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And there wasn’t. Whatever had happened to Dante only happened three years ago. The pain and guilt and shame were still fresh.

It haunted him.

The war of indecision danced across his features. He wanted to tell me, but I knew Danny hadn’t wanted him to share, and he was torn between his devotion to the man he loved and the desire to work through what he had experienced.

“There was a woman there. She was in her fifties. She used pain to make me comply. The more I fought her, the more pain she inflicted. She knew I was gay, and she used that to her advantage...”

Dante told me his story. The things this woman did to him and the things she made him do. It wasn’t until he told me about Dani’s mother that I wept. It wasn’t professional, but I was human. I couldn’t listen to what this man had been forced to do without feeling it deep inside me.

Fuck professionalism.

I reached out and pulled Dante into my arms. I cried with him as he tried to let go of the guilt and shame he faced every day since his time in that awful place.

“I am so sorry, Dante. What you endured...” I didn’t know how to put into words what I was feeling for him. My heart broke for him. My soul felt like it had been torn in half.

I wasn’t trained to handle something like this.

But I wouldn’t turn my back on him.

“You know Dr. Scott, don’t you?” I asked hesitantly.

“He was one of the boys who pulled me from that place as a baby.”

“Does he know? About what happened to you?”

“I don’t think so. The others do. They got me out again.”

Dante shook in my arms. I grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around him. He continued his story, telling me about how his family had found him and what his brother Silas had done to get him back.

“Dante, I have a friend who is a therapist. She works with adult sexual assault survivors. I think you would greatly benefit from speaking with her.”

“You’re a doctor,” he reminded me.

“I am, but my training specializes in working with children. I will do what I can to help you work through your experience, but I am limited in my training. Just think about it. She does online therapy so you could meet with her while still living here.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Today has been a lot. I want you to know that nothing you have shared with me will ever be shared anywhere or with anyone. I take my oath seriously.”

“Thank you. Danny didn’t want me to share. He was worried about prosecution, because Dani’s mom was so young.”

“I am only mandated to report a crime you tell me you are going to commit in the future, or an ongoing crime that puts someone in danger. What happened to you was a crime. And I wish with everything in me that I could report that woman on your behalf. But what you did… Despite the pain that girl went through, you went through pain as well. Tomorrow, I would like to talk about how you found Dani. I want you to be prepared because it will be another emotional day.”

“Thank you, Dr. Jefferson.”

Chapter Four

Ghost

December 11, 2024, Diamond Creek Nebraska.

“Dad? What’s going on?” Beck asked the sheriff as I walked into the main room from the hallway.

The sheriff had been persona non grata here at the clubhouse ever since King found out Declan had been lying to him his whole fucking life and was actually his uncle, not his brother like he believed.

We all recently learned King’s father was Braesal O’Malley. Head of the fucking Irish Mob in Boston, Massachusetts. That was a fucking trip to find out. The couple that raised him until they passed away when he was ten were actually his grandparents.

I was curious about what had brought Dec here and better still, how he’d convinced the prospect at the gate to let him in. I had been upstairs jacking off again to the memory of the woman I couldn’t get out of my fucking head when King told us all to get to church.