CHAPTER FORTY THREE
I walk out of the spare room without looking back.
Down the hall.
Down the stairs.
Past the voices, the tension, the file still burning behind my eyes.
I don’t stop until the air shifts—cold and open and still.
The garden greets me with overgrown hedges and the scent of wilted roses. The crooked fountain trickles beside me, its waterline stained and chipped, a perfect match for how I feel inside.
I keep walking until the weight of it all collapses my spine.
And then I cry.
Silent at first. Then not.
The kind of crying that doesn’t ask permission—just tears right through you like a storm.
Because five years ago, I trusted Montgomery.
I thought he was the one good thing in a place built to break people. He never touched me. Never hurt me. Always hesitated when the others didn't.
I begged him to take me away.
He always said he couldn’t.
Now I understand why.
And I hate that knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.
Then there is Shoomaker—my rescue, my savior. He tore me out of the hell I had lived in for nearly a year and held me like I mattered, like I was human again.
Now they are both here.
Not as heroes. Not as the men who saved me.
But as puppeteers. As handlers. As the keepers of a lie.
I sink onto the stone edge of the fountain and wipe at my face, furious that I can’t even cry without wondering which part of me they’d planned for—which part of this was mine, and which part they’d written into my story.
For all their promises, all their rank and orders, it is clear now:
I’m not just a girl they tried to save.
I am a tool.
An asset.
A weapon aimed at the heart of a trafficking empire they didn’t know how else to dismantle.
And the worst part?
They don’t regret it.
It isn’t until a cold breeze licks across my thighs that I remember—I am still in that thin cotton shirt. Barely clothed. Barely covered. And yet I’d walked out here like I wasn’t exposed, like I wasn’t still bleeding from truths that hadn’t stopped cutting.
For a moment, I consider going back inside.
But no.
So I turn away from the house, from the men arguing over who got to own the pieces of me. And that’s when I see it—
A wall of wildflowers. Overgrown. Untamed. Blooming despite the decay of everything around it.
I move toward it, needing distance.
Needing something untouched.
Needing space to think.
My bare feet carry me through the grass, across cracked stone paths, past the scent of soil and rain. I walk until the house is no longer in view.
Until it is just me…and the truth I don’t want to face.
Shoomaker is right.
I’d seen the flyer.
I’d taken the address.
I’d walked into that auction knowing exactly what kind of world I was stepping back into.
So why am I so angry with them?
Because they played me.
Because they controlled me.
Because even under the banner of justice, they used my trauma as a map and dragged me back through hell like I am nothing more than a compass with skin.
They touched my mind.
Twisted it.
Let me believe I was free while they pulled every string behind the scenes.
And worse—
They touched my body.
Not like protectors. Not like agents on assignment.
Like traffickers. Like monsters with badges.
They enjoyed every ounce of it.
Even if only in the smallest ways.
The power. The obedience. The game of control.
And maybe that is the part I can’t forgive.
Because in the end…
What is the difference between the ones who would have sold me, and the ones who used me to catch them?