38. June 19th

JUNE 19TH

TB

Outside the conference room,TB clutched at Midas' arm to prevent him from going inside. "Midas. I…"

Midas used his free arm to grab TB's opposite shoulder. "I've got her. She'll be fine. Trust me. And while you're on the other side of that screen, figure out your shit. Because this is definitely your point of no return."

A single clap to TB's shoulder and Midas went into the conference room. TB saw Flame in the space between Midas' body, the door, and the door jamb, and then he couldn't see her anymore when the door closed.

Midas had some sort of voodoo magic he did on "good cop" interrogations. No one understood how it worked, even him, so when they had softer targets, he took the lead with his auto-suggestion tactics.

Banished to the security camera room, TB stood in front of the monitors, watching the room. Midas sat at the head. Flame was one seat to his right. The others stood around the room, relaxed yet focused. They were trying not to scare her, but TB knew she was petrified by how her teeth were gnawing on her lip and the tight fists clenched in her lap.

"Everything feels stretched. Like if I lock myself down any harder, I'm going to shatter," he said to himself.

"That's because you know you might not be able to fix this."

TB looked to his right and saw the speaker had a green light on it. God was listening in. TB had known the man would be but hadn't figured he'd be listening in on the security room end as well.

"Let me guess," the voice continued. "Feeling panicked? Angry? Confused? Reliving your argument and realizing all the ways you've fucked up? Wishing you could reverse time?"

TB relived the conversation in her sanctuary.

He did always paint himself as a villain.

He did destroy things first so that others couldn't.

He did hold himself away from others because when they left, it wouldn't hurt.

He did see himself as unredeemable.

He did see the worst in others because he jumped to the most obvious conclusion, thereby allowing him to let go before they did.

He wanted her so badly, but he truly believed he didn't deserve her, so he subconsciously took every opportunity to try to turn her away.

But then he turned around and tried to bind her to him using the only weapon he had, which was her feelings for him.

The poor woman had to feel like she was constantly being whipped around in every direction with him. She had no clue how he felt. And why should she? He'd never told her.

And you can't use the excuse that you didn't know. It was always your way: deny, deny, deny.

"I failed her," TB acknowledged. "I did promise I'd protect her. I may have kept her out of the hands of her stalker, but I didn't protect her from me and my self-destructive nature."

"Finally, he understands," God mumbled.

TB's attention was drawn back to the conference room.

"Who are you, Flame?"

The question came from Midas.

Clearing her throat, her eyes focused on Midas, saying, "What do you want to know?"

Midas had a folder in front of him with her name on the tab. A very thin folder.

Midas opened the folder and looked up at her, his expression blank.

The open folder revealed about a dozen small, stapled sets of paper. Midas laid them out neatly on the table with deliberation, identifying each one as he did so. "Social security number. State I.D. A savings account containing just over eight million dollars. A checking account with over forty thousand dollars in it—only debit card transactions and automatic payments for bills. No credit cards. Five years of tax returns claiming earnings from writing your books—all showing huge amounts of earnings each year—no other declarations. A title on the house, which is paid in full. A history of gas and electric, cell phone, and internet usage. A website and social media accounts dedicated to your twenty-five books, but no personal pages or accounts. That's it. Nothing else. And none of it goes back more than six years. Prior to that, you did not exist."

She did not look down at the papers. She simply stared at Midas.

"I'll ask again. Who are you? Because this"—Midas waved a hand over the papers—"is not a real person."

"My name is Sylvan Jones. You can see I'm exactly who I say I am."

"But only for the past six years. Who were you before that?"

Her gaze was steady on Midas, but TB took in the hard swallow, the pulse beating skittishly in her neck, and the fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly in her lap.

"I was the same person I am now."

Waters broke in. "Let's not play semantics games, Flame. Characteristics aside, you were most definitely not known by the name you are now. It didn't exist back then."

Midas took back over. "Flame, why did you not exist prior to six years ago?"

Her gaze finally broke, going to her hands in her lap.

Tears threatened to fall from her eyes, and TB felt himself wanting to pull her out of that room and hide her somewhere.

A shape knelt down at her side. Nemo. He turned the chair slightly and reached into her lap, his hands resting over hers. "Flame, look at me."

Liquid emerald eyes looked at the blond playboy.

He smiled gently at her. "While it's entirely possible that what you say is true, we're all in agreement with Waters. You need to tell us. There's very little you could say that we haven't heard before. No one will judge you."

"You can't promise that, Nemo," she whispered as she looked back down at their hands in her lap. "That's already a lie. I can feel his judgment from here."

No one needed to identify whose judgment she was referring to.

