchoring her, even as my own pulse goes feral.
At the same time Nico shifts. Just one step, one twitch of intention. Aidan is on him instantly.
In a split second, he’s grabbing Nico by the collar and slamming him back into the wall with bone-jarring force, forearm pinning his throat before Nico can even open his mouth. The impact echoes, sharp and final.
“Don’t,” Aidan growls in his face. “You move again, you die.”
Nico’s eyes flick to Lily—wild, calculating—before Aidan slams his head against the wall, forcing him to look at him instead, and whatever he sees there makes him still.
Lily is still shaking in my arms, breath coming in ragged bursts as the betrayal continues to sink its claws into her.
“Lily, stop!” I growl, voice raw, shaking with the heat of fear and fury. “I’ve got you! You can’t—she’s not worth it!”
She twists, breath ragged, hair whipping across my face, and I feel her grab my knife, but before I can so much as blink, Lily is out of my arms, holding Isabella to her chest like a shield as she presses the knife against Isabella’s throat.
Isabella freezes, wide-eyed, her hands going up half-heartedly. “I-I thought—” Her voice trembles, disbelief bleeding through.
“You didn’t think!” Lily spits, voice jagged, slicing through the tension. “You didn’t care! You helped them! You sold me out! You betrayed me!”
Una and Antonio stiffen, eyes pinned to the knife in Lily’s shaking grip.
Real, naked fear flashes across their faces as their eyes dart to each other, the carefully constructed masks slipping just enough to expose what’s underneath.
And that’s when it hits me.
Not all at once but piece by piece. The way they’re both looking at Isabella. The way Nico went still the moment Lily grabbed Isabella. The way panic—not anger—tightened Antonio’s jaw.
Then I really look at her.
Hair the same dark shade as Nico’s, so dark it almost shines blue under the lights. The same brown eyes.
The tilt of her nose. The faint dusting of freckles across her cheeks. Subtle things I’ve never questioned before because I wasn’t looking for them. Because some truths are only visible once it’s already too late.
My stomach drops so hard it feels like it might tear straight through me.
Isabella isn’t just involved.
She’s theirs.
My half-sister stands frozen a few feet away in the doorway, a blade hovering dangerously close to her throat in Lily’s shaking grip.
Aidan has her other half-brother pinned in a chokehold less than five feet away, muscles locked, ready to snap his neck without hesitation.
And behind me stands our mother.
I glance at Da—at the impassive set of his face, the lack of surprise in his eyes—and I realise he expected this. He expected her to go this far.
Because of course he did.
This is who she’s always been in his eyes.
The woman who cheated on him and then tried to paint him as the cheater. Who used every interaction with me as a way to dig for information that was never hers to have.
And with a sick, sinking clarity, her motives finally snap into focus.
This is exactly who she’s always been—a traitor.
And judging by the fact that Isabella is the same age as Lily, this betrayal isn’t new.
It’s been at least twenty-one years in the making.
Christ, this shit just got messier.
Una lashes out first. “Isabella, for God’s sake—do you ever listen?”
Antonio steps in fast, too fast for a man who barely blinks when his men get shot. His hand lands heavily on Una’s shoulder as he holds her back.
“You were supposed to keep them quiet,” he says to Isabella, voice low and shaking. Then he looks at Nico with fury in his eyes, “and you were supposed to keep her safe.”
Them.
The word explodes in the room like a bomb, and everyone freezes at the implications. Jonathan steps forward, gun raised, his voice lethal. “Them? How many innocent girls are here, you sick bastard?”
Antonio swallows, his gaze flicking toward Una as if begging her to answer. She doesn’t, she’s too busy glaring daggers at Lily.
“Twelve, including me and Lily.”
The voice is soft, trembling and we all turn as the redhead steps out from the wall, hands shaking as she visibly forces herself to meet Jonathan’s gaze.
“Twelve of us,” she repeats, her voice wobbling, then steadying as she straightens her spine. “There used to be more. Alice said there were thirty at one point.”
Liam clears his throat, drawing her attention. “What’s your name?”
“I… I’m Niamh.” Her voice is almost a whisper, fear stretching it thin. As she keeps talking, the soft edge of a Scottish accent begins to bleed through. “They branded us so we couldn’t run.”
The room goes still enough to hear our own breathing as she holds out her wrist, still only looking at Liam. Like she’s picked him to trust and is scared if she looks away something bad will happen. At first glance, nothing’s visible just pale, nearly translucent skin.
But Liam steps forward, pulling out a thin flashlight from his pocket, and the room tenses.
“Hold still,” he murmurs, shining the light over her skin.
And there it is.
The brand burns bright beneath the light—two skulls perched atop a cross in white ink.
Marked like cattle. Branded with the same design engraved on Antonio’s cufflinks, his ring.
Reduced to inventory and ownership scars they’ll never be able to scrub off, no matter how many times they shower, no matter how far they run.
A permanent reminder of everything taken from them carved into their skin.
Lily’s breath punches out of her in a broken, jagged sound that hits me like shrapnel. She jerks, hand tightening around the knife she has pressed to Isabella’s throat, her entire body trembling with a cocktail of rage and trauma so potent it feels like it burns the air.
Jonathan’s jaw flexes. Aidan swears under his breath as he tightens his hold on Nico. Da adjusts his grip on his gun, finger already on the trigger as the room thickens with the rage of five deadly men.
Niamh’s voice wavers, fear threading through every syllable. “It’s… it’s the same on everyone. The ones who’re still alive.”
Jonathan inhales sharply. “Still alive?”
Niamh nods, eyes flicking to Lily, more apology than explanation. “Some of us didn’t make it. Some were… punished. For trying to run.”
“Punished?” Lily chokes out, voice cracking around the word.
Jonathan exhales sharply through his nose, and Da lifts his gun another inch—but before anyone can say anything, a laugh cuts through the room. Choked and a little manic, like this is all one big joke.
Even with Aidan’s forearm locked against his throat, Nico, the bastard, manages to twist his mouth into a grin.
“Cazzo,” he grunts. “Always hated the sentimental ones.”
Aidan slams him harder into the wall, the impact echoing like a gunshot. “Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.”
Nico just coughs, then laughs again, wet and ugly.
“Twelve?” he rasps. “That’s nothing. You should’ve seen it when it was running properly. Before Angus let his pride get in the way.”
“Shut. Up.” Una spits the words like poison.
But Nico doesn’t. He’s like a tap that refuses to be turned off.