Page 75 of Cherished By the Sinners

“Yeah.”Mason was following them, so she continued.“I saw some pretty fucked up shit in that warehouse.”

Both men froze statue-still for nearly three seconds.

“You’re not...scared?”Mason asked in the smallest voice she’d ever heard him use.

“Of what?That nutso from England?No, he’s dead.He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”She paused to frown as she sat on the couch.“Heisdead, right?”

“Completely,” Magnus promised.His wide eyes made him look completely freaked out.

“What did you see?”Mason asked.He slowly lowered himself onto the couch, his big body taking up the remaining room on the sofa.

She opened her mouth to answer, but Magnus standing by himself bugged her.

“Magnus,” she said, motioning him closer, but there was no more space on the couch.“Is there a chair or something you could bring over?”

He dropped himself onto the floor two feet in front of her.

She frowned.“What are you doing?You don’t have to sit on the floor.”

He crossed his legs and sat like someone sitting next to a campfire.“I’m good here,” he said.

There was an edge to his voice, a note of fear and worry that she didn’t like.What could he be afraid of?

“What did you see?”he asked.

She glanced at Mason.Did they really want to hear all this?

Mason nodded his head.

She blew out a breath.“Okay.So, Eli grabbed me from the hospital.”Damn.In all the stuff that followed, she’d forgotten about the chaos of the attack.“Did he hurt anyone?”

“Not that we’ve heard,” Magnus said.

Darlene nodded.“So, he wanted to know why I was so special...His uncle sniffed me and then just told Eli, ‘No.’I didn’t know what he meant.”Mason and Magnus both stiffened.

Huh, sospecialmeant something specific to them.

“I explained that I was once a prostitute, but that I’d been given a second chance to be a normal person with all the rights and freedoms I’d never gotten to have before.He seemed to think that was funny because his uncle was going to use me to punish you two.

“That made me mad.I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt me or you ever again and told him so.Then I showed him my back and said that I’d already lived through hell, and that I would do anything to save you two from the kind of emotional pain his uncle inflicted.Even...”her voice trailed off.Would they understand or would it make them even more upset?

“Even going so far as to kill myself right then and there.”

Both men made almost identical shocked noises.

Mason leaned forward to grab one arm, while his brother came up on his knees and grabbed her other arm.

“No,” they said in unison.

She rolled her eyes.“I’m not suicidal, I just wanted him to understand how certain I felt about the wholepunish your enemiessituation.”

“He sat and thought about it for a while, staring at me like he’d never seen a human being before.Then as we arrived at the warehouse, he told me I wasn’t what he was expecting, that he admired my strength of convictions, and he would try to help me as much as he could.Hopefully long enough for you to find me.”

“Perhaps we will let him live, after all,” Mason said.He released his hold on her arm but didn’t let her go.Instead he took her hand in his.

Magnus copied him, resulting in both men coming much closer to her than they’d been before.

“Okay,” she said, squeezing both their hands.“This next part is...scary.”