He fought the discomfort, locking it down. On the inside—sick to his stomach at whatever was coming. On the outside—badass and pissed. But not for the reasons most people would have guessed.

Nemo reached to tip her chin up so that her eyes met his again, then he raised one of her hands to his mouth, kissing the knuckles, followed by rubbing his thumb across them. He smiled encouragingly at Flame. "We all have secrets. Each and every one of us, including Mr. Totally Stupid. Some of them are worse than others. All of us have felt unredeemable. Some of us still do," he emphasized. "No matter what, we'll protect you. And you know TB has your back, even though he's refusing to admit to his feelings.

"But he's being that way right now because he's scared. When he feels like he can't control things, he lashes out. Some people would say that's immature. That he's throwing a temper tantrum. But that's not it at all. His brain doesn't process fear like a normal person's. He can only process fear in the form of anger."

Nemo flicked a quick look over her shoulder to the camera embedded in the frame of the painting behind her. TB knew where Nemo was about to go, and his stomach dropped in a real moment of regret.

Don't, Nemo. Let it go.

"Flame, do you know how TB got his name?"

She shook her head. "He just said it was because he was cruel."

Nemo nodded. "He is. But believe me, when he shows that side of himself to someone, you'd best believe they deserve much worse. One of our first jobs, we were hired to track down a drug boss and rescue his daughter. Her mother's family was very wealthy, and it sounded like an easy project. Go in, get the girl, bring her home. What we didn't know until TB caught him in the act was that this particular asshole was shooting up his ten-year-old daughter and selling her to his men. TB went into berserker mode. I've never seen anything like it. None of us have. That man didn't deserve to live after what he'd done to that girl. But what TB did to him? It's probably why he's wanted dead in so many countries."

And I'd fucking do it again.

"That man's daughter was there for the whole thing. Her father had her so brainwashed, she screamed at TB to stop. She called him selfish, cruel, and sadistic. Selfish for taking her father away. Cruel for murdering him in front of the daughter who loved him. Sadistic for causing so much pain. And it was painful to watch, let alone for that man to experience.

"But you need to know this, Flame. TB isn't a good man. He's righteous."

What the fuck?

"He'll tell you he isn't worthy of anything good because of the blood on his hands. He believes he has to be alone because his anger at those who hurt others is so terribly strong. But he doesn't see what we see.

"You know why we call him Total Bastard? It's not because he is one, although that's what his pea-brain believes. We call him that because he rids the world of Total Bastards. The men who are selfish, who are cruel, who are sadistic."

Flame's tears were free-flowing.

Nemo continued, "So when he pushed you, like he clearly did this morning, it was because his heart cut off all of the blood flow to his brain, making him stupid for a few minutes." Nemo turned her arm over and pushed the sleeve up to the elbow. "He saw this, and I'd bet my life he was suddenly back in that moment when he caught that man, and his men, raping a daughter who should have been loved. Protected."

"So he panicked," Midas piped in. "He feels like he can't protect you because this jackwagon keeps finding ways to reach out to you. Worse yet, he feels like he doesn't deserve you, and that means he's terrified to admit he loves you, Flame, because you might leave him if you ever figure that out. So he keeps pushing you away, even though he has a burning need to pull you closer until you're so bound to him that the two of you become one person."

TB stood frozen, watching his woman's heart break and his friends betray him.

Betrayal? Really?

They had no right to share that story.

Why? It's their story, too. All of them did and saw horrific things on that project. Everyone's soul came back stained, not just yours.

She'll never forgive what I did.

She doesn't have to, dumbass. You need to realize that you saved that child's life. That child hated you then. She might still hate you. But she's alive today because you killed that sonofabitch.

But the way I killed him…

Doesn't matter. It's done. The girl is safe. End of story.

It seemed like the screens stopped recording because there was no sound from the conference room. No one looked as if they were even breathing.

Demon's voice was the first to cut through the silence. "How long, Flame?"

She inhaled, let out a long exhale, and looked to the medic.

He pushed her to speak. "How long have you been free of it?"

"I've been clean since I left… home. Six years."

The word sounded like it tasted funny in her mouth. Almost like it was foreign or not the right word. TB felt his heart speed up.

She shuddered as she took in a deep breath, exhaled long again, and began to talk.

"My parents were addicts. My father was a dealer. My mother was a prostitute."

TB felt his body turning cold. He could feel himself emotionally and psychologically shutting down. Instantly, he pictured that drug boss, but instead of seeing him abuse the little girl, he saw Flame. Pictured her as a teenager.

"My earliest memory in life is walking down the street with a little pink backpack. I was five, maybe? I don't really know. I don't know when my actual birthday is. I can only guess at how old I actually am."

