Forbidden (Blood Ties #7)

“Meet?” He scowled. “No, we don’t have another appointment for at least another two weeks. We were meeting monthly.”

“Meeting.” I answered. So he wasn’t the asshole she’d been going to see the night I struck her with my car.

“Yes.” He pushed off the wall, stepping closer. “She’s a client.”

I knew my brother, knew the way his mind worked. “Have you fucked her?”

He licked his lips, and there it was. That need. That hunger. He might not’ve fucked her…but he’d wanted to. Or at least, he’d tried.

I wanted to think about that. I bet she hadn’t cowered under his touch. I bet she’d looked him right in the eye and told him to keep his damn hands to himself, just like she’d tried to tell me…for a while at least, until that sick need inside her caught a taste of the hunger she’d been born craving.

Now she couldn’t get enough.

“It doesn’t matter,” I answered, remembering how that bastard guard had stabbed at the maps in front of me. “None of it does. Not her. Not this. Not even us. They plan on filling this place with as many Daughters as possible…then setting it alight and us along with it.”

He froze, scowling. “What does that mean?”

Some part of me was relieved to share the burden. “It means we can’t leave. We even try and we’ll be locked in those fucking cells along with all the women we shoved there.”

The blood drained from his face. “Why?”

“Why the fuck do you think?” I lifted my glass.

His eyes searched mine as it slowly dawned. “They’re going to use us.”

“Yes. They are…and right now, until we get the location of the black site, there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it. We leave now and we’re out. We leave now and—”

“Our sister is lost for good.”

I slowly nodded. “Yeah, she is. Which is why right now we need to let them think they have the upper hand. We need to play the game while they truck in as many shipments as they need, and we need to, but we can neither leave nor have any involvement here. They want us around by reputation alone. A reputation we built on the backs of all the cruel things we’ve done here. They’ll kill them all, every Daughter, every guard, and then they’ll come for us.”

“No.” He shook his head.

I didn’t have the heart to watch him journey through all the fucking stages until he slammed into acceptance. But that’s where he needed to be, if we had any chance of making it out of this alive. I turned from him and walked back to the Scotch, as I drained my glass.

Only this time I didn’t pour for me.

Amber splashed against the bottom of a fresh glass sitting beside the bottles. I screwed the cap on and carried it back, holding it out. “Here, it’ll help the rancid taste of what you just swallowed.”

“I banked on greed,” he said slowly, raising that stunned gaze to me. “I never thought they’d—”

“Yeah, well, you were wrong.”

His hand shook when he lifted the glass. Ripples of the liquid caught the light. He swallowed, swiping his mouth before he glanced toward the darkened bedroom. “Maybe we can get him out?”

“We try to leave and we’ll be gunned down. I know that for a fact.”

“Fuck,” my brother whispered, and glanced at Thomas’ room.

Hell, five seconds in a room with Coulter and anyone could see that. We were here for one reason and there was no way they'd let their fall guys escape.

Beep.

I looked at my cell.

Coulter: You’re required in the meeting room. Immediately.

“Speak of the devil,” I snarled and turned, striding toward the connecting door before I stopped. “They’ll be taking over the rooms where I left her. If they find her—”