Page 23 of Owen (Blue Team #1)

I rushed down the stairs and when I hit the living room, Gabe, Kevin, and Myles all turned to look at me.

Their matching stares of concern hit me like a ton of bricks, a blow to my stomach, a slap in my face.

In one way or another, they all cared, I could see it plain.

They were worried about why I’d run down the stairs like a crazy woman.

“Where’s Owen?” I asked.

Gabe’s eyes narrowed and he lifted himself off the couch. “You okay?”

“Where’s Owen?” I repeated.

“Right here.” Owen stepped into the room and his eyes did a full-body sweep before he moved my way. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m ready,” I announced.

“Come again?” Owen asked but didn’t stop walking my way.

“I’m ready to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Why Wilco wants me back.”

Owen jerked to a stop and I thought that was the best thing.

I didn’t want him too close when I told him.

Hell, after he knew, he might never want to be close to me again.

This was counterproductive to me living in my dreamland but he deserved to know the truth.

Know who Sarah Pollaski truly was. Know who he was sleeping next to.

Oh, God, I was going to throw up.

I was going to ruin everything.

“Baby.”

Owen’s soft voice spurred me on. He had to know. He couldn’t call me ‘baby’ and not know.

There was only one way to do this. I had to purge it all at once.

Everything.

I needed it out.

“My first living memory was my father slapping my mother. I don’t know what for.

But he slapped her and she apologized to him.

I remember it clearly. She didn’t even cry.

She just stood in the foyer with my father’s handprint on her face and said she was sorry.

Father didn’t say anything but he saw me.

Then he walked back into his study and my mother calmly went into the bathroom. ”

“Nat—”

“That happened a lot. My father slapping my mother. On occasion, it would escalate to more and she’d have a black eye or a swelled lip. She never said anything. She never did anything. She would just take it and apologize to him.”

“Baby, stop.”

I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I needed to get it out.

My gaze lifted and my eyes locked onto Owen’s and once again I used his strength.

“When I was fifteen, I saw my father kill my mother. It was their anniversary and she was drunk. Thinking back, since I could remember they never celebrated that day but my mother would get drunk and spend the day crying. It was the only day of the year she showed any emotion and it was profound sadness. I never understood until that day. She was drunk and yelling at my father.” I stopped and took in a breath and when I let it out I finished.

“My mother was in love with Wilco and Wilco loved her. The two of them had been together when my father decided he was going to be the one to marry her. My uncle being the dutiful brother, stepped aside but never stopped loving her. She hated my father and hated my uncle for not protecting her. Loved and hated Wilco at the same time, that is. She just hated my father. It became clear that day why she didn’t love me.

How could she? I was the product of a forced marriage, a life she didn’t want.

And my uncle hates me for much of the same reason, I’m the reminder my father had the woman he loved. My very existence disgusts Wilco.”

“Your mother was reported missing by her sister.” Kevin told me something I knew.

“Yep. My aunt hated my father. She wasn’t allowed to come to the house.

But my mother still kept in touch. Funny things happen when you buy police loyalty.

A week after my mother’s death she made a call from the grave to the police chief and told him she was fine and had left my father, was seeking a divorce, and was happily living in New York.

The police reported this to my aunt and the case was closed.

As I’m sure you know, my father legally divorced a dead woman and according to her tax filings, she’s still alive living in Massena, New York.

She owns a home, pays her bills, and files taxes.

Though my aunt is dead, she had a horrible car accident. ”

“How do you know that?” Owen asked.

“Know what, that my dead mother draws a paycheck from a dummy corporation my father owned, that Wilco now owns and all of her bills are paid on time?” I didn’t give Owen time to confirm that was what he was inquiring about and continued.

“Because I paid her bills. Because I set up her direct deposit. My father was a criminal but he wasn’t stupid enough to let a death go to waste.

Yet another avenue to clean his dirty money. ”

Something flashed in Owen’s eyes but I pushed aside the pain it caused and continued. There was more he needed to know.

“I learned to play cards when I was little. The only time my father had any interest in me was when he was teaching me to play. By the time I was a teenager I could count cards. He started setting up games with his soldiers. They thought it was amusing having me at the table until I took their money. Then they kept coming back in an effort to win some back. When I was eighteen my father started having me sit at bigger tables, not with his soldiers but real players. Two years later he had me at high stakes games and that’s when I started earning my keep. ”

“Natasha,” Myles cut in but I didn’t allow him to stop me from getting the rest out.

I was numb, totally emotionless, it felt like I was telling a story that was not my life.

How I’d been forced to do things I didn’t want to do.

But there was more, so much more it would take days, but they had to know the highlights.

They needed all the information so they could decide if they really wanted to help me or not.