"Jesus," someone whispered. He wasn't sure who.

"My dad sent me on ‘errands' every day. A pool hall. A pawnshop. A bodega. A couple of people's homes. At every stop, there would be someone who met me at the door. Each person reached into my backpack and removed something, then placed something inside. And there was always a gift for me. At the pool hall, they'd give me a small cup of soda. The man at the pawnshop gave me little trinkets, probably things he bought off people. I remember a butterfly hair clip one time. The bodega was the only place I was allowed inside, but still, there was the backpack ritual. The girl there was the best. Always any ice cream treat I wanted out of the case."

She offered a sad grin at the simple childhood joy of ice cream. Nemo, still crouched at her side, seemed to understand and gave her a small nod. His thumbs gently rotated circles of calm on the backs of her hands.

"Most places were regular stops, but every once in a while, there would be a new stop. Never more than four or five blocks away, but as young as I was, I'm guessing that's too far for a child of that age to have been walking on their own.

"One day, I went past the local school, and all of the kids were outside playing. They were laughing. Having fun. They didn't have to stay home and run errands for their fathers. I'd never been to school or played with other kids. I remember wanting nothing more than to be on the other side of that playground fence, running and shrieking in joy like they were. When they all went inside, I ran home and told my father I wanted to go where all of those other kids were. I didn't want to run errands anymore."

The tears came. It was a losing battle. There was no way to hold them back now. "He yelled at me. Called me ungrateful. Said there was no way he was going to lose his runner. If he sent me to school, he'd have to run the errands himself, and then bad men—I can only assume he meant the police—would take him away. After all, if they caught me, what would they do to an innocent little kid? And if he were to disappear, he told me, Mother and I would be alone. We'd starve without him." She snorted. "Like he was some great provider. Like he cared what happened to us. Then…" her voice dropped even lower, "he made it very clear that I should never ask again."

Flame pulled her hands from Nemo's grasp, and her arm crossed over her middle to grab the other arm. Her eyes were open, but they had drifted to staring down the expanse of the table, focused on nothing. The right hand rubbed subconsciously at her left forearm. Every time on the downstroke, she winced.

"He beat you?" Midas asked.

She spoke without acknowledging the question. "I cried. I begged him to stop, and that seemed to make him even angrier. He backed me into a corner. I tried to curl into a little ball to protect myself, but he kept hitting me. Then he kicked me. Hard. In the arm, maybe? Must have been, but I don't remember much after that. I guess he knocked me unconscious. When I came to, my arm was swollen and black and blue."

He briefly remembered seeing the weird kink in the belt around her wrist when he bound her hands together, but he'd been so caught up in the moment that he didn't think to look closer. So many dots were connecting now, and a fuller picture was forming.

"I guess it was broken, but I didn't know that, and neither he nor my mother was going to waste their drug money to take me to the hospital. When it didn't heal properly, I made sure it was always covered so that no one could see it.

"He hurt me so badly. I was petrified. And that fucking bastard made me go back out on my errands the next day, broken arm and all."

The profanity from her, where it had never been heard from before, made her pain that much more real. "Oh, princess, I'm so sorry," TB whispered to her image on the screen.

The voice came from the speakers. "It works better if you apologize to the actual person, you know."

TB's eyes never moved from her on the screen. "I didn't know. Waters said it would feel like the world was imploding. It's worse." The last part was whispered.

"I said nothing was ever going to be the same," the voice said with a sigh, as if to himself. "And it hasn't been."

TB didn't know what God was talking about. Truthfully, it didn't matter because all TB was feeling was pain. Pure, unfiltered, unstoppable pain.

Back in the conference room, Waters spoke next. "That explains your childhood but not the new identity. What happened six years ago? California is hell and gone from New York City."

She sat up straight, looking into his hazel eyes. The tears kept falling.

Nemo palmed her cheeks with his large hands, turning her gaze to him, his thumbs swiping away the tears that would not stop. "It's okay, Flame. You're safe here. Whatever it was is in the past and can't hurt you anymore."

"But it's not, Nemo," she told him. "That's just it. The past is why this is all happening now. It's why TB was right to judge me as selfish for not giving you what information I had, even as I denied it mattered."

TB didn't want to hear the rest of this. It could only get worse from here, and he had a feeling the worst he could imagine still wasn't the worst it got.

She sighed and turned her face away from Nemo's gaze. "It was a few years later. Or, at least, I think it was. It's not like we had a calendar on the wall. One night, I came home from my errands, and my parents weren't there. They didn't return that night. It was three days before I accepted that they weren't coming back. That was when he came for me. Gendry."

