Chapter 27

I wasn'tsurprised when Silver didn't answer me at first. His reaction to Aggie's unintended statement had been unbearable to watch. Silver's sister had unknowingly tapped into memories he'd been trying to forget. Memories he'd never told me. Sadly, I knew his wounds ran much deeper and if today's response was anything to go by, Silver would need a lot of help to cope with what had happened to him.

Help I wouldn't be able to give. I could listen to him for hours and hours as he talked about all the cruelty he'd endured, but I wouldn't be able to say the right thing to help him deal with all the things Ivan had done to him.

Only a professional could do that.

I'd reluctantly figured that out for myself as I'd dealt with my need for alcohol in the past few weeks. The cravings clawed at me every day but when they became too intense, I talked to my sponsor about it because he had been through it, and he knew what tools I could use to deal with said cravings. I'd already accepted that I'd be fighting this battle for the rest of my life, but I'd seen enough people at AA whose problems ran much deeper than my own and were finding new lives in sobriety.

As for my back, the nerve block had turned out to be a miracle of sorts. It was just as Ronan had said. The lingering discomfort could be managed with over-the-counter medication. I'd been released from my prison of pain, and I'd lived every moment knowing it wasn't a forever thing. Silver and I hadn't talked about the future, which I was glad for because I wasn't ready.

"We're a pair, aren't we?" I murmured. "With as many ghosts and demons as we have, we should be charging admission to watch our lives."

The lighthearted statement put a smile back on Silver's face. He even let out a little chuckle.

Another tiny victory.

We fell silent again, content to just touch each other in reassuring ways.

"He used that word a lot, but never in a good way," Silver said. I could feel him trembling beneath my touch. "It was early on, and I didn't understand German or Russian so I had no clue what he was saying, but as I got older, I figured it out. I had to look up the names he'd been calling me on the internet. I… I don't want to repeat them," Silver said with a shake of his head.

"You don't have to, sweetheart. But there are probably going to be other things that trigger that kind of response when you're least expecting it. You're allowed to have that response, Silver. It doesn't matter where you are, who you're with; you need to purge it or it will control you for the rest of your life."

Silver closed his eyes. "My parents… they can't… they can't know."

The mere fact that he was talking about his mother and father like he was gave me hope. Even if he didn't realize it, his psyche already knew he'd be reunited with them.

"That's your right, Silver. I obviously don't know much about how parents who really love you behave, but talking to your sister, even if it was only for a few minutes, makes me think that your parents won't let anything you say change their feelings for you. Can I tell you some of the things I found on the internet? It might help you make your decision about meeting them or not."

Another achingly long bout of silence and then Silver was nodding.

"It was just a few months after your eighth birthday. Your parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary, but they didn't want it to be just the two of them. They wanted their entire family with them. It was basically the vacation of a lifetime. You guys went to London, Paris, Venice… pretty much all over Europe. Your last stop before you were supposed to fly home was Berlin. There were a lot of kids with you guys… mostly cousins. Your parents, along with the parents of all those cousins, decided to hire a nanny in London and take her with you guys on the trip. They interviewed a dozen nannies before they settled on Vanessa. She worked for a temp agency and came highly recommended. All of her references and work history checked out. Your parents even did a background check on her to make sure there wasn't any kind of criminal record in Europe or the States."

I paused to give Silver some time to process my words before I asked, "Do you remember any of that?"

Silver nodded. "We rode a lot of trains and walked around a lot. When we kids started to get bored, one of the parents and Vanessa would take us to an amusement park or do something else fun."

"That's right," I said. "Until the last night. The adults decided to go to dinner to celebrate the trip. They left you in the house they'd rented for the time you were in Berlin. It was the first time that Vanessa babysat all the kids by herself. Since it was late in the evening, you were all asleep, so your parents believed Vanessa could handle everything alone for a few hours. When they returned home, Vanessa was gone. So were you."

"I remember waking up in some kind of warehouse. Vanessa was with some guy named Keith and they were arguing about how much money to ask for and where to get it."

I could tell the pieces were falling into place.

"They were talking about your ransom."

Silver's brows furrowed. "Ransom? What is that?"

"It's money that someone pays to get back a loved one who's been kidnapped," I carefully explained.

He sat up in the bed as understanding dawned. Sadie was there to cover his lap with her front legs. He automatically began petting her. I could have kissed the dog.

And Jace for pulling strings to get her for us.

Actually, I wouldn't kiss Jace, just like I'd never be kissing any other man if I had my way.

"So Vanessa took me to sell me back to my parents?" Silver asked.

"Yes," I responded grimly. I suspected that it wasn't just the adults who'd trusted Vanessa. During such a long trip, she would have built up bonds with each child.

