Page 49 of Keys

She sighed so deeply that I felt the weight she must be carrying. “I don’t want you to get that information from cyberspace. I wanted it to come from me,” she explained. Then, she launched into the story of how she came to be, what it was like growing up, and how she eventually blackmailed her father into giving her a new identity, a healthy bank account, and her mother some peace. What she didn’t mention was knowing her sister was in town.

“What about your siblings?” I asked, trying to get her to fess up about Aubrey. We were both lying back on the bed side-by-side by then with our legs draped over the edge and feet still planted on the floor.

“What about them?”

“Did you ever meet them?”

She chuckled softly. “As if Senator Cassidy would have ever allowed that.” Keys turned slightly and tucked her feet up behind her. Her hand moved to my shoulder where she started caressing back and forth almost absentmindedly. “When I was little, I sometimes saw pictures of them on TV or in a newspaper article while we stood in line at the grocery store. At first, I was curious about my little brother and sister. As I got older, I realized that they got to live with our father, have him attend whatever shit they had going on. Not that they had shit going on yet, because they were babies, but I looked at it from my own perspective, I guess. He was there to tuck them into bed, read them stories, take them for ice cream. I don’t know if any of that was even true, but as a young girl that’s what I imagined for them.”

I gently brushed a few strands of hair away from Keys’ face and wished I could take the pain I saw creasing her beautiful features away from her. She didn’t let it stop her from explaining everything though.

“When he would come to our house, he would hand me a doll, pat me on the head, and tell me to go play. Those were the times he bothered showing up when I was around. Sometimes, he would call ahead and worn my mother that he didn’t have a lot of time and that she should leave me with a neighbor or something.”

“Are you serious?”

She nodded her head. “I stopped thinking about my siblings and the fantasy life I created for them in my mind before I ever even hit middle school. My mother would always ignore pictures she saw of his family, so I took a page out of her book and followed suit, thinking it would save my sanity in the long run.”

She heaved a heavy sigh before carrying on with her sad family story. “The last time he showed up, it was the same thing. He patted me on my head, handed me a fucking doll, told me to go play, and pulled my mother into her bedroom. That was when I got the video of them together.” She chuckled, amused with something, even though sadness pulled at her eyes. “I was fifteen fucking years old, and he told me to go play with a doll. I should have demanded more money.”

Keys had already explained how she took that video to the lawyer and set everything else into motion. I still couldn’t believe that she’d done all that, on her own, at fifteen-years-old. Then she moved here. She still wasn’t able to drive a car, and she was living out here on her own. It fucking astounded me. The sheer bravery, but I had to be sure of one thing.

“So, even after everything went down and you moved out this way, you never tried to meet your brother and sister?”

“No. I told you, I stopped even checking pictures of them when I was younger because it would spin me up and then I would end up sick for a week, thinking about the fabulous life they had while I was just an afterthought. Besides, when I moved out here, I had the NDA working against me ever doing that anyway. Protecting my mom was more important than meeting my siblings.”

“Why did you suddenly tell the girls about everything?”

Another sigh escaped her lips. “When I left here the other night, I went to work to take my mind off things.” She didn’t elaborate on what those ‘things’ were, but I knew she was talking about what had gone down between Aubrey and me and then Laney with her lips wrapped around my dick for everyone to see. She went on to tell me about the alerts she got and how one of the girls was also one of the missing women she had flagged as possibly being trafficked.

“So, you think your father has something to do with the trafficking ring?” At least I wouldn’t have to break that news to her.

A tear slipped free, out the corner of her eye and landed somewhere on my bed beneath her. “I always knew he was a piece of shit; you know?” She asked quietly. “I knew he wasn’t a good person. The way he treated my mom and me was enough to know that. I never thought he was this horrible damn monster though. If he knows about them, if he’s responsible, if he's a part of it… That means my father is one of the most deplorable human beings on this planet.” She leaned in, her forehead touching my shoulder, and I could feel the wetness accumulate on my shirt from the tears she attempted to hide.

I lifted her face so that I could look into her beautiful eyes, clouded as they were with tears. “What your father does isn’t a reflection on you.”

“Isn’t it though?”

“No. You are your own person. It’s obvious, by how you protected your mom from him and how you got away that you are nothing like the man. Don’t take the shit he’s done on your shoulders.”

“What if he got into all that because I took my mother away from him?”

“Nope. You’re definitely not going down that road. I have a feeling that if your father was involved in that shit, it predates whatever you did to get your mom safe. And no matter what, you were a fifteen then, and probably didn’t even realize human trafficking was a thing you’d ever need to worry about.”

“That’s true,” she offered as a tiny smile tipped one side of her lips up at the corner.

“Come here,” I whispered as I pulled her in closer so that her body was flush with my own. “None of this is your fault.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her who Aubrey was, but Keys seemed so fragile just then that I didn’t want to break her any further by telling her that the little sister she envied as a child had been in the same town, gone to the same college that Keys once attended, and apparently hated her for some reason.

When I thought they might be in on some bullshit together, I was ready to throw both of them to the wolves, but the deeper I dug, and from what Keys told me, I don’t think that was the case. It did make me wonder what Aubrey’s agenda was though. It also made me wonder if she had been telling the truth about her middle name. Had her father named the daughter he kept after the one he had hidden away?

That was some seriously fucked up shit. Keys’ body jerked lightly in my arms, letting me know that she had finally broken. Her tears were warm on my chest as they soaked through the fabric of my thin t-shirt. Eventually those jerky movements from her quiet sobbing subsided and her breathing eased. It took me a few minutes to realize she had fallen asleep on me. Carefully, I moved us both so that we were lying fully on the bed comfortably and then I fell off to sleep too with her safe in my arms.

If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t think she would still be there when I woke up. That’s why I was surprised to feel a hot mouth on my cock. I pulled back the sheet that obscured my view of her and took in the sight that I never thought I’d see again. Her eyes sparkled as they met mine.

“I missed this,” she admitted once she popped her mouth free of my dick. I didn’t wait for her to go back to it. Instead, I reached down, grabbed her under the arms, and yanked her up my body so that we were chest to chest.

“I missed this too.” My mouth came down on hers in a punishing kiss as I reached down and squeezed her ass, bringing her body grinding down on top of my hard, exposed cock. Her answering groan let me know she had missed me in more places than just her mouth.

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