The way she said his name made TB's heart clench. A name. He had a name. A name for whomever it was that had hurt his woman. Who had frightened her. Who had stolen her life.

"He was my father's boss, and he claimed that my father placed me in his care as he was dying. He claimed my parents died by overdose." She rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh. "Both? At the same time? Even as a child, I knew that was unlikely. So, I went with him.

"At first, it seemed like things had improved. He was nice to me. He seemed like he cared that I'd had things so rough. I had my own room, nice clothes, good food. He never beat me, which at the time seemed far more important than anything else. I still didn't get to go to school, but he hired a tutor to teach me to read and write. All those things I had wanted but hadn't been allowed to have before.

"I'm not sure exactly how long I was with him, but it was several years. I must have been just into my teens when I noticed his attention toward me began to shift. Maybe it had always been that way, but by then, I realized he was always watching me. I'd enter a room he was in, and I could feel his eyes on me, following me every second. I felt dirty every time.

"People started coming over. Mostly men, but whoever they were, they were clearly higher up the chain than him. I wasn't completely naive. By then, I had figured out how Gendry made his living, but what options did I have? If I ran away, one of his enforcers would just drag me back. If I ran and managed to evade him, how would I support myself? I had no skills to speak of. And even if I went to a police officer, I soon learned the hard way that he had more than a few in his back pocket.

"Sometimes, when I'd walk into the room, conversations would abruptly change. The men would look at me the same way he did. Some of them would be nice to me, but I knew it wasn't really because they wanted to be nice or help me. One or two tried to touch me, but Gendry wouldn't let them. He'd say things like they would owe him for a taste. At first, I didn't understand, but it didn't take long to realize that there could be worse things than beatings."

Her voice cracked, and she began to cough. Demon brought her a bottle of water and encouraged her to drink.

"Somewhere around that same time period, I got sick. It was probably just a cold, but he kept shoving medicine into me. I was so tired all the time, so muzzy-headed. I know now that he was drugging me. That's when the marks began to appear on my arms. If I was aware enough to remember him injecting me, he just kept reassuring me that they were vitamin shots. He was trying to make me well again.

"There are entire periods of time that I have absolutely no memory of, or if I do, it's shadowy. Just fragments of memories. I try not to think about what happened during those times," she whispered.

The men murmured epithets under their breath.

With one swift motion and a growl of pure rage, TB swept the entire contents off the desk in front of the computers, screaming in anger. Before he knew what he was doing, he was out the door, down the hall, and bursting through the conference room. Chest heaving, muscles popped, breath soughing in anger, he could only utter one word.

"Where?"

Flame jumped up from her seat and pulled on his arm. "TB! Stop! It's not worth it! It's over. It was so long ago." She put her hands up to his chest. Her eyes pleaded with him to regain control of his anger. "I'm not worth that rage inside of you."

His eyes went glassy. "Don't you ever say that, princess." TB reached up and smoothed the strands of her red hair that had escaped from her braid at the nape of her neck. Then his hands clasped hers and held them tightly between them as if they were praying. "You are worth my rage and so much more."

Waters broke in. "What caused you to decide to run anyway?"

"Gendry was on his way up in the organization. He had a huge client list, and he made good money. Penthouse. Nice car. Designer clothes. The finest of everything. But he also loved his product, and in the drug business, the dealers at the top end never use the product. Gendry didn't have the strength to stop.

"He also had other interests, namely me. My mother had been in his stable of women that he would send out to customers who not only wanted drugs for themselves but also wanted sex. Just normal, everyday guys who made the mistake of contacting a hooker. Gendry would use her to put those men in compromising positions, and he would blackmail them. Not for money—for connections. Places he could funnel the product through. Businesses to launder the money he took in. Obviously, I was much older when I learned this, but a lot more made sense about my parents. In fact, they were probably trapped by him early in their days of using, just like what they were doing to others.

"When he got into a particular bind, either because he was using his own inventory or used the money he owed to his chain of command, he would ‘rent' me out to a boss or a boss' visiting client. After the clients left, he'd come into my room, drunk, high, and angry. His mouth would say more than he meant for it to, and one of those nights, I managed to be clear enough to hear him berate me, my mother, and my father for putting him in the position he was in, having to use me to pay off his debts. How my father promised Gendry that he could have me. How he got impatient and purposely overdosed my parents so that he could collect his prize."

"It took two more years to finally get away, and it wasn't easy. I knew no one who would help me, and I had nowhere to go. But I knew where Gendry kept his extra cash. It wasn't easy, being so drugged up all the time, but I made a concentrated effort to see the combination on his safe.