"But she and the guy she was with… Keith, they sold me to Ivan."

"They did but only after the ransom drops kept falling through. Your parents agreed to their demand of three million dollars without hesitation—they just wanted you back. Vanessa and Keith would tell them where to leave the money and then they'd leave you in some other spot and call them—that was the plan, anyway. But they never showed up to pick up the money. They changed the drop location several times but they probably knew the German police would be watching the drop point and they just plain freaked out about getting caught."

"But Vanessa… she liked us. She was nice to all of us," Silver murmured.

"It was all an act. Her criminal background check was clean, but it never mentioned Keith, who she'd been dating for years before your family hired her. They were both drug addicts, but Vanessa had managed to pass a drug test before your parents hired her. Vanessa and Keith's original plan was to take one of you in London and ransom you there, but with one of the adults in your family always joining Vanessa to help her handle so many kids, she and Keith couldn't make it work. They knew how much money your parents were worth, so Keith basically followed behind you guys to all of those places and was waiting to help Vanessa take one of you the second she was alone with you."

"One of us?" Silver croaked. "What does that mean?"

I'd hoped to skip over this part until Silver was in a better place emotionally, but I'd figured he would pick up on it. Despite all the times it had seemed like he wasn't listening to something because he was lost in his own little world, he'd heard some of the things that were said.

"It was never confirmed, but the police believe you were the one they randomly chose to take. Even though there were a lot of kids in your extended family, you and Aggie were the ones who were the youngest in your immediate family. You were sharing a room with her in the house your family had rented." I paused so I could work up the courage to finish telling him things he wouldn't want to hear.

"Do you know what bunk beds are?" I asked.

Silver shook his head.

I'd kept my tablet handy for this exact purpose, so I pulled it out and quickly found a picture of what I was talking about.

"I remember that," Silver said with a nod. "Aggie slept in the top bed because I didn't want to be so high off the floor. So I slept in the bottom—" His already pale skin went whiter. "Wait," he croaked. "Vanessa took me because I was in the bottom bunk?"

I reached out to cover Silver's free hand with mine. "She needed to take whoever was the easiest for her to get out of the room and ultimately out of the house. She didn't care which one of you it was."

Understanding dawned for Silver as he began to make sense of what I was saying. He would have been spared the life he'd had with Ivan and grown up as a normal little kid, but if he hadn't been the one taken, his twin sister would have been the one to suffer a similar fate.

Since I could see Silver was on the verge of falling apart again, I rushed through the remaining details of his abduction. "Your parents actively searched for you for nearly a year. They never left Berlin in all that time. Your brothers and sister were sent home with your relatives. Your parents offered huge amounts of reward money for anyone who helped get you back to them safely. Hundreds of leads came in. The police checked them all but there was never any sight of you, Vanessa, or Keith. Every year around the time you'd been taken, your parents returned to Berlin and did TV and newspaper interviews in the hopes of getting any kind of lead on where you were. It's likely Vanessa sold you to Ivan within days of deciding it was too dangerous to ransom you to your family. Their bodies were eventually found in an abandoned building. They'd overdosed. There was no sign of you. Not then, not ever. The only evidence the police had to go on was the sighting of a black car in the area at some point, but no one could remember when or any specific details about the car, so police couldn't find it."

"They sold me to Ivan for the drugs that killed them?" Silver said with a harsh laugh that also carried a deep sob with it.

The irony had cut me to my core, so I could only imagine how Silver was feeling.

"Silver, I?—"

"No!" he shouted. "No!" he repeated as he tried to scramble past me, shoving Sadie away from him in the process. I managed to catch him by the upper arms before he could get off the bed.

"Don't touch me!" Silver screamed. "Don't touch me!"

He kept repeating the words, his voice getting louder each time. Sobs racked his body. Angry sobs.

As painful as it was to know he didn't want to be anywhere near me, I couldn't release him. Not in the state he was in.

"Silver—" I began to say as calmly as I could.

"Let me go, Dalton! Fucking let me go!" he bellowed. He was completely out of control. Even though I had a hold of his arms, it didn't keep him from physically lashing out at me. He clawed at my face, hit me with his fists, and kicked out his legs in the hopes of hurting me. I didn't try to stop him from taking all his rage out on me, but it was a struggle to keep him from escaping my hold. Even Sadie had left the bed because Silver had inadvertently hit her in the process of trying to get to me.

Every time Ivan had raped him, every time the fucker had degraded him, every hurt Ivan had ever inflicted upon him; it all came pouring out of Silver like water gushing from a broken pipe.

"Let me go!" Silver screamed at the top of his lungs.

