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“Your dad’s a big boy,” Axel says when the game starts up again.

My brows drop. “What do you mean by that?”

Axel shrugs.

“I mean your dad is a grown-up making grown-up decisions. He’ll have to face whatever shit he’s in like a man.”

I feel like my head is about to explode.

“Nah, that’s not him. Someone is trying to frame him,” I say, clenching my jaw so hard it hurts.

Axel doesn’t respond, he just keeps staring at the screen as he shoots at a pack of zombies.

“Someone is trying to frame him,” I repeat, moving closer to him, crowding over his chair.

At that, Axel sighs and slams his controller down, standing to face me.

“Come with me,” he says, pushing me back a step with a straight arm.

With those three words, it’s like ice hitting my face. Whatever he’s about to show me, I know I won’t like.

Axel plops into his computer chair after we enter an adjoining room, and I’m taken back by the sheer size of his set-up. There has to be at least twelve screens stacked in four columns, all showing different things.

On the wall near the ceiling is a stock ticker.

What the fuck is Axel really into?

“Your father is as guilty as the FBI thinks he is, not that they’re looking anywhere close to you anymore. The problem is they never had any evidence. Itsomehowended up vanishing into thin air.” He pulls closer to his keyboard, his fingers flying over the keys. “I guess it helps to know people on the inside.”

“Anyone who thinks my father is a human trafficker is out of their mind. He’s being framed.”

Axel nods and moves a window from the bottom right screen to the center.

“Yeah, no. I’m sorry to tell you, but your father is participating in trafficking. Look.”

One by one, pictures fill the screen.

The images look like drone footage, framed from high above what looks like a tropical shoreline.

I take a step closer to the screen, and it takes a moment for my brain to understand what I’m seeing.

But when it registers, I wish I’d never looked.

“Are those?—”

“People being carted out of shipping containers? Men being forced to fight to the death? A child with a?—”

“Enough!” I shout, my voice sharp like lightning. “Enough.”

Axel leans back in his chair, swiveling from side to side with his hands folded over his stomach.

I pinch the skin between my eyebrows.

“That’s terrible. But how do you know my father is involved?”

Even though it’s fucking unlikely, I am holding on to the idea that maybe he has a paper-thin thread connecting my father to all of this.

These…this fucked up shit.