He nodded, his eyes set in satisfaction. “They’re waiting for you at the warehouse. I might have had a bit of fun first, but don’t worry, there’s still something left to break.”
I nodded, awareness licked my skin. I wanted to go to the bastard, but fuck, I didn’t want to leave Gemma alone in case she woke from a nightmare.
Dad must have seen the indecision in my eyes because he said, “I’ll stay here with her for a while if you want to go and question them before she wakes.”
“Did they say anything?” I asked.
He nodded. “They work for Frank Gallagher. They were here for the girl.”
I looked off to the side, my fists clenching. “Anything else?”
Dad shook his head. “That’s all they have to say. I don’t think they know anything else.”
So basically, we got nothing new.
He watched me carefully. “You’re going to be running this empire one day, son. You need to learn how to be patient—to control your emotions. Especially when you’re hunting your prey. One misstep because you let your emotions get the better of you, and that wouldn’t just mean your death, but the deaths of all those you cared about.”
I let out a small breath of air.
He was right.
But fuck me, it was hard.
I tried to rein in my emotions and nodded.
He grunted and turned back to the computer screen.
Anger and nausea clawed their way up my throat.
On the screen was a virginity auction site for Gemma Gallagher. And what was more, there was a bidding war for her. Men from all over the world wanted to take what was mine.
There was a picture of Gemma that fucking looked like a school picture. Fuck me, but she hadn’t changed all that much from then to now. Her innocence was still clearly reflected in her soft brown eyes, a fucking beacon for all the monsters in the world.
I would just have to be meaner, scarier, and more fuckingviolentthan all of them.
The second picture…
My fists clenched.
This one was taken without her permission.
Only her side profile was shown, and it looked like she had just gotten out of the shower, her head turned.
You couldn’t see anything from the picture, just her side, a hint of her ass cheek, and her ribs. Her arms had covered up her breasts.
Someone had taken a naked picture of my girl and put it up on the darknet. And I couldn’t fucking risk taking it down. Not until I knew who had set up this site in the first place.
Because Gemma wasn’t the only one in it.
Twenty other girls, by my count, some younger than Gemma.
I closed my eyes.
Who was protecting them?
I couldn’t even stomach the idea of what would have happened to Gemma had she not shown up in my life when she had.
The King’s Men were a lot of things, and we had done a lot of bad shit, but there was one thing we didn’t deal with, and that was skin.