"No!" I yelled. I shook him hard. Hard enough to rattle his teeth. When his eyes finally met mine, I said, "You let all that fucking shit out, Andrew! I don't care what you do to me, I'm not letting you go! Do you hear me? I'm never letting you go!"

Silver was shaking like crazy, but the use of his real name had ended his violent attack. Like when we'd been at the koi pond, he began throwing up, though there was nothing in his system to expel. He heaved with every retch that his body forced upon him. Bile was all that came out and even that stopped eventually. When his body's painful assault on itself came to an end, Silver fell against me and sobbed.

"I've got you," I whispered into his ear. I kept saying the words until his body stopped shaking and relaxed against mine. It wasn't until he fell completely silent that I heard the floorboards of the boat creak. I looked over my shoulder. Silver's parents were standing in the doorway, clinging to each other and softly crying. Aggie was sitting on the floor, her arms slung around Sadie's neck as she too grieved. I couldn't see the rest of his family, but I had no doubt that at least one or two of his brothers was standing on the deck or stairs behind Silver's parents. The fact that they'd heard Silver's screams didn't surprise me, nor did their presence. They'd kept their distance upon our arrival, but what parent could stand by and listen to their child suffering?

Silver's weight became heavier as his eyelids began to flicker. We were both a mess from the encounter. Our clothes were torn, Silver's sick covered us both, and we were both breathing heavily.

I glanced at Silver's parents and saw that they were still crying, but they'd also calmed down. The need in their eyes, especially Silver's mother's, broke my heart. They wanted to console their child but couldn't. I was a stranger to them, so to have to see their son rely on me for comfort had to be tearing them apart. Silver's father gave me a short nod as he put his arm around his wife and urged her in the direction of the steps that led up to the main deck.

"Mom?" Silver whispered. The word was barely audible because Silver's cheek was resting against my chest and his mouth was turned just a bit so it was pressed against my shirt.

Silver's mom stopped in her tracks and spun around. The sobs she'd managed to stifle began all over again, but she stayed where she was. "Andrew," she choked out.

Several long beats went by and then Silver was trying to sit up. I helped steady him and held my breath as he climbed off the bed. I was with him all the way to make sure he didn't fall. I didn't release him until he'd cleared the small step at the base of the bed.

"Mom," Silver repeated and then he began putting one foot in front of the other. His balance was iffy at best but fortunately his mother took care of that. She hurried toward him but thankfully didn't grab him in a bear hug. Instead, she stood in front of him. Tears streaked down her face as she tentatively reached her hand out like she was going to touch his face, but she pulled it back before making contact. I admired her restraint. She knew that what she needed wasn't the same as what her son did.

"Mom?" Silver let out with a choked sob and then he walked into her embrace. I watched as mother and son wrapped their arms around each other and clung tight as they both cried. It was painful to watch but also liberating.

"Thank you, God," his mother said softly as she looked up at the ceiling. "My sweet boy," she cried as she dropped her head and held Silver's face against her chest. He was about the same height as her, but it didn't matter. Silver was still the little boy she'd lost.

"Dad," Silver called despite his face being pressed against his mother's body.

Silver's father was there in an instant, his long arms surrounding both his son and his wife. "Andrew," he cried.

I could see that there were several men standing on the stairs but one by one they climbed up them instead of down. I was glad for that because I knew Silver wasn't ready to face each member of his family.

While I was focused on the men disappearing, I missed the moment where Silver's mother released her son so father and son could cling to each other. The last thing I was expecting was for her to be walking toward me. She was dressed in only a nightgown and her feet were bare and dirty. Her husband was in a similar state. It was proof that neither parent had taken the time to even put shoes on when they'd heard their son's screams.

I stiffened as Silver's mother reached me. I expected her to stop in front of me, but she just kept coming and then her arms were around me. "Thank you," she said with a brutal sob. "Thank you."

The hug felt foreign to me, so I wasn't sure what to do, but as Silver's mother clung to me much like she had her son and kept repeating her thanks, I found myself wrapping my arms around her.

Tight.

I dropped my head to her shoulder as she continued to cry and thank me. Moments later, Silver's father's arms were enfolding me. "Thank you, son," he said, his voice uneven and shaky. "Thank you."

For the life of me, I couldn't speak as I returned the man's hug.

Silver was back in his mother's arms, but Aggie had joined in on the embrace. I felt a bright, warm light go through me as I watched Silver's father return to his family and join in on the group hug. Sadie brushed up against my side and licked my fingers. I should have felt like a stranger watching from the outside, but oddly enough, I didn't. It wasn't until Silver's eyes sought mine out as he continued to hold on to his family that the light grew brighter and my whole body felt like it was going to float up right into the sky.

Silver… no, Andrew, had finally come home.

And maybe, just maybe, I had too.