Chapter 14 #2
"The truth." Rafael's voice is soft but carries a weight that makes my skin prickle with dread.
"The reason I was able to convince your father to sign that contract is right here. This is the reason he did not fight harder to keep you and is the reason Magnus Sterling thought he could buy you in the first place. They both knew the depths of my knowledge concerning their nefarious activities, even if I didn’t reveal the darker elements. "
He taps the folder. “Open it.”
My hands tremble as I peel back the beige cover.
The first photograph steals the breath from my lungs.
It is my father, but not the father I know. Not the governor with the polished smile and the pressed suits and the round spectacles that catch the light and make him look like a man you can trust.
This man is a monster wearing my father's face, caught in the act of violence against a woman whose eyes hold nothing but terror and resignation. These images are different from the ones Rafael showed at the church when he confronted my father then. These are darker and involve blood and chains.
My stomach drops to the floor at my feet.
Page after page of evidence spills across the table as I flip through the file with numb fingers. Photographs and documents and financial records that paint a picture so horrific I cannot fully process what I am seeing.
“Your father is part of something called Society 69. It’s a secret organization trafficking human beings like commodities, selling women to the highest bidder and disposing of them when they are no longer profitable.”
That’s Reaper. He steps forward and places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, Persia. But you don’t get anything by staying in the dark.” His voice is as gentle as his touch. Both contrast sharply with the violence written across this man's knuckles and the horror that hides behind his eyes.
"Stop," I whisper, but my hands keep turning pages, keep revealing fresh horrors, keep destroying every last shred of the illusion I have been clinging to my entire life.
My father is not just a corrupt politician who sold his daughter to cover his gambling debts. He is a monster of the worst kind, complicit in suffering I cannot even begin to comprehend.
And Rafael knew. Rafael had this file the entire time, and had the power to destroy my father without ever involving me at all. I could have been free of all this?
"So, what are your plans in showing me these? If you had plans on exposing him," I say, as I point to the Savage bikers, “why did I even have to sign your contract?"
Rafael reaches for my hand, but I pull away before he can touch me.
His sigh is patient. "You misunderstand, little dove.
The men in this circle are bound by silence.
They are here to witness your father's crimes because they are working with the Men of Genesis to eliminate Society 69. What we share in this room will never be made public. The file was only leverage to take you. Not a weapon against you.”
The rushing blood in my ears makes it hard to hear, but I manage. “What now?”
“We use what Rafael has on your father to stop Society 69,” Beast answers. He stands with his massive arms crossed over a barrel chest and speaks calmly. Unlike Reaper, this man has an aura of peace about him. And patience.
“Your father needed to believe I would use it.
And I would have..." Rafael pauses, and something that looks almost like vulnerability flickers across his features.
"I pulled out all the resources at my disposal in order to get what I wanted. I won’t lie to you.
I knew I had to have you at my side by any means necessary from the first time we kissed. "
The words should comfort me. Instead, they feel like another cage slamming shut.
I signed away my future, promised him an heir, bound myself to a man I barely knew because I believed I had no other choice. But he could have freed me without any of that. He could have destroyed my father and let me walk away untouched.
Instead, he took what he wanted and dressed it up as salvation.
"I think I need some air," I manage, pushing back from the table on legs that feel like they might collapse at any moment.
Ash offers a steadying hand and I grab onto it and right myself. “Thank you.” He offers me a smile of understanding, but how can anyone understand the betrayal of someone you desperately wanted to love?
Rafael finishes his dealings moments later. The ride back to the airport passes in silence so thick I can taste it. Rafael tries twice to engage me in conversation, and both times I respond with monosyllables that make it clear I am not ready to talk. Not about this. Maybe not ever.
On the plane, I curl into the seat farthest from his and close my eyes, but sleep does not come. Instead, I replay every moment since he crashed my wedding, searching for the truth beneath the pretty words and the tender touches and the promises of protection.
He wanted an heir. He needed a wife. I was convenient and available and desperate enough to sign anything he put in front of me.
I am no better off than I was with Magnus. Just in a prettier cage with a more attractive jailer.
When we land in Chicago, the penthouse feels smaller than it did before, the walls pressing in with all the weight of the secrets I now carry. Rafael tries to pull me into his arms, but I step back, putting distance between us that feels like miles even though it is only inches.
"I need a few moments alone," I say, and my voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. "Please."
Something flickers in his dark eyes, hurt or frustration or both, but he nods once and reaches for his phone. "I have to step out anyway. There are some things that require my attention. Stay in the penthouse, little dove. Please."
I do not answer. I just watch him walk toward the elevator, wait until the doors close behind him, and then I follow him down.
I know I should stay. I know the world outside these walls is dangerous for a woman with my face and my connections.
But I cannot breathe in this gilded cage, cannot think past the rage and the grief and the desperate need to see my mother, to look into her eyes and ask her if she knew what kind of monster she married.
The country club rises from the manicured landscape, exactly as I remember it. It looks like a monument to old money and older secrets, all red brick and white columns and windows that gleam in the afternoon sunlight.
The Fairview Country Club has been my mother's second home for as long as I can remember, a place where women in pearls and pastel cardigans gather to discuss charity galas and tennis matches and the latest scandals whispered behind gloved hands.
The air smells of fresh-cut grass and chlorine from the pool and the particular floral perfume that seems to cling to every surface, as if the building itself has been marinating in wealth for so long it has absorbed the scent.
Inside, the dining room is all crisp white tablecloths and crystal water glasses and silverware polished to a mirror shine.
Sunlight streams through floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the golf course, casting warm rectangles across the hardwood floors.
Soft classical music drifts from hidden speakers, and the clink of china and the murmur of polite conversation create a soundtrack of civility that feels almost obscene given what I now know about the world beyond these pristine walls.
My mother is waiting at her usual table near the windows, her champagne-colored dress perfectly pressed and her diamonds catching the light with every subtle movement.
Calla and Kiara flank her like sentinels in their matching designer sundresses, and the way all three of them look at me when I approach tells me this is not a casual lunch.
This is an intervention.
"Darling." My mother rises to air-kiss my cheeks, and her gardenia perfume wraps around me like a noose. "We have been so worried about you."
"Have you?" I settle into the chair across from her and signal for a waiter, desperately needing something stronger than the iced tea sweating in crystal glasses at each place setting. "Because it seemed like you were more worried about your social standing than your daughter's safety."
My mother's smile tightens almost imperceptibly, the only crack in her carefully constructed facade. "That is not fair, Persia. I have always wanted what is best for you."
"What is best for me?" I laugh, and the sound is sharp enough to draw glances from nearby tables. "You stood at the top of those stairs and watched Magnus Sterling put his hands around my throat. You did nothing."
Calla shifts uncomfortably in her seat, exchanging a look with her sister that speaks of rehearsed lines and careful planning. "Persia, we are just worried. You disappeared with a man none of us know, a man with a very dangerous reputation. Your mother has been beside herself."
"Rafael Milano saved me from a monster," I say, though the words taste like ash on my tongue after everything I learned in New Orleans. "That is more than anyone else in this room can claim."
"Saved you?" My mother sets down her water glass with a soft clink that somehow carries more weight than a slammed door.
"Darling, he kidnapped you from your own wedding.
He has kept you locked away in that tower of his for weeks.
The papers are calling it a scandal. Do you have any idea what this has done to our family's reputation? "
"Our family's reputation." I stare at her, searching for some flicker of maternal concern beneath the polished exterior. "Father is a criminal, Mother. He sold me to pay his debts. And you are worried about reputation?"