Chapter Sixteen
“So?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Tabitha says after a moment. “That’s the same tattoo.”
“So… Here’s the problem,” Thane says cautiously. “That type of tattoo—a barbed wire and snake tattoo—it’s basically a label.”
“What does the label say, Thane?” I ask impatiently.
“They’re human traffickers, Ayla,” Thane says honestly. I appreciate him being direct about it, but I think I would rather live in blissful ignorance.
“You mean… They want to sell me because you killed the man who raped Tabitha?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, slowly stepping closer to me.
“And if they get me…”
“Do you want me to be blunt?” he asks, cupping my face. I nod because talking might lead to me crying. “You’ll be raped by God knows how many people and eventually be sold. Best case scenario, it’s some lonely billionaire who is too lazy to find a wife on his own, so he buys one.”
“Worst case?” I ask, nearly whispering.
“You die,” he says honestly, but his tone is so soft that I can almost forget that his words don’t feel like the end of the world for me. “But we won’t let that happen. Okay?”
“How?” I ask, sniffing back tears.
“If something happens and someone manages to take you, I swear to you right now, we will find you,” Thane says. “We will do everything within our power to make sure that doesn’t happen, though.”
“Ayla, I am so sorry,” Tabitha says tearfully.
“Don’t apologize for getting raped, Tabitha,” I say. “I’d love to blame this on y’all, but this is Joe’s fault for putting his hands on you.”
“Let’s get this place cleared out fast because they will likely come back to look for her then,” Giovanni says.
“Is Tabitha safe?” I ask.
“I’d say that likely what’s happening is they know that Thane killed him, so they want revenge by taking someone he cares about,” Giovanni says.
“I mean, he cares about Tabitha, too,” I say.
“Yeah, but taking Tabitha would be far riskier than you,” Reid says honestly. “You don’t have any family. The benefit is that they must not know that you and Giovanni are connected, so that is good.”
“As much as I hate to do this, we will have to suspend the program until this can be settled,” Thane says. “We can do day classes, but housing people there who have already been through significant trauma is risky.”
“Yeah,” Reid says with a sigh. “Let’s just focus on this, and then we can go from there.”
“Ayla, you are to stay with one of us at all times,” Thane says to me. “I don’t care what it’s for; you stay with us. Okay?”
“I will stay close,” I confirm. Thane wraps me in a tight hug and kisses the top of my head. “I’ll be okay. I’ve come too far to get myself killed.”
Now I just have to convince myself that I’ll be okay…