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Lenora thought back on how long she’d known Adelia, and her heart squeezed until her throat burned. “Been a while.”
“Little Adelia, paraded out in her skivvies.” Hawke cringed. “By her own flesh and blood. Put up for auction like livestock.”
“Doesn’t get much worse than that,” Lenora whispered over the slice of pain she wanted to ignore.
“Can’t imagine it does. What kind of piece-of-shit father sells his daughter? And Tex walked over, threw money at the bastard, walked Adelia down, and gave her clothes and a wad of cash.”
“We’d never talked about it.” Lenora hadn’t asked for specifics, and Tex hadn’t shared.
Hawke stopped stroking his chin, seeming somewhat shocked. “No?”
“Not-uh.”
Hawke belly laughed. “Probably because yourold man was traumatized.”
Lenora’s eyebrow crooked. It wasn’t often that Hawke full on laughed. “What do you mean?”
“I think he envisioned more of a catch-and-release program.”
“Really?”
A tired grin broke on Hawke’s face. “There was a language barrier, not at first. Tex let her go. We went our way. She went hers. What happened in our time apart? Fuck if I know, but we’re heading back, andI’ll be damned if that poor girl hasn’t been double-crossed by some backstabbing whore her father pimped.”
“Meaning what?”
“The asshole grabbed his daughter again, and he’s trying to sell her, but this time, she was hurt, a bloody mess, beaten within an inch of her life, strung up by her hands and unconscious.”
Tears brimmed, and Lenora prayed she wouldn’t let them fall in front of Hawke. “Whathappened?”
“The slimy motherfucker’s gathering folks to sell her again, and we’re just watching this shit show—like this ain’t right, but we ain’t the fuckin’ police.” Hawke put his elbows on the scarred table. “We have our code. We’re in another country, and we’re loaded with our product now. No need to cause a stir.”
Elevated risk. Lenora could understand. “So?”
“Tex walks up in front ofeveryone, next to her dickhead pimp father, pulls out a big-ass serrated knife, cuts her down, and throws her over his shoulder. Says something like, ‘I believe this belongs to me,’ and marches off.”
“What!” Lenora’s heart exploded, and her rogue tears fell.
Tex never bragged, but how hadn’t she ever heard this? Mayhem couldn’t keep their mouths shut half the time. She was their damn lawyer!She knew better than most.
Hawke chuckled, ignoring her tears. “We stuck around for an extra day, planning to get Adelia to a good place. But where the fuck was that? We had no clue. Neither did she. She just wanted to go wherever we were headed as long as we could go back and get her brother.”
“Javier?” Lenora’s throat seized again.
“Yup. Man, we were in Brazil for fuckin’ ever.” Hawke shookhis head. “Late with our product. Missed our deadline. That kid had bailed. We looked for him for two days, all of us. But really, we didn’t know what the shit the kid looked like. Adelia was so banged up, she wasn’t much use, and her English wasde nada.”
“Why doesn’t anyone share that story?”
He lifted a heavy shoulder. “Fresh starts and challenging work mean no time to focus on the past.”
She loved Tex even more. Wherever that old bastard was, Lenora was sure he was doing what it took to keep Adelia alive, and that was what she was going to do too, in her ownmotherlyway. Even if she had no idea what a mother might do.
“Anyway,” Hawke grumbled. “Enough about history.”
She took a sobering breath. “What’re you looking at?”
“Bank statements.”
Geez. That wasn’t what she wantedto hear. “I’ll let you work then.”