Page 14 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

Resi laughed lightly. “Yup. Nothing like murder—if you can really call it that when the person so deserves to die—to bring long-lost siblings together again.” She gazed around the cave of a room, with its pillars and vicious griffins like sacred carvings; its massive bed like a white marble slab.

“Huh. Come to think of it, it happened right here in this room. Everything happened in this room. Master, or should I say, Daddy, used to let his friends go at me right over there, in that bed, while Max was tied up in the corner and forced to watch, poor guy. All he ever wanted to do was help me, but he couldn’t. Explains a lot.”

There might actually have been something genuine behind her voice, but it was hard to tell, concealed behind layers upon layers of trauma and sociopathy.

“Until a few years later, when he stood right over there by choice , watching me press a pillow over dear Daddy’s face.” She looked around fondly. “Probably why I haven’t changed up the decor much. Too many happy memories.”

I could almost see Louisa’s skin turn a shade of green, her body seeming to squeeze in on itself.

Fucking hell, how long had she been lying on that bed of horror, waiting for more?

The more I’d given her? I had to end this.

I had to make it right. My wrist wriggled in the cuff, trying to expand its circumference without drawing attention to it.

“You see, Lemaya and I had a lot in common, obviously,” Resi was saying.

“We both loved my brother, for instance. And that’s when I put the idea in her head,” she continued.

“Why be a vet tech when you can be a billionaire’s trophy wife instead?

” She giggled. “Promising her I could make it happen was one of my best bedtime stories. Good enough to get her to do anything I asked, anyway.”

Lemaya had betrayed me, and Maeve, and Louisa.

I should hate her. But she’d been through as much hell as any of us, maybe more, and I couldn’t blame her—or any of the girls, really—for cashing in everything for a free ticket to a life she’d never before dared to dream of.

She’d been a victim twice over—once of slavery and again of Resi’s false promises of freedom.

“You put ideas in all their heads, from the sounds of it,” I said. “Ideas that didn’t exactly pan out, did they?”

She tossed her head back. “Well, see, my brother and I—I gather he told you about this, right?—had this dream. One from a long, long time ago. And we agreed that it would be my job to figure out how to remove the tracking chips from the girls we chose, ones we could be confident their owners weren’t looking for,” Resi said.

“And that we would save them; and in time, all slaves. That was our dream.”

“It was his dream,” I muttered, too low for Resi to hear.

However, it prompted the former gardener, who must be getting paid a shitload of money to continue to act like a good slave, to punch me in the ear, leaving the echo of pain ringing through my frontal cortex.

Despite this, it was enough of a distraction to give me a chance to expand the one cuff that hadn’t been applied properly, nearly enough to slip it off.

Assuming neither thug noticed, it was a start.

“No one was better qualified to do it,” Resi was saying.

“Max made sure of it. He sent me to California, to the best research universities there, while he made the money, all in preparation for our one big chance. But sadly, even though we quickly found a formula we thought would work.” She shrugged.

A formula? The science nerd in me couldn’t help but perk up at that.

“My experiments failed, one after another. And we only had finite capital, you see. Naturally, I started getting desperate. If I had to go back to Max and beg him for more money, he’d start asking questions.

He’d be like you . And then he’d find out I started cutting corners.

And that the results of the failed experiments weren’t exactly as humane as I assured him they were.

One of the girls, sadly, we couldn’t save. ”

She spoke about the dead girl in the desert like a flower she’d forgotten to water.

“But at least she died knowing she was advancing the noble cause of freedom. Or something.”

Louisa jerked on the bed at that. I closed my eyes; opened them again. If only I could see her face. See whether she was still with me. Whether she trusted me to have a plan to get us out of this. Whether she trusted me at all, which was doubtful at this point.

“And my sister? Was she one of the failed experiments?”

Resi just laughed. “Even worse, our main financial backer—I think you both know him quite well—would spook. And that would be the end of our dream.” A strange, faraway look in her eyes. “And everything that happened in this room would be for nothing.”

“So the girls were tools.” I forced myself to keep my voice measured, even.

Any emotion I showed, anything I purported to care about—up to and including the girl on the bed—would immediately become a weapon Resi could exploit.

