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“Your only concern is to hter better” A woh cheekbones, a strong jaw, and dark sloe-eyes She gave off the impression that she wasn’t afraid but she couldn’t hide the tre her up in the ht anyway? Let my poor baby sleep”

The nurse raised her brows “Your baby was crying in thefrom the pain I was the only one around” She let those last words sink in like daggers

Amelie sucked in her breath and shook her head “Don’t you dare question et some sleep at home It’s the only e can be there for her”

The nurse stared back at her, wondering if she should push it further She glanced at the girl as staring at her mother with aaround here If the girl really was being abused or neglected, Child Services would find out about it They’d already been notified anyway The Watts could deal with the

Finally the nurse sighed and said, “You’ve got five minutes before I’ll need you to leave the roos will keep the pain at bay”

Ahter The nurse left the roo the door behind her

Amelie relaxed visibly once she heard the door shut She cahter and placed a hand on Ellie’s thin, tanned ar into it

“Baby,” she whispered “What did you tell them?’

By now the girl was slowly losing consciousness, eased into a comfortable state by the morphine She licked her lips and said what she knew her , mama”

Airl When you’re feeling better, we’ll let you knohat to say For now, tell the for car parts at the duot it? The last thing you remember”

“But …” the girl started “But the man Travis” Amelie shuddered at the sound of his nao to jail”

“He will be punished one day, baby,” her mother said “One day, he will pay But that’s not your job We’ll take care of it I promise”

Herher hand

I’ll ht Then fell asleep

CHAPTER ONE

The stor

I was sitting in a stolen Jeep with no roof, parked on the side of a dirt road beneath a wavering canopy that occasionally let a spattering of rain pelt ht, I was cold and soaked to the bone in own On one side of me was Caht than dark, one ht Both men had come for me Both men had loved me And both of them I had seriously underestimated

There really wasn’t ht But after everything that happened, I knew a panic attack was just waiting to devour ahto tear– Gus, e, ht do to Caed toward ht do to try and make sense of it all

We had only been in the Jeep for about tenback to Veracruz, when I’d told Javier to park the car so I could have aan area beneath so winds Bothat me and I could only look down at ainst theinto my palms They both knewinternally, wanting to run I couldn’t even look at them I couldn’t even accept the situation Javier and Caether, let alone sit in a Jeep together without the each other And I was in the middle

My mind raced back to our escape My ht I’d see her again, let alone at a drug lord’s party, but there was she was, servingfor Travis of all people, thewhen I was just eleven years old, the saht in Mississippi What the hell had happened to her? After everything we had gone through as a family, after all the pain I suffered, the inquests from authorities, the move to Palm Valley to stay with Uncle Jim and her eventual abandonment of me, as she here with him now? And where was my father?

I sed,Javier He had known this all along, knehere they were He’d even wanted edme

I couldn’t even be angry at hih I should have known better, I should have expected this I was so da for his old tricks, for slipping into a past that would have been better left buried I hatedit in Javier instead, and hated e I caused That was another reason I couldn’t look at hied He was stronger, tougher and more ruthless He was also hurt, scarred deep inside by what I’d done He now had the kind of scars that even his skilled hands couldn’t transform

“Are you okay?” Ca his knee My other knee was touching Javier’s I could feel the, both their bodies tense and rigid as we sat there in the darkness This was so aard So fucking aard

And from the looks of it, with Gus andblown, the three of us having to ether, aas the least of my problems

I nodded, still looking at h I wasn’t okay None of us were

Javier sighed loudly So about his tone made me look over Somehoas easier to look at hiuilt when I did