"As sneaky and smart as he was, I guess he didn't account for the fact that as you use heroin, you become accustomed to it. Like any drug, you need more in order to maintain the high. He never gave me more than what he gave me the first time, so eventually, the effects were less and less. I knew if I was going to get away from him, I couldn't show him that I was capable of making decisions or doing anything without help, so I waited for the right opportunity. There were days when I thought it would never come.

"Then, one night, he left me alone in the apartment. He didn't do it often, and usually, he gave me an extra hit when he left to keep me pretty much comatose. But that particular day, there had been a heated telephone call. Someone was demanding money he didn't have. I think"—she shuddered—"he promised to sell me to them in exchange for whatever he owed. I knew this was my last chance.

"He left. As soon as he was out of the building—I watched him from the balcony—and into the limo waiting, I got into the safe, took what money was there, and I left. I borrowed a black hoodie from his closet, grabbed a T-shirt and jeans from my dresser, stuffed them and the cash into a backpack, and headed to the train station, where I bought a ticket to Florida. I got on the train, found a bathroom where I changed into the T-shirt and jeans, threw my dress in the garbage, put on the hoodie, pulled it over my head, and got off the train, looking like any other homeless vagrant hanging around the station.

"Then I went to the bus station. I asked a young girl there to buy me a ticket to the next city a bus was leaving for, and I ended up in Trenton. Once there, I stole away on a train with a huge family headed to Chicago. How I managed that is beyond me, but from there, it got easier and easier. I rode around to a different city each day, changing directions, backtracking, you name it. Finally, I made it here."

Midas smiled at her. "You're a pretty tough cookie."

Her return smile was wan. "I don't know about that. There were days when I wanted to just stay put. Let Gendry find me. I was so tired. The drugs were clearing my system, and I was very sick the entire time I was trying to get away."

"But you didn't give in," Demon reminded her. "You were strong. You knew it was the only way."

She nodded. "Whenever I felt like giving up, that's what I would remind myself of. But still, there were days when the urge to give up was stronger than the urge to run."

Her shoulders shook with exhaustion. TB felt the vibrations all the way through him as if he were a divining rod. She would crash soon.

"When I arrived and found a shelter to spend the night, I must have slept for two or three days. I woke up to discover that everyone around me was different than who'd been there before. The woman who ran the place, Ms. Monica, said just by looking at me, she saw I was running from something bad. Instead of waking me and kicking me out, she broke the rules and let me stay. Then she really broke the rules and took me home. I stayed with her for almost three months. She was the one who helped me get an I.D. and a social security card. She helped me get an apartment and learn how to use a computer."

"I hate to ask, but your previous life is a long road from spicy romance novels. How the hell did that come about?" Waters asked.

Flame smiled. "Ms. Monica again. She loved them. Had hundreds of them in her house. While I was detoxing and she was working, that's what I did. I read her books. And then I thought, maybe I could do that for a job. When I learned how to read and write, I did it nonstop. Sucked up everything I could find. I certainly couldn't be out and about for Gendry to find. This was something I could do and be anonymous. Apparently, I have a talent for it."

TB pulled her close, his large frame dwarfing her much smaller one. Glaring at his teammates, he growled, "You assholes don't need to read any more of them."

The guys were smirking at his order. He didn't care if he sounded like he'd murder them if they did. These idiots did not need to be seeing what fantasies his woman created in her dirty little mind.

He kissed the top of her head. "I'm so sorry, princess. You shouldn't, but if you forgive me, and if you'll let me, I will protect you. I swear on my life, little Flame, no one will ever touch you again. I promise you will be safe," he whispered. "With my last breath."

Flame's emerald eyes looked soberly up into his. "You still want me, knowing what he did to me? All the things I did?"

"Flame, you are a survivor. You didn't choose that life. Most women wouldn't have had the strength to do what you did. None of us would blame them for staying rather than attempting to break free. Still want you? Of course I do. I've always wanted you," he whispered again, framing her face in his hands, his eyes imploring her to understand. "I wanted you before we even got to our third chat session. I'd never heard your voice. I'd never seen your face. But I wanted to make you mine."

He brought his forehead down to hers and looked her in the eyes as he asked, "The real question is, can you still want me?"

The room went absolutely still as everyone held their breath.

Is this what they mean by a pregnant moment? It feels like the air weighs a hundred pounds. It actually hurts to draw in air.

She burrowed into his chest.

He exhaled in utter relief. Suddenly, the tightness in his chest lessened. His muscles unlocked. His brain booted back into life.

His eyes went to his team. One by one, they nodded their assent. Sylvan had been claimed. She was now tribe.