I had to approach this like the businessman I’d just been trying to fool everyone into thinking I was. “To fuck your dad. To fuck the system.”

She came closer and kneeled, pressing a hand lightly on the side of my face. “Oh, sweetie, we both know someone’s always going to get fucked,” she said sadly. “All I cared about was that it was never again going to be me.”

I swallowed and looked down, ashamed that what Resi had just said made sense to me—or had, too many times in my past.

“Meanwhile, I promised them more and more, anything to help me. But some of the girls knew I was lying; I knew I was lying. They were asking about the missing one. Especially your sweet sister. She threatened to run; to tell someone; or to find her brother, the one who was going to come save all of them.”

Maeve had always had a talent for getting under people’s skin. And it sounded like her language barrier hadn’t been as big as I’d feared.

“And the free one, too?” I asked.

“Alma was crazy anyway,” Resi scoffed. “She’d have to be, to pretend to be a runaway slave just to get food and shelter.

By the time I realized she didn’t have a chip, it was too late.

Luckily, I had all the resources I needed for a very successful—and fun—side hustle,” she said, looking around the room, nodding at Louisa’s prone, shadowy form on the bed as if she were just another part of the decor.

“Sadly, I couldn’t tell my brother, who, God only knows why, still upholds some morals and principles and stuff, though I’ve frequently begged him to stop.

Anyway, he wouldn’t touch any of the girls, or let anyone else touch them, unless I could convince him they were there by choice.

” She tittered. “Luckily, they thought they were there by choice.”

“Were? Past tense?” My heart began to thrash against my ribcage at the implications.

“Little sis may be a pest, but she’s a star.

She still figured out where the girls were despite Lemaya’s best efforts.

So yes, they’re gone. Almost certainly on their way to the police with Alma and those two cute little sapphic snowflakes I got suspended, if they’re not already there.

And it may be too late, but don’t think for a second I’m going to let them get away that easily. ”

She could be bluffing, but I didn’t think so. “What happened to them?”

She looked at her watch, raised her head, and smiled. “I’ll find out soon. And once I do, all that remains is to figure out how to wrap up our little gathering here before the cops break down my door. And Max’s. And Keith’s.”

I watched a shiver wrack Louisa’s body, and an ice-cold fear rose in my chest. I could almost feel her heart thumping with terror as Resi spoke, my eyes, for the millionth time, trying to find an escape route from the room she’d been trapped in for hours already. Fuck.

Because though Resi would torture me, chances were she wouldn’t kill me. Not yet, anyway. Not while Max was still around. But Louisa would never be anything more than a loose end.

And I forged ahead with the assumption that Louisa knew that. Because if she didn’t, what I was about to do would kill her.

“No,” I said. “Only Keith’s.”

“What?” A crack in Resi’s shell, for the first time since she’d arrived. For the first time since I’d met her, almost.

I sped ahead, knowing if I paused to think, I’d trip on my words and it would be over.

“You already had his name on the warehouse deed, but you wanted to go further. You were trying to steal as much of his money as you could while framing him for it. For the sex trafficking. For all of it.” I paused, but only for a second, to take a gulp of air.

“You knew the police would find the girls. That’s why you wanted into Max’s books.

It was going to be your Plan B. Corey was helping you. But you didn’t finish the job.”

Louisa had grown silent. Everyone was silent, an audience watching the soliloquy of a lifetime.

“And? Well?” Resi crossed her arms, a posture that revealed more than she probably thought.

“Well, I can make it happen,” I continued. “I found the files. I’ve already doctored most of them. I just need to finish a few more. We drop it in the cops’ laps, and you and Max are free.”

More silence. Resi barely moved.

“He’ll be ruined,” I swallowed. “At the very least. The whole family will.”

“And at most?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure people’s families still got sold into slavery for major debt, don’t they? They’ll get a taste of what it’s like to be you. To be me.”

“And you?” Resi pressed.

“With Keith out of the picture, I’ll be free, too. Max will make sure of it.”

Lou, don’t believe me. Please don’t believe me.

I knew how hard she’d worked. I knew how much she loved her family, despite it all. I’d seen it all. I understood. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.