My guess was, they’d be done with me. Pack up their stuff, drive us down the mountain, and leave me at the airport to find my own way. And back to hell I would go.

“I was ten the first time I met one of the women from my father’s stable of prostitutes.

She came by the house—this was at my father’s request so he could fuck her.

She was his favorite, said she was clean.

That also happened frequently. My father didn’t care if my mother was in the house or if I was.

He’d call over his hooker, fuck her in his office, do this loudly, and send her on her way.

Through all of this, I stayed silent. I learned what happened if I spoke.

I wasn’t as strong as my mother, when I felt the sting of my father's palm on my face I cried. That would earn me another slap, and more and more until I stopped whimpering. Crying is for pussies. Crying is a weakness and Pollaskis are not weak. Women do not speak out of turn, they shut the fuck up and take what they’re given.

Pollaskis are to prove their loyalty. And I knew one of the ways my mother proved she was a Pollaski was by spreading her legs for the family.

My father whored her out—she brought in top dollar.

If you wanted to fuck The Boss’s woman you paid.

And men paid, but Wilco was not allowed to buy my mother’s time.

Another way my father taunted my uncle. Then he killed the one person that kept Wilco in check.

The only thing my uncle cared about was finding a way to get my mother back.

My dad used to say, pussy is the downfall of man.

He was right. He killed my mother, and Wilco plotted for ten years, turned my father’s soldiers against him, took his business, and finally dethroned him.

“I know where the girls are. I know where the client lists are kept. I know how the payouts are made, what accounts they come from, and who is on my uncle’s payroll.

I know my mother is dead. I know what my father did to Amie’s family and I know why.

I also know why my uncle was happy to sell me.

Like my father, Wilco doesn’t miss an opportunity to make a problem go away and do that making a buck.

Though, in my case, it was a bad deal. I made him a lot of money at the tables, much more than he sold me for.

But he had to get rid of me, so he did.”

“Why’d he have to get rid of you?” Kevin asked softly.

“Two reasons. I saw him kill an FBI agent and that same night I saw a cop dismember the body.”

I said it.

I thought I’d feel better, I thought it would feel good to finally tell the truth.

But it didn’t. I felt sick to my stomach.

The guilt I felt didn’t magically vanish.

I witnessed a man being tortured and brutally murdered and I’d done nothing.

I didn’t attempt to stop it, which would’ve been futile and I would’ve ended up dead as well, but at least I would’ve died with some morality.

“Do you know his name?” Owen asked and my heart broke.

No, it shattered.

Gone was the tenderness I’d heard over the last few days. Gone was the Owen who had been open and kind. I couldn’t even say he reverted back to the man I’d met because I’d never seen him look at me with such revulsion.

“That night my uncle called him Agent Conor but I knew him as Steel. He’d worked with Wilco for ages, maybe two years.

He ran the girls. And when Wilco added heroin to his menu of drugs offered, Steel was the one who ordered the shipments.

Most of them came out of San Antonio. Steel had a contact there, Axel, who got the heroin straight from Mexico. ”

“Undercover,” Myles muttered.

“Yes, Wilco found out he was an undercover FBI agent and he killed him in the house, in front of me. Though he didn’t know he was doing that last part. I wasn’t supposed to be home. Wilco had sent me out to work, I was done sooner than he thought.”

“Work?” Owen spat.

I had nothing else to hide. He now knew without a shadow of a doubt I was as filthy as the rest of my family. I may’ve never killed anyone but I still had blood on my hands—wet, sticky, warm blood that wouldn’t wash away. I was trash like the rest of them.

“A new client needed to be vetted. I took him to dinner but didn’t need much time to figure out I wasn’t going to approve him.

Not only did his financials show he couldn’t afford more than a few appointments but he had a drug habit.

Clients only got to partake in one or the other; they either bought drugs, or women, never both.

I concluded my dinner and went home early and walked in on Wilco killing Agent Conor. ”

The room was silent, but I didn’t need words to feel the electricity snapping through the air.

I felt every zap painfully pulse through me.

I was acutely aware that every man in the room was staring at me but I didn’t take my gaze off Owen.

He was the only one who mattered to me. I didn’t know if I was looking for forgiveness or if I wanted him to hate me as much as I hated myself.

“I need to go call Zane,” Owen broke the quiet.

I watched as he walked across the room. I kept watching until I lost sight of him when the back door closed behind him. Only then did I allow my shoulders to hunch and my lids to lower, blocking out the room but not the pain.

There it was, it was done.

I’d said my piece and now it was over.

They all knew who I was. Owen knew the truth. I could pretend all I wanted but I wasn’t Natasha. I was Sarah and I’d never shed her no matter how hard I tried.