Page 48 of Vengeful Lies

But stuffing them away was so much harder when one of the men who’d made her get on her knees before him so he could roughly take her mouth was too much.

She wasn't even aware she was whimpering until Cole reached around to shoot her a worried look.

“You okay, Gabs?” he asked.

Unable to speak she just nodded.

There was no time for her to have a meltdown.

Whether she was okay or not—and most definitely was not—the priority was getting Cade home to his daughter.

That was what mattered.

Once the two were reunited then she could fall apart.

Maybe.

Unless they needed her.

“Gabriella and I are going to take an Uber home,” Cole told the others when Cooper reached out and opened the back door of the SUV.

“No,” she said, still shrinking away from John’s approach, but confident she wanted to be there. “I'm okay. I just …” she trailed off because she still hadn't told the others what had happened to her when she was being held captive. They knew about the kiss because it was on the video that had been sent, but they didn't know about the oral sex she’d been forced to give, or about the bite on her breast that burned with pain, but she was steadfastly ignoring it.

“Yes, yes, of course she is,” John said as he was shoved into the back of the SUV behind where she was sitting.

“Don’t talk to her,” Connor snarled as he climbed into the backseat beside her. Cooper joined him and Becca took the front passenger seat.

“Of course,” John agreed amicably. “Was just trying to make conversation. I understand why you're all so on edge. It’s why I felt like I must reach out to Becca and let her know that I might be related to the woman I assumed would one day be her sister-in-law. I was just trying to do the right thing, Becca, you know that. You know me.”

“Shut up,” Cooper ordered, and John gave an agreeable nod.

They rode in silence until they got to the building she knew was where Cade and his team planned their ops and ran training drills. Prey’s main office was in Manhattan, but since that was several hours away, they had their own office building close to home. There were plenty of times that they had to go into the main office, but most of the time, Eagle allowed his teams the autonomy of working independently so long as they ran things by him.

She’d only been there a handful of times over the years, but never like this.

Never with a prisoner in tow.

Since she knew Prey always did things in a way that there would be no blowback to them, she had to assume they had already alerted authorities to the fact that John Gaccione was involved in her and Essie’s abduction and had permission to interrogate him.

Whatever John thought was going to happen was not.

Life as he knew it was already over.

This was all just a formality because they needed to know where Cade was being held.

Please be alive, please be alive, please don’t let us be too late.

It felt like it was too late.

That’s what she was thinking as the car drove into the underground parking lot and came to a stop.

As the guys pulled John out of the vehicle, she and Becca trailed behind as they all headed inside. Instead of taking the lift to the main floors, they took it down to a level she hadn't been to before.

Not that she needed an imagination to figure out what this level was for.

These were the interrogation rooms.

“Wait here, moonlight,” Connor said, pausing to drop a kiss to Becca’s lips. “You too, Gabriella.”

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