CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

GIANNA

"L et me out," I scream at the guard as he holds a gun to my head. "My father will kill you."

"Shut up," he growls, pushing me onto the floor of the vehicle. "Stay fucking quiet or we're both dead."

At this point, I really don't care.

My brain is scrambling to understand what I heard in the warehouse. My father's warehouse.

I know.

I know what it was.

I want to vomit. I want to scream. I want to understand what is going on.

They are women. A lot of them.

Suffering.

Why?

You know why.

I push back the bile rising in my throat.

"Who were those people?" I ask the guard as we hear the gunfire outside.

"Shut the fuck up. And don't ask questions you don't want answers to." He grunts, then his body covers me more as he ducks, and booted men run past the car.

More gunfire and shooting sound out.

Oh my god.

My father. My brother.

Braxton.

I don't know what to think or who to blame. Maybe all of them.

Does my mother know about this? Did my grandmother?

How could they sit back and allow it to happen? I know other criminal families are involved in...human slavery—I gag—but I never thought we were.

God, I'm so stupid.

I believed my father would never do such a thing. Surely my brother couldn't stand by and allow it. As if either of us has a choice.

My heart slowly breaks as tears slide down my face, my reality crumbling before my very eyes.

My family are monsters.

What does that make me?

I listen to the sounds outside and the vision of Braxton's face as I was carried out of the warehouse returns.

Did he betray me and my family?

Or is he one of the men responsible for these women being in that hole?

Do you know what I do?

Was he warning me that he's not a good man? But then he also said I've assumed you know more than you possibly do. My apologies.

I know enough.

Well aren't you a surprise?

Oh god, Braxton thinks I know. He thought I knew about this. No wonder he could never love me.

But then another realization crashes through me. I was right. He used me to get to my father but it's much worse than I thought.

He's a spy. A traitor.

Braxton Rossi never loved me. He was fucking me to work his way undercover into our lives.

I hate him.

I HATE him.

I can't help myself; I start sobbing.

"For fucks sakes," the guard says and whacks me on the back of my head.

As I cry out the world goes black, and I'm not